FERNANDO RESTREPO: He was very critical of the United States and the crisis with Cuba and all of that. He took a very radical position and for a long time they didn’t give him a visa to enter the United States. Now I think he has one, permanent and everything.
ROSE STYRON: He was on that list for so many years . . . I organized the Committee for Free Expression at PEN, and we were trying to bring to the United States, for our own edification, various prominent writers whom the American government, especially the Nixon–Kissinger administration, considered dangerous leftists. And García Márquez, like Graham Greene—and Carlos Fuentes for a time—couldn’t enter the country. There were a lot of writers who couldn’t. And then suddenly, and very quietly, they let him come to New York. He wanted to go to Mississippi and pay homage to Faulkner, go to his house, and the first time he entered the country they didn’t allow him to. He had to wait. The whole business of their not letting him enter the country angered him and amused him at the same time. Fuentes came in every year because he taught at Pennsylvania and at Brown, and he spent several months at a time in various universities in the United States.
But each time Fuentes had to request permission and each time he did they authorized him.
If García Márquez made the request, he was turned down.
JUANCHO JINETE: Everything we did here in Barranquilla, all the petitions we signed asking that they give him that visa. We were friends of those gringos from the consulate who went around with us here. Later we learned that some of them were even in the CIA.
WILLIAM STYRON: The McCarran-Walter Act was a delicate subject with Gabo for a long time. This awful embargo on intellectuals like Gabo. A time in 1985 comes to mind, I recall. It’s a particularly memorable moment for me because it’s connected to the depression I suffered from and that I wrote about, and I remember I was flying from New York to Martha’s Vineyard. He called and said he would be at the house of a mutual friend, Tom Wicker, who at the time was still writing his column for the New York Times. He told me he was going to have a get-together at his house and I remember it was the beginning of that colossal depression. I remember flying to New York, going to the party, and being profoundly sick. Gabo’s extremely amusing comments on how he had managed to enter this time with the McCarran-Walter Act, which still prohibited his coming in, scarcely registered in my mind. I remember that he took it with a mixture of anger, good humor, and cynical acceptance.
FERNANDO RESTREPO: At a certain moment he was invited to teach a class, a seminar, at Columbia University, and he was issued a special visa so that he could go. At that moment Fernando Gómez Agudelo and I were in Paris on some television business. We called Gabo and decided: “Let’s go to New York.”
WILLIAM STYRON: We shared recollections of his love for New York, and what I want to say is that he came and went very quickly because of the immigration problem. The time they allowed him to spend in this country was limited. But I think that one of the many things that acted as a catalyst for our friendship, though it would have existed all the same without it, was the war in Nicaragua at the beginning of the eighties. The war was a delicate subject, almost a painful one, for him and for me. Later I went with Carlos Fuentes to Managua, at the most heated point in the war, because it was a cause of great sorrow for many people in this country, myself included. And then there was the fact of his friendship with Castro, which has always been an uncomfortable subject. Many Latin American intellectuals have been concerned, of course, about his relationship with Castro.
PLINIO APULEYO MENDOZA: Fidel is a myth from the confines of his recovered childhood, a new representation of Aureliano Buendía. If anyone’s looking for a key to his Castroite fever, here it is in eighteen carats.
FERNANDO RESTREPO: Gómez Agudelo and I decided to take the Concorde, since they had recently initiated the supersonic flights of the Concorde. We told Gabo we were traveling on the Concorde, and Gabo says: “I’ll meet you at the airport.” When we landed, there he was, and Gabo asks: “Well, and how’s the Concorde?” Fernando says: “A fast-as-shit DC-3.” Gabo wrote that description in one of his columns.
CARMELO MARTÍNEZ: His father, a Conservative, and him, a communist. With the money he has he can’t be a communist. He has a lot of money.
BRAM TOWBIN: The scene is the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. I was ensconsed aboard the Sumurun, the most beautiful sailboat in the harbor that year, which belonged to my father. I was spending my spring vacation from Dartmouth in Europe. I was on deck alone while the crew and a good number of cosmopolitan European and American guests were down below. A South American gentleman in his forties appeared on the dock and came up the gangplank. He behaved with determination and authority, but with a low profile. I didn’t think he was an intruder, but rather one of those minor actors. When he came on board he asked for one of the guests, saying only her first name, Albina. I told him in English that she was busy but would soon be up and invited him to the table, in the middle of the ship, which was set to receive guests. We sat there.
In my defense for what I’m going to relate, I should make it clear that at this time Gabriel García Márquez wasn’t the recognized name that it is today for most people in the United States. Our dialogue begins here. He claimed not to know English. I don’t know Spanish. We decided on French, which I speak very badly. Taciturn and obviously unimpressed by my qualities as a host, he put me in a bad humor and I imagined him acting, reciting the usual phrases, but he was our guest and I rushed to show him the marvelous benevolence and good manners of the ultra-privileged gringo college student. It may be that we don’t have the panache of the French or that old-world overconfidence of the English, but we do have our strong points:
I: Where were you born?
He: In Colombia.
I: Is it nice in Colombia?
He: Yes.
(Uncomfortable silence)
I: Do you want something to drink?
He: No.
(Uncomfortable silence)
I: The chef is preparing cheeses and bread. They’re terrific. Do you want cheese and bread? It’s delicious.
He: No, thank you.
(Uncomfortable silence)
I: Do you have a film in the festival?
He: No.
I: I heard that Annie Hall and E.T. are super fine . . . but to each his own.
(Uncomfortable silence)
I: It’s a nice day . . . a very nice climate . . . a little hot but much better than in New York. I live in New York.
He: Yes.
I: Have you liked any of the films they’ve shown this year here in Cannes?
He: Missing.
I: I haven’t seen that one yet.
(Uncomfortable silence)
I: I didn’t like Annie Hall at all. It’s pretty stupid. Really.
At this point people began to come up. I realized immediately that he was no second-rate actor. For all these people adulation is as sinful as wearing velour, but there they all were, fairly servile and tittering like embarrassed children. Who the devil was this guy? Well, then, for the next few days I didn’t do anything but hear them all preach to me about One Hundred Years of Solitude . . . And I said to myself what the hell, another writer. I return to the United States and it seemed as if the whole country was reading that novel, and I begin to realize its significance. In a few months, he’s awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Wherever I go I hear everybody talking about García Márquez. And I’m silent. I return to my university and decide to take a course on William Faulkner. The first day of class, the professor, very well versed in the subject matter, who had spent years teaching Faulkner, begins: “This year the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the great Gabriel García Márquez. Of all our contemporary authors, he is one of those who share with William Faulkner the sense of place. I want all of you to know that at this moment this formidable talent is not allowed to visit the United States thanks to our antiquated immigration laws. This is an embarrassment. What I wouldn’t do to spend a few minutes with this man.” I didn’t raise my hand.