Cultureplex Data Points VOL 2 L ISSUE 1 L OCT 2018 L ISSN 2561-5211

CulturePlex Data Points VOL 2 l ISSUE 1 l OCT 2018 l ISSN 2561-5211

“LETTERS FROM VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE”: García Márquez’s Global Literary Republic

Authors: Juan Luis Suárez García Márquez cultural network also explains his impact. Antonio Jiménez-Mavillard

SUMMARY In the Container 54.5 of the Gabriel García Márquez Archive at the Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin1, we find a list of “Very Important People” that wrote to Gabo between the period of 1986 and 2001. These letters were described as “very important” by himself or his family. This container sits right below the series of letters entitled “Balcells Literary Agency”, and above “Letters, Invitations and Requests”. Who are these very important people? How are they different from those included in other containers, the inviters and requesters from the next set of boxes?

VIP LIST u From the 652 special correspondents, only 37 were considered VIP.

Figure 1. Pictures of 28 out of the 37 very importnat people list. *Images’ credits in the last page.

There are 652 people identified as correspondents through the metadata used to orga- nize García Márquez’s Archive in Austin. This includes both senders and receivers of letters throughout the period 1961-2013. However, this analysis does not include all other forms of communication such as faxes or telegrams also preserved in the archive.

1 We would like to acknowledge the guidance provided by the Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

1 Only 37 of those 652 individuals and institutions are part of the VIP list. The list includes 35 identified names (four women and 31 men). Whereas two other names are only identified by the initials “E.C.” or the last name “B. García”. We do not know who they are. The VIPs are: Kofi A. Annan; Emilio Azcárraga; Belisario Betancur; Boutros Boutros-Gh- ali; E. C.; Ingvar Carlsson; Fidel Castro; Raúl Castro; Bill Clinton; Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello, Joseph-Marie Córdoba Montoya; José Luis Cuevas; Abelardo Curbelo Padrón; Nohra de Pastrana; Carlos Díaz Redondo; Fundación Pablo Neruda; B. García; Graciano García; Diana Elvira García Morelli; Felipe González Márquez; Rosa María Hernández Soto; Akira Kurosawa; Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado; Thomas F. McLarty; Luis Méndez Morejón; Danielle Mitterrand; François Mitterrand; Kenzaburō Ōe; José Juan de Olloqui y Labastida; Giōrgos A. Papandreou; Andrés Pastrana Arango; Carlos Andrés Pérez; Carlos Pizarro León-Gómez; Carlos Rafael Rodríguez; Mario Rodríguez Martínez; Carlos Salinas de Gortari; Luis Yáñez. Why were these people “very important”? In what sense were they “important” for Gabo VIP LIST FACTS u and his family? Were they personally or professionally important? Some were entre- In the VIP group appear preneurs, politicians, authors, filmmakers, painters, UN secretary generals, Cuban and presidents and prime Mexican diplomats, a “guerrillero”, journalists, literary foundation presidents and prime ministers of ten different ministers; all from ten different countries: Colombia, Sweden, Cuba, US, Brazil, Spain, countries, as well as famous Mexico, France, Greece, and Venezuela. Not even the most successful writer would have diplomats and artists. such a rolodex.

ZOOM IN u NUMBER OF LETTERS PER COUNTRY 1 - 3 Zoom in to view the map 4 - 7 8 - 13 14 - 16 and the correspondents’ 17 - 53 0 countries of origin in more detail. Figure 2. Map of correspondents’ countries of origin.

It is at least curious that in the letters classified as Selected Correspondence we find many other names that might have been included within the VIPs: artists, politicians, celeb- rities, and writers, to mention a few. Here are some of the non-VIP selected names: Héctor Joaquín Abad Faciolince; Yōko Ono; Pablo Milanés, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza; Ángeles Mastretta; Alfonso López Michelsen; Milan Kundera; Henry Kissinger; Juan Carlos I (King of Spain); Tomás Gutiérrez Alea; José A. Gurría; Edith Grossman; Luis Goytisolo; Carlos Fuentes; Jane Fonda; Régis Debray; Francis Ford Coppola; Haroldo

CulturePlex Data Points I VOL 2 I ISSUE 1 I OCT 2018 2 Conti; Rubén Blades; Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan; Indira Gandhi; Günter Grass; Milan Kundera; Umberto Eco; and Actors Studio2. Reading this list of names, some very well known, others difficult to identify, one won- ders about the immense network that García Márquez built during his life. This network was in some cases established through personal contacts, but maintained by the power of epistolary correspondence. It is only late in his life that he complemented traditional letter writing with email, as he had done before with faxes and telegrams. The efficacy of the letters shaped the literary, political, and cultural fabric of Colombia, and transformed the identity and movement of Latin American literature from a traditional ‘lettered city’ into a more global republic established by García Márquez. He developed a new global dimension in Latin American literature founded on the power of fiction that has greatly impacted the lives of people all over the world. His network of correspondents is the best testimony to this phenomenon. This global network starts in Colombia, where some of his correspondents were born, and covers forty-nine countries, from Venezuela to Japan, through Spain, India, France, the US, and Mexico, among others.

CORRESPONDENTS’ GENDER u

male 271 female 74 unknown 21

Figure 3. Correspondents’ distribution by birth date. It is a very diverse network. Most of the correspondents are men (two hundred and seventy-one, 79%) and there are also seventy-four women (21%)3. And it is definitely a network of politics, culture and literature of the 20th Century: some of the correspondents were born at the end of the 19th Century while others during the last quarter of the 20th Century. Most of them were born between 1920 and 1960. Among them there are politicians, writers, journalists, diplomats, actors, lawyers, soccer players, screenwriter, professors, and film directors.

2 According to the archivists at the Ransom Center in Austin, “The Letters from very important people and Special letters were designated as such by either García Márquez or someone in his family, most likely his wife. Both groups are arranged alphabetically.” 3 We have been able to automatically identify approximately half of the 652 correspondents.

CulturePlex Data Points I VOL 2 I ISSUE 1 I OCT 2018 3 García Márquez was unique in many dimensions of his life, but his ability to create and TOP TEN maintain such a vast network of contacts can only be explained by looking at his begin- PROFESSIONSu nings as a journalist –a profession based on contacts– and qualities that made him a very special human being. Unlike most migrants and exiles who drop their lives and contacts politician writer on their way out of their land, Gabo was able to carry his life and his contacts from the journalist Caribbean coast into Bogotá, Barcelona, Mexico, and into other parts of the world. This diplomat network shows how he integrated and sustained each of those life moments into the next actor ones, from La Cueva all the way to Stockholm. lawyer association football Some people say that Colombia still remains a very introspective country, a country player that tends to look inwards when faced with problems. Was Gabo able to create this screenwriter huge network because he left his country? Is Colombia better known because of the university teacher work and the connections established by García Márquez? The truth is that the effects film director of García Márquez’s global network on Colombia and Latin American literature will be felt for many years to come. Only then will we be able to assess what his path from Aracataca to the world stage means for his country.

* IMAGES’ CREDITS: “Andrés Pastrana Arango”, by Guillermo Ramos Flamerich, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 /cropped from the original. “Ex presidente Belisario Betancur en inauguración de En Busca del Traje Perdido II” by Vanessa Reyes, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 “Carlos Rafael Rodríguez” by EcuRed, is licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0 “Fotografía recortada de Carlos Salinas de Gortari, presidente de México (1988-994)”, by Andrés Monroy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 “DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, JAN 1989 - (fltr) Klaus Schwab and Venezuela’s President-elect Carlos Andrés Pérez at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1989. Copyright World Economic Forum(http://www.weforum.org)” by Klaus Schwab, Carlos Andrés Perez - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 1989, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 “Pizarro in 1990” by Colectivo Pizarro, is licensed by Colectivo Pizarro “Plenario do Congresso Nacional durante sessão solene destinada a homenagear os 61 anos da morte de Getúlio Vargas. Em discuso, senador Fernando Collor (PTB-AL). Foto: Geraldo Magela/Agência Senado” by Senado Federal, is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / “Felipe González en 1976” by Hans Peters / Anefo, is licensed by CC0 “Ingvar Carlsson vid invigningen av Lundakarnevalen 2006” by Henrik Hansen, is licensed under CC BY 2.5 “Manuel Suarez y Suarez, Mario Orozco Rivera y Jose Luis Cuevas” by Carranzagabriela, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 “Kenzaburō Ōe at the conference of Paris Book Fair 2012” by Thesupermat, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 “Luis Yáñez-Barnuevo García, Member of the European Parliament for Spain in Strasbourg, France” by Diliff, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 “Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado” by sinaloaarchivohistorico, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 “Danielle Mitterrand during Ségolène Royal and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s meeting in Toulouse on April, 19th 2007 for the 2007 presi- dential election.” by Guillaume Paumier, is licensed under CC BY 2.5 “Primera dama durante la presidencia de Andrés Pastrana” by Enis hernandez, is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 “Τελετή παράδοσης-παραλαβής στο Μέγαρο Μαξίμου Μέγαρο Μαξίμου 11 Νοεμβρίου, 2011” by Papandreou_Papademos, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 “Raúl Castro durante un encuentro en septiembre de 2015 con el presidente ruso Valdimir Putin” by Kremlin.ru, is licensed under CC BY 4.0 “Strasbourg-1980-04-11” por Philippe Roos, utilizada bajo licencia CC BY-SA 2.0 / cropped from the original.

www.cultureplex.ca EDITION METHODOLOGY Emilio Calderón Zeina Dghaim We applied Natural Language Processing to the meta- DESIGN data file provided by the Ransom Center to identify the Ana Ruiz Segarra selected correspondents and the list of VIPs. We searched COORDINATION for their names on Wikidata and DBpedia to extract their Yadira Lizama-Mué birth dates, birth places, and professions, and formed a Cultural Network with this information. COLABORATORS Bárbara Romero Daniel Varona Cordero @cultureplex [email protected] London, Ontario, Canada This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. CulturePlex Data Points I VOL 2 I ISSUE 1 I OCT 2018 4