A Colombian Pop Song, García Márquez Idolatry And The Sins Of Censorship

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — In a country at war with itself, where the government uses hate speech and sows division, one can take some small solace in a raucous debate emerging over a simple song.

This involves our veteran Colombian rock and folk singer Carlos Vives who recently sang at a house party, offending attendees with lyrics that seemed to be a jab at the late Nobel laureate and national literary treasure, Gabriel García Márquez. The Vallenato number, so typical of Vives’s repertoire, said this: “Let the writer García Márquez know, you’ve got to love the land you’re born in, not leave it like he did. He abandoned his hometown, and as for his family home, it’s falling down…”

Those words set Colombia’s social media on fire: outrage rained on Vives for his ingratitude, treachery, lack of patriotism, you name it. How could he sing against the source of a nation’s pride, and one who’s died to boot and unable to defend himself?

Singing against a nation’s pride

Even President Gustavo Petro — an eager X user — tweeted that the song was “cultural suicide,” before deleting the comment.

Did he have to? Is the song’s first line true, that we must love the land to which we’re born?

Someone informed him that all Vives had done was to sing a bit of the 1974 song by Armando Zabaleta, Aracataca espera (“Aracataca is waiting”), at a celebration.

But that still left an eerie sensation of oppressive censorship for anyone daring to criticize the only Colombian in the pantheon of literary giants. The man nicknamed “Gabo” is sacred, said one commentator.

Our identity, our culture

As always, many different elements were mixed into this cacophonous broth — sacred symbols, the fatherland, who we are, etc.— and nobody stopped to think there is nothing sacred or celestial about the “fatherland” or our identities.

Our identity and culture are as profane as can be, seeing as they are expressions of all of us — our habits and conduct, triumphs and failures or the virtues we claim to cherish and monstrous acts we end up justifying.

The 50-year period between Jorge Oñate’s first rendition of that curious song and the night Vives sang it at the home of his friend Silvestre Dangond is also our identity, with its vicissitudes and surprises. The minstrel who composed it to let out his irritation, the aging star with a rollercoaster career and the great novelist who gave the world a bouquet of the best and worst of our words — are all in our identity.

Would Gracía Márquez be offended?

We may reaffirm or question the identity others have built, which is merely to present it another way. Certainly, in the midst of it all is the tremendous and undying presence of the son of Aracataca who fixed in his extravagant prose the cataclysmic force and stifling, buzzing unease of our Caribbean lands; Gabo as the creator, and destroyer, of the fictional Macondo, which is nothing less than a new word in Spanish for the unreal and absurd.

I dare say, García Márquez wouldn’t have given a hoot (to avoid using the word with which he ends No One Writes to the Colonel, namely mierda), about people chiding him for doing nothing for his hometown. Did he have to? Is the song’s first line true, that we must love the land to which we’re born?

I haven’t ever thought so, just as I never submitted to the despotism of blood ties, nor believed artists to be social workers, activists, cheerleaders and the like.

Artist commitment to authenticity

I fondly recall an Argentine film I saw eight years ago, El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen) with a script written by Andrés Duprat, now head of the Buenos Aires Museum of Fine Arts. It is the story of an eminent writer and Nobel laureate who returns to Salas, the small town where he was born, after 40 years of not visiting the place that inspired his works.

None are above criticism nor fit for worship.

He is warmly received at first, before the welcome and his interactions sour, as he can barely stomach the petty pride and parochialism of his own town’s citizens.

And that leads to the intriguing ending revealing the Macondian nature of an entire continent! We have a gift for destruction, like the meanest of townsfolk, and our culture and identity can sink to the basic level of simple instincts: me and my opinions, my manhood and my lady!

Artists have a commitment to their art, to impeccable creativity and authenticity, and perhaps down the line to their collective legacy or posthumous reputations. That is what Zabaleta, Vives and García Márquez have done and will continue to do, seeing as there is no end to their art.

But none are above criticism nor fit for worship. So no, Gabo is not sacred, but forever for all to take or leave…