Gabo is Dead, Long Live Gabo: Latin Americans React in Unison to the Passing of Gabriel García Márquez

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The death of Gabriel García Márquez was a major seismic event that generated a tsunami of coverage in the Latin American media.  It focused the attention of the entire region, and was the top story in every major paper in Spanish-speaking Latin America (and Spain, as well).  Stories about Gabo will likely continue to pour out for some time to come.  It seems that nearly everyone wants to go on the record.  Several papers had special sections ready to go.  Even the Brazilians gave significant coverage.  His legacy, clearly, will be contested territory for decades.  Both Colombia (the place of his birth and font of his fiction) and Mexico (his adopted home) claim him as their own, though plenty of other Latin Americans feel a sense of connection to Gabo, as he was known with great affection.  Commentators stressed his “universal” appeal and the wide resonance of his pan-Latin American themes, beyond his obvious connection to the broader Caribbean, his love of vallenatos, the world he created through his “magical realism,” his leftist politics, his utopias, dystopias, and his sense of solitude.  He was the “interpreter” and the “light” for the entire Hispanic community, as well as the guide the rest of the world looks to for understanding.