Long into the night thousands of mourners waited their turn to file into Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts to bid farewell to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian Nobel laureate considered one of the greatest ever Spanish-language authors.
Garcia Marquez, who died last Thursday aged 87, was eulogised in a brief ceremony in the art deco lobby by Enrique Peña Nieto and Juan Manuel Santos, the presidents of Mexico and Colombia, two countries linked by the writer through his birth, life and career. Although he was born in Colombia, Garcia Marquez lived in Mexico and wrote some of his best-known works there, including One Hundred Years of Solitude.
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“We come as admirers and friends of Gabo from all corners of the planet,” President Santos said, using the nickname by which the writer was known throughout Latin America. “He will live on in his books and writings. But more than anything he will live forever in the hopes of humanity.”
At the end, mourners sprinkled yellow paper butterflies, one of Garcia Marquez’s most famous literary images from Solitude and his favourite colour.
