MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

OAS Secretary General Insulza: “García Márquez Raised Latin American Literature to Global Heights”

Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel laureate writer, dies aged 87

José Miguel Insulza, today expressed his “deep sorrow over the death of Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian and Latin American author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, primordial figure of the most prolific and brilliant generation of authors our continent has ever seen, who raised the literature of Latin America to global heights.”

 Insulza said “García Márquez transformed the real into magic and enthralled, with his masterful prose and the strength of his spirit, the imagination of men and women of different languages, races, creeds and ideologies. He brought a timeless style to the new Latin American literature and made it universal.”

On the literary production of the Colombian author, Secretary General Insulza said: “His captivating stories, born of our reality, gave profound meaning to the everyday and conferred transcendent meaning to our Latin American identity. Their magical realism allowed millions to learn about the mystery and beauty of this contradictory, vast and exciting continent.”

“The political struggle that marked the region for many decades was not absent from his work,” he said, “and that made it even greater, because he defended the most just causes, identified with our democratic aspirations and showed himself a man who did not fear power.”

The Secretary General sent his condolences “to the family of Gabriel García Márquez, the people and government of Colombia and all those in Latin America and the world who today mourn his departure.”