Vargas Llosa, who was born in Arequipa (Peru) In 1936 And he died Palm SundayApril 13, 2025, in Lima, Peru, at 89, also acquired Spanish nationality in 1993 and three decades later added the Dominican
In coincidence, in 2014, about 11 years ago, during Holy Week, on a Holy Thursday too Gabriel García Márquez died, at 87.
Both writers They were part of the so -called Latin American ‘boom’ along with other Argentine Julio Cortázar or Mexicans Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo.
But, with the death of Vargas Llosa, too Some episodes have been remembered in which both Nobel awards agreed.
A chair of literature
In September 1967, the National University of Engineering (UNI), invited Lima, Peru, Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez. A few months had gone from the publication of One hundred years of loneliness, In Buenos Aires, Argentina.
At that time he was in Lima, spending a few weeks in the country, the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa who had just won the Romulo Gallegos novel award, for The Green House.
On September 5 and 7 of that year they would remain as historical dates in the auditorium of the Faculty of Architecture of the UNI. It was the first public meeting of the two writers and who have been planted in the book Two loneliness.
They talked about the characters, of literature, of Latin American writers living abroad, among other themes.
There are also fragments of an interview for El País, by García Márquez by Vargas Llosa, which was published on Monday, July 10, 2017. Tamibén Fragments of Carlos Granés’ interview to Mario Vargas Llosa regarding his friendship with García Márquez.
“In this book there are more valuable lessons about the office of a novelist than in any fact of literature,” says Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Colombian writer.
The frustrated friendship of García Márquez and Vargas Llosa
“I think what contributed the most to our friendship were the readings: we were the two great fans of Faulkner, the way we had contacted the modern technique …” He had had an enormous influence of Virginia Woolf … I, from Sartre, to whom García Márquez I think he did not even read, “said the Peruvian.
Granés asked Llosa if he saw García Márquez again, To which he replied: “No, never … we are entering dangerous land, I think it is time to put an end to this convert (laughs).
How did you receive the news of García Märquez’s death? “With sorry, of course, it is a time that ends, as with the death of Cortázar or Carlos Fuentes. They were magnificent writers, but they were also great friends, and they were in a mometo in which Latin America called the attention of the entire world. As writers we live a period in which Latin American literature was a positive credential. Discover that suddenly I am the last survivor of that generation the last one who can speak in the first person of that experience. Vargas Llosa.
The Gabo Foundation, created by the writer Gabriel García Márquez, lamented in X “the death of Mario Vargas Llosa, teacher of the Spanish narrative and key figure of Latin American literature. We accompany his family, friends and readers in the duel.”
An image of a letter from García Márquez to Vargas Llosa was also shared. He wrote on October 1, 1966 – they met first by correspondence. In this letter, Gabo explains his process behind One hundred years of loneliness and talks about the difficulties of Latin American writers.
They also shared photographs of the tribute that both received in 1967, by the magazine National Letters.
This letter and the photograph in which they are seen together will be part of the exhibition Everything is known: the story of the creation of Gaboa temporary exhibition of the National Library of Colombia and the Gabo Foundation, which will open its doors on Wednesday, April 23 and will go until August 2, 2025.
The Peruvian author maintained a close friendship with the Colombian writer, but his relationship ended abruptly with a punch of the Peruvian, surrounded by mystery.