Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Fidel Castro: An Unlikely Friendship

Gabriel Garcia Marquez said on Fidel Castro: "A man of austere habits and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned formal education of cautious words and subdued tones, and incapable of conceiving any idea that is not colossal."

The Late Nobel Prize Winning Author met Fidel Castro in the Caribbean island as a journalist to cover events that followed Fidel Castro’s grabbing of power by ousting the right wing dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959.

Later their friendship spanned for years which spurred both criticism and wonders which eventually was thought to be a Cold War Debate.

Gabriel fiercely criticized Latin Amercia’s right wing dictatorship which resulted in a debate between him and the Cuban Dictator.

The Padilla Affair was the issue that brought their friendship to a crisis. Gabriel Garcia Marquez believed personally that he helped Heberto Padilla(a Cuban writer who had been jailed in 1971 for his opposition to the Castro regime) to get permission to leave Cuba.

Garcia Marquez’s support for Fidel Castro prevented him from getting visa to go to the U.S. until President Clinton lifted the ban in the late 1990s.

Both of them had disagreements, which they both said were often exaggerated.

Fidel Castro said on Gabriel “He is a man of tomorrow whom we thank for having lived this life to tell it". “Our friendship is the fruit of a relationship cultivated over decades, formed by hundreds of conversations that were always enjoyable for me," Castro said.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was more of a spokesperson to the U.S. when the bilateral relationships between the U.S. and Cuba were affected due to the migration of Cubans in large number to Florida in 1994.

He acted as a friend to Bill Clinton and also defended Castro in various issues when he and Clinton were at diplomatic talks.