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Feuding authors may yet reconcile

With one right hook an epochal friendship was destroyed and a rift opened between two of Latin America's most celebrated authors.

At a movie premiere in Mexico City in February 1976, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa with no apparent provocation landed a spite-filled punch to the left eye and nose of his once inseparable Colombian friend Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who six years later would be awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

Three decades later, the circumstances that led to the scuffle remain shrouded in mystery.

But in time for a series of tributes this month to Garcia Marquez, who turned 80 on March 6, a new photo and details about the incident have emerged along with the beginning of a rapprochement between the two greybeards of Latin American literature.

For 31 years, both authors have kept silent about the shiner, leading to speculation it was motivated by professional envy, a love triangle involving Vargas Llosa's wife or the authors' steady drift to opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Different paths

Both started out enamored with Cuba's 1959 communist revolution, but whereas Garcia Marquez remains a close friend to ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa tilted to the right and proposed a staunch privatization and austerity measures during an unsuccessful run for Peru's presidency in 1990.

Although their careers have followed parallel paths Garcia Marquez went on to win the literary world's top honor in 1982 whereas Vargas Llosa in the eyes of many critics appears eternally doomed to the shortlist of Nobel also-rans.

But before their separation, the two were almost blood brothers. Vargas Llosa even named his friend godfather of his son, Gabriel.

A clue to unlocking the mystery behind their estrangement was revealed this month when Rodrigo Moya, a Mexican photographer, published in Mexican newspaper La Jornada a mug shot taken in his studio of his bruised friend two days after he was punched.

In an essay titled The terrific story of a black eye, Moya recalled being told in his studio how Vargas Llosa was infuriated by marital advice Garcia Marquez and his wife gave years earlier to the Peruvian's wife Patricia.

Dasso Saldivar, who has written in Spanish a 500-page biography of Garcia Marquez, says Moya's account rings true and dovetails with long-standing rumors that Garcia Marquez encouraged Patricia to file for divorce over her husband's alleged extramarital affairs.

The two hadn't seen each other for a long time when Garcia Marquez, spotting his friend on the red carpet, ran to him with arms wide open shouting out "Mario."

Bloodied face

"It was the only word he was able to say because Vargas Llosa greeted him with a sharp blow that threw him onto the carpet with a bloodied face," Moya wrote.

Since then the two are believed to have never exchanged another word.

"It's a real Gordian knot for biographers to tie," Saldivar said.

Like Saldivar, Gerald Martin, who is finishing a biography of Garcia Marquez, says Vargas Llosa's punch was probably as much motivated by personal jealousies as it was ideological differences or literary egos.

"Then there's the question, which we don't know the answer to, as whether there was sex involved or not, or at least the suspicion of sex," said Martin, who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. "And if you put sex, politics, fame and glory together that's a pretty explosive mix, isn't it?"

Whatever led to the rift, for the first time there are hopeful signs the two famously stubborn authors may reconcile in their old age.

After obstinately refusing for years, Vargas Llosa has granted permission for parts of an exalting essay written, before their split, about Garcia Marquez' best-seller One Hundred Years of Solitude to be included in a 40th anniversary edition of the landmark work.

"Vargas Llosa has broken the ice ... it's a good sign," said Jaime Bernal, a member of the Colombian Academy of Language.
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