Statue of García Márquez to be Erected in Colombia

Gabriel García Márquez is being immortalized with a bronze statue in his native homeland…

Bogota City Hall will pay tribute to the country’s 1982 Nobel Literature laureate with a statue representing him as a young journalist erected in the gardens of Lievano Palace.

Gabriel García Márquez

The Bogota Culture, Recreation and Sports Secretariat announced on its Web page the inauguration of the life-size statue of the 86-year-old Colombian novelist, screenwriter and journalist, fashioned in bronze according to the lost wax method by artist Julia Merizalde.

Merizalde won a district program to stimulate artistic production, a recognition that allowed her to design, fund and install the work of art in the gardens of the Lievano Palace, the seat of the Bogota City Hall, in a location it will share with the sculpture Cascade by Edgar Negret and El Quinde de la Paz by Ecuador’s Nixon Cordova.

Gabriel García Márquez Statue

Wearing a shirt, his unmistakable bushy mustache and glasses, Garcia Marquez’s image shows him as just another passerby in the garden of the city hall.

García Márquez, born in the Caribbean town of Aracataca, left his home region at a young age and came to Bogota to study law at the Universidad Nacional, although he soon dropped out to become part of the city’s intellectual life and work for the daily El Espectador.

The Culture, Recreation and Sports Secretariat is coordinating two-hour tours of the Lievano Palace in both the morning and afternoon so the public can see the statue, among other sites.

Known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America, García Márquez is the mastermind behind Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Autumn of the Patriarch, among others.

Sánchez to Star in “La Maestra y el Nobel” Film Adaptation

Roselyn Sánchez is about to experience one hundred years of solitude…

The 39-year-old Puerto Rican actress/singer has signed on to star in the film adaptation of Beatriz Parga’s novel La Maestra y el Nobel, which tells the story of Gabriel García Márquez and his beloved first teacher Rosa Fergusson.

Roselyn Sanchez

Sánchez, who will be starring in Lifetime’s Devious Maids sudser next year, will play the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian novelist’s teacher in the film.

García Márquez, best known for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, has said of Fergusson: “The one who taught me to read was a very intelligent, very funny, very beautiful teacher, who made me like going to school just to see her.”

La Maestra y El Nobel

Filming on La Maestra y el Nobel would begin at the conclusion of the first season of Devious Maids – sometime in July or August of next year, according to PeopleEnEspanol.com.

The Frank Marrero-directed film would shoot in Colombia. García Márquez would be portrayed by Christian Tappán, who currently appears as Pablo Escobar’s cousing in the series Pablo Escobar, el Patrón del Mal.