Colombia to hold memorial for Marquez
Colombia will pay tribute to the Nobel-prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a ceremony at Bogota’s national cathedral tomorrow.
President Juan Manuel Santos will be present, but it is not clear whether Garcia Marquez’s family will attend.
His relatives have confirmed, however, that they will be at a memorial ceremony in Mexico City today.
The author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” died on Thursday in Mexico, where he lived for more than 30 years.
Colombians feel that the man many consider to be the country’s greatest son must be honoured in his homeland, says the BBC in Bogota.
The writer fled the country in 1981, after learning that Colombia’s military wanted to question him over alleged links with the country’s left-wing guerrillas.
He moved to Mexico with his family and eventually chose to die there correspondent says.
Garcia Marquez, who was 87, will be honoured at a memorial service today at Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes. The ceremony will be attended by Mr Santos and his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Pena Nieto.
A symbolic burial will be held simultaneously at his home town of Aracataca.
On tomorrow, Colombia will hold its own ceremony to honour the author, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
The event will be shown on national television. Elsewhere in Colombian libraries and parks there will be public readings of his books over the next few days.