Dear Gabo …

Letters sent to Colombian author Marquez on display in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY — While reviewing the photo archives left by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of his granddaughters came across a mysterious plastic box with the word “grandchildren” written on its label.

At first, Emilia Garcia Elizondo was afraid to open the box, but curiosity overcame her. Inside were 150 unpublished letters that he received from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Cuban President

Fidel Castro and actor Robert Redford, among others.

Forty of the letters are being exhibited for two months in the colonial house in the southern part of Mexico’s capital where Marquez lived with his wife, Mercedes Barcha, from the 1980s until his death in 2014.

The exhibition is part of celebrations for the

40th anniversary of his winning the Nobel literature prize. Another event, which includes the exhibition “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Making of a Global Writer,” opens today in Mexico’s Museum of Modern Art.

“I’m 32 years old, and all this continues to impress me,” Elizondo, who is director of the Marquez foundation, told The Associated Press, describing her shock at finding the box in a cabinet on the second floor of her grandparents’ house. She had passed the cabinet many times without paying much attention to it.

Marquez’s granddaughter said the discovery was a surprise for the family because they thought all his letters and personal correspondences were in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which possesses the largest collection of the writer’s documents.

“One never expects to find this kind of thing even though one already knows who Gabo is … I will always think that Gabo does everything like magic,” she said. Marquez is know affectionately in Latin America as Gabo.

Among the letters that will be exhibited are five from Castro, one from Neruda, two from Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, two from Mexican guerrilla leader Subcomandante Marcos, one from Redford, one from director Woody Allen and seven from Clinton.

In one of them, dated Dec. 28, 1999, Clinton told the Colombian writer the emotion he and his wife, Hillary, felt at a concert of Colombian vallenato music given by young people at the White House. He described the music as a “treasure” and a “wonderful counterpoint to the negative images often associated with your beautiful country.”

Also included is a letter that Castro wrote by hand, dated Dec. 10, 2007, in which he writes: “I am subject to a rigorous exercise regimen that I must not fail to comply with if I intend to continue being useful to the revolution.”

Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, the writer’s youngest son and Emilia’s father, said the family misses Marquez very much. Marquez has four grandchildren.

“That’s why we do these kinds of activities. We want to keep this house alive,” he said.

“One never expects to find this kind of thing even though one already knows who Gabo is … I will always think that Gabo does everything like magic.” — Emilia Garcia Elizondo, granddaughter of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In 2003, baseball Hall-of-Famer Larry Doby, who broke the American League’s color barrier in 1947, died in Montclair, New Jersey, at age 79.

A collection of letters is displayed Wednesday in a room decorated with a photograph of Marquez at his home in Mexico City.

A letter from American film director Woody Allen is displayed during the exhibition.

Gonzalo Garcia Barcha, Marquez’s son, speaks Wednesday during an interview at his late father’s home in Mexico City. Barcha and his daughter sorted through the belongings left by the late Colombian Nobel Literature Prize winner, and they found a box marked with the word “grandchildren” which revealed to the world more than 100 unpublished letters that Marquez received from writer Pablo Neruda, Clinton and actor Robert Redford among others.

A letter from former U.S. President Bill Clinton is displayed Wednesday during an exhibition at the home of late Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Mexico City. (AP/Fernando Llano)

A letter by Neruda is displayed during the exhibition.