El Amor en los Tiempos del Coronavirus

Thirty-three years ago, famed Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez wrote El Amor en los Tiempos de Cólera/ Love in the Time of

Cholera. The last scene of this book sees the now old and wrinkled protagonist, Florentino Ariza, undressing as he prepares to make love to his equally old and wrinkled lover, Fermina Gaza.

The two had fallen madly in love with each other as teenagers, but a series of events that culminated in Fermina’s marriage to an upper class physician prohibited them from being together. In his love infected state, Florentino then went on to live a salacious life until the moment Fermina’s elderly husband fell from a mango tree and died while trying to reach his pet parrot. As the story comes to an end with Florentino and Fermina in the bedroom of a boat sailing down the river, Fermina hesitates as she’s afraid of the scandal she might create on land. To reassure her, Florentino orders the captain to raise the yellow flag of Cholera, which prevents them from docking and thus sails off into infinity after waiting exactly fifty-one years, nine months, and four days to be with the one and only woman he has always loved.

As the world reels from a pandemic caused by the novel (new) coronavirus, the themes of life, just like the themes in El Amor en los Tiempos de Cólera, has come into perspective. With thousands of older people dying and millions more going in quarantine or lockdown, in a matter of weeks we have all had to consider our mortality, to rethink love and friendships, to value those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and to cherish each other’s physical presence. More than this, Latin America’s goodness is lighting up the world; the magnanimity of Doctors from embargoed Cuba have brought cheer to exhausted Italians and sanctioned-weary Venezuela. Even the gangsters of Ciudad de Dios/City of God in Brazil have implemented social distancing protocols as they confront their new infectious enemy.

As the Earth breathes a little easier, while we pause to re-evaluate our choices as humans, may we never again take for granted the people we love or those that love us. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be leaving you with an exciting end to this class. Instead, I will leave you with a Uruguayan poem that is pensive in these times of societal love and stress.