You hear El Jude before you see it. Its music fills the streets around Mario de Moya’s cantina in Malambo, an hour outside the Colombian port city of Barranquilla. Mario has just returned from a two-hour stint at a local radio station. A big bull of a man, Mario is a DJ, but could easily … Continue reading
Have you heard the story about Gabriel García Márquez’s 80th birthday party? Gabo was famous by this time, his years as a poverty stricken journalist having given way to his career as Colombia’s most famous novelist. At 55, he had become the first of his countrymen to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. At 80, … Continue reading
Bogota, Colombia – Finding Anna Karenina in the rubbish would change Jose Alberto Gutierrez’s life. It was 20 years ago, but Jose still remembers first glimpsing the Russian classic by Leo Tolstoy in the rubbish outside a home in Bogota’s Bolivia neighbourhood. The rubbish collector loaded his truck with the rest of the waste, but took … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 