Report from a shipwrecked man
Report of a shipwrecked man who floated on a raft for ten days without eating or drinking, who was proclaimed hero of the fatherland, kissed by beauty queens, rich in advertising, immediately cursed by the government and then forgotten forever, ( Original title: Relato de un náufrago ) is the title of a book published in Barcelona in 1970 by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez about a shipwreck in the Caribbean . The journalistic reconstruction of the story, written by the author based on the oral accounts of the seaman Luis Alejandro Velasco, first appeared in 1955 as a series in the newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá, not under the name of the ghostwriter , but under the Velascos. The German translation by Christiane and Curt Meyer-Clason was published in 1982.
action
The 20-year-old seaman Luis Alejandro Velasco tells of his shipwreck and the ten-day raft trip in the Caribbean in a realistic , exciting style. He is part of the crew of the destroyer Caldas , which returned to Cartagena in Colombia on February 24, 1955 after an eight-month repair stay in Mobile , Alabama . On the deck, the sailors have roped up many boxes of radios, ice boxes, washing machines, stoves, etc., which they want to take home illegally. On February 27, the overloaded ship gets caught in a storm, threatens to capsize and loses its cargo. Five sailors who are on deck at this moment, including Velasco, are also washed into the sea by a wave. While it manages Velasco, in a rescue raft to climb, he has to watch helplessly as drowning his comrades around him, while the destroyer in the storm continues its journey. Initially, Velasco is confident that they will be missing by the morning roll call at the latest and that a search will begin, but his hopes are dashed after a rescue plane overflies and overlooks him several times. As he learns later, the search for four days was stopped and told the sailors officially dead. Velasco driving aimlessly for ten days on the open sea without food and drinking water supplies, constantly blazing sun and the danger to life from the orbiting him sharks exposed . He only manages to catch an animal twice in ten days: once a seagull, another time a fish. Every now and then he drinks some salt water. In the beginning he tries to keep himself awake for fear of the sharks, then he dawns for hours, hallucinates and wishes for death. On March 9th, after almost ten days at sea, when he has given up hope and is on the verge of starvation, he sees land on the horizon. With the last of his strength, he swims towards the coast and is discovered there shortly afterwards by a farmer near Mulatos, brought to his house and cared for in a makeshift manner. In the remote area with no radio and newspaper, nobody heard of his shipwreck and only after reporting to the police did the people find out about his fate and a large crowd accompanied his transport on a hammock to San Juan de Urabá. From there, a plane takes him to Cartagena, where he recovers from the exertion in a hospital and has to be protected from the sensational reporters. After he has recovered, he comes to Bogotá, where he is received by the President and awarded a medal. Through a versatile marketing of his history and numerous radio and television appearances, he earned a fortune in a short time. He ironically confessed: "My heroism consisted in not dying".
background
In the foreword to the book edition “The History of History” the author gives some information about the genesis of the fourteen-part newspaper series and the consequences of the publication: The Colombian government denied that the destroyer had contraband goods on board. However, the newspaper editors were able to show through photographs of some sailors that there were many boxes with legible factory marks on deck, which were apparently the main reason for the overloading and leaning of the ship. The dictatorship responded with a series of drastic reprisals that culminated with the closure of the newspaper. This “denigration” of the Colombian Navy also brought Márquez out of favor with the military dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla , whereupon he went abroad and worked there as a reporter for several years.
Luis Alejandro Velasco Rodríguez left the Navy and started working in the private sector, starting with a job with a bus company. He eventually settled down as a sales representative for an insurance company in Bogotá. When Gabriel García Márquez published the story fifteen years later - in 1970 - in the book "Relato de un Náufrago", he generously gave his rights and license fees to Velasco. In 1983 Velasco sued for the translation rights to the book and lost the case. In the last week of his life, he apologized to García Márquez for the lawsuit. He died on August 2, 2000 at the age of 66 in Bogotá.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ garciamarquez.de ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Gabriel García Márquez: Report of a shipwrecked man. Kiepenheuer & Wirsch Cologne, 1982.
