Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal

Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal (born October 31, 1945 in Tuluá ) is a Colombian writer , journalist , literary critic and politician .

Life

Álvarez, who came from a conservative Catholic family, attended the Colegio de las Madres Franciscanas and the Colegio de Los Salecianos . He began studying chemical engineering at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellín in 1962 , from which he was expelled in 1964. At the Universidad del Valle , where he studied from 1965, he acquired the degree of Licenciado en Letras with the monograph Las Novelas de la Violencia en Colombia

His first short stories were published in La Estafeta Literaria (Madrid) and Monde Nouveau (Paris) magazines. In 1971 his first novel La tara de papá appeared , which by 2004 appeared in 60 legal reprints and more than 90 pirated prints. For his second novel La Boba y el Buda he received the Premio Ciudad de Salamanca in 1972 .

From 1970 to 1972 Álvarez was a professor at the Universidad de Nariño in Pasto, then at the Universidad del Valle in Cali. In 1980 he withdrew from teaching in protest against a decree by the Minister of Education, Rodrigo Lloreda Caicedo , which banned university professors from political activity.

Since 1978 Álvarez was active in the civil movement around José Pardo Llada . He became city councilors in Cali and Tulua and in 1988 first mayor of his native city. A candidacy for the legislative assembly in 1990 failed, but in 1992 he was re-elected mayor of Tuluá by a large majority. In the next few years he became known through conflicts with President César Gaviria Trujillo and protest actions against the American occupation of the island of Juanchaco.

At the end of his tenure in 1996, he ran for the office of governor of Valle del Cauca without the support of a political party and was elected with 780,000 votes. In 1999 he was charged with selling a sculpture worth 7 million pesos as the straw man of a drug dealer and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. He saw himself as a victim of Horacio Serpa's election campaign and the US embassy.

Works

• Piedra Pintada. 1965.
• El Gringo del Cascajero. 1968.
• La novelística de la violencia en Colombia. 1970.
• La tara de Papá. 1971.
• Cóndores no entierran todos los días. 1972.
• La Boba y el Buda. 1972.
• Dabeiba. 1973.
• El Bazar de los Idiotas. 1974.
• El Titiritero. 1977.
• La farsa universitaria colombiana. 1978.
• Cuentos del Parque Boyacá. 1978.
• Manual de crítica literaria. 1980.
• Los Míos. 1981.
• Pepe Botellas. 1984.
• El Divino. 1986.
• El Último Gamonal. 1987.
• La imaginación al poder: Balance intelectual de una gestión burocrática. 1990.
• Los Sordos ya no Hablan. 1991.
• Perorata. 1997.
• La novela colombiana: entre la verdad y la mentira. 2000.
• Prisionero de la esperanza. 2000.
• Se llamaba el País Vallecaucano. 2001.
• Comandante Paraíso. 2002.
• Las mujeres de la muerte. 2003.

swell

• Álvarez Gardeazábal , Centro Virtual Isaacs
• Gardeazábal, Gustavo , Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture