But Cuban dissident and freedom fighter Armando Valladares has a different opinion of Márquez.
Very different.
All dictators and murderers have had staunch defenders — Stalin, Hitler, and Fidel Castro.
Perhaps the most heinous in that fauna supporting dictatorships are writers, poets, and artists. I’ve been saying for decades that an honest intellectual has a commitment to society: Tell the truth, fight for respect and human dignity, and do not lie or skip over the historical reality and thereby abuse the privilege of reaching millions of people.
This is one of the biggest crimes in the case of the late Gabriel García Márquez. He put his pen at the service of Fidel Castro’s tyranny, supporting torture, the concentration camps, and the murdering by firing squad of whoever dared to oppose the Communist regime. García Márquez used to say that the only country in the Americas that respected human rights was Cuba…
Read the rest of Valladares’ column here in National Review.
