When Nobel Laureates – Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez – came to blows

While Márquez is famous for his magical realism, Vargas Llosa is known for his stark realism. The two remained friends and mutual admirers until their headline-grabbing public fallout.

What happened?

The infamous incident with Colombia’s Nobel Prize winner took place in Mexico City in 1976 during a film premier. Vargas Llosa, as per multiple accounts, sucker punched an unsuspecting Márquez in the face, leaving him bloodied as his glasses shattered. The reason for the fallout, however, remains unconfirmed to this day with both parties remaining tight-lipped.

Three competing theories persist. According to photographer Rodrigo Moya, who famously captured García Márquez beaming with a black eye, the catalyst was Patricia Llosa, Vargas Llosa’s wife. García Márquez had reportedly offered her comfort during a troubled moment in the marriage. Vargas Llosa had allegedly yelled, “For what you tried to do to my wife!” before delivering the blow.

The other rumoured reason is political. It is said the men had drifted ideologically, with Márquez embracing socialist idealism and Llosa growing disillusioned with Fidel Castro. It is said that Vargas Llosa, following the blow up, mocked Márquez as “Castro’s courtesan.”

The final theory is that while the punch was personal, the silence that followed was political. Llosa is known to have espoused leftist ideals throughout the 60’s, but in the 1970s, he denounced Castro’s Cuba and supported free market conservatism, triggering a fallout with many of his Latin American literary contemporaries.

It was only in 2007 that photos of a smiling Márquez with a black eye emerged. “He looked like he was really beaten up,” photographer Rodrigo Moya reportedly said. “But he also looked… amused.”

Did the laureates resolve their differences?

The feud reportedly lasted four decades. They reconciled in 2007 and three years later, in 2010, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize – the first South American writer to be chosen for the literature prize since Márquez took the honour in 1982 for One Hundred Years of Solitude, as per the BBC.

Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his “cartography of structures of power.”