Alvaro Cepeda Samudio (1926-1972) was a renowned Colombian writer and journalist who stood out for developing literary genres such as short stories and novels with linguistic quality and originality. The intellectual was part of the Barranquilla Group and was a precursor of the Latin American boom that emerged in the mid-20th century.
The literary work of Cepeda Samudio was characterized by the use of a cultured, well structured and expressive language. His writings had modern features, thereby distancing Colombian literature from the traditional. The author published four books, among them stand out We were all waiting Y The big house.
This Colombian lawyer was also a notable journalist, his curious personality led him to investigate and make known what was hidden for many. He began in the journalistic career when he was eighteen years old and developed mainly the chronicle and reportage genres.
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Álvaro was born on March 30, 1926 in Barranquilla, he came from a cultured family with a good economic position. His father's name was Luciano Cepeda y Roca and his mother's name was Sara Samudio.
Cepeda was the only child the couple had, although on his father's side he had two brothers. On the paternal side, the author was the grandson of the politician Abel Cepeda Vidal, who twice held the title of mayor of Barranquilla.
Álvaro's childhood was marked by the separation from his parents in 1932 and by his frequent asthma attacks. When he was six years old, he moved with his mother to the town of Ciénaga, where he lived until his father died in 1936. After that tragedy, the author returned to the city where he was born..
Cepeda was an outstanding student, his first years of studies were in Ciénaga and when he returned to Barranquilla he completed his training at the American School. It was at that time that his interest in writing and journalism began, and in 1944 he achieved a space in the pages of the newspaper The Herald with the political column "Things".
Cepeda Samudio was a student with criteria, that led him to write criticisms against teachers and in 1945 he was expelled from school. He entered a public institution and a year later rejoined the American. There he produced the student newspaper and in 1947 wrote for The National.
Álvaro obtained a bachelor's degree in 1948 and a year later received a government scholarship to study in the United States. In August 1949 he began studies in literature and journalism at Columbia University in New York, after a few months of wandering life..
Cepeda was not very given to attend classes, but that did not prevent him from being an outstanding student; He preferred to go out to eat, walk and read in the company of his friend Enrique Scopell. He invested time learning about avant-garde trends, magazine design, and the love he felt for Sandra, a young woman he met while in Michigan..
In June 1950, Cepeda Samudio returned to Barranquilla loaded with new knowledge and ideas. It was at that time that he joined the Grupo de Barranquilla literary club, where he shared with the intellectuals Gabriel García Márquez, Meira Delmar, Alfonso Fuenmayor, Germán Vargas and Julio Mario Santo Domingo.
In 1953 the journalist began working as director of the newspaper The National. His intention was to restructure the editorial line and the informative content, so he asked his friend García Márquez for help.
In his native Barranquilla Álvaro Cepeda had job opportunities and an encounter with love. In 1954 he published We were all waiting and a year later he married a young woman named Teresa Manotas.
The couple conceived two children: Zoila Patricia and Álvaro Pablo. It is known that the writer also had two children out of wedlock named Darío and Margarita.
Since his childhood, Cepeda Samudio was passionate about cinema. In 1954 his interest in the so-called seventh art led him to film the fictional short film The blue lobster. Three years later the intellectual created the first cinema club that Barranquilla had and there he held the position of director for three years.
In the journalistic field, at the beginning of the sixties, Cepeda carried out the direction of the Caribbean newspaper. His performance was brilliant and came to change the design, the way of presenting the information and put a humorous stamp on the editorials. In 1962 the writer released his novel The big house.
The last years of this remarkable intellectual's life were spent dedicated to journalism and writing. His last post was The tales of Juana in 1972, at that time he began to present health problems.
On medical recommendation, he traveled to New York to treat the lung condition he suffered. He entered the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, but died on October 12, 1972. He was buried with a funeral recognition in the Jardines del Recuerdo cemetery in Barranquilla..
Álvaro Cepeda Samudio's literary style was characterized by being innovative and transforming the manners of his time. The writer narrated his stories, chronicles and reports through clear and precise language. The main theme of his publications was related to the culture and history of his country, but from the avant-garde.
- Project for the biography of a woman without time (1947). Story.
- We were all waiting (1954). Stories.
- The big house (1962). Novel.
- The tales of Juana (1972). Stories.
This work was one of the best known by Cepeda Samudio and belonged to the literary genre of the story. It was made up of eight stories inspired by their experiences in Ciénaga and New York. The publication was carried out on August 5, 1954, received good reviews and praise from various intellectuals, including Gabriel García Márquez and Hernando Téllez.
The most outstanding stories in this book were:
- "A tale for Saroyan".
- "We were all waiting".
- "Today I decided to dress up as a clown".
“… I walked behind them until I found a small clearing of white sand. Then I heard that he was done. His machine gun no longer sounded. Their backs were turned. I started to cry. When he arrived his machine gun rang again. I told myself that I didn't want to hear more. And I didn't even hear when the bullets fell silent ... ".
It was the only novel the journalist wrote, and it took eight years to develop. This was due to the different work commitments of the author. At first, some chapters were published in printed media and in 1962 it was completely published under the Mito publishing house..
Álvaro Cepeda recounted in this work the well-known massacre of the banana plantations that occurred in Ciénaga in 1928. It was a work of a historical nature, but told from the original style of the writer. The language and expressive resources he used earned him good criticism.
It was the last literary work that Álvaro Cepeda Samudio wrote and its publication was posthumous. The work consisted of twenty-two stories and had as its protagonist a young woman named Juana, inspired by Joan Mansfield, an American with whom the author had a relationship in Barranquilla..
The work was original, this was due to the fact that Juana varied physically and historically according to the stories she was telling. The author portrayed some of his loved ones and used the main locations of the Colombian Caribbean and Barranquilla as frequent landscapes..
- "When we don't have dreams, when we don't expect anything, we have to go into movie theaters and borrow dreams from movies".
- “They were not yet death: but they already carried death on their fingertips: they marched with death glued to their legs: death struck their buttocks at each trance: death weighed on their left clavicle; a death of metal and wood ".
- "... All the questions that could not be asked when the little and miserable life of the day laborers was shot at the stations ... because precisely they tried to exercise what they believed, what I mainly believed, which was their right to ask, to investigate the reason for inequality and injustice ... ".
- “Cinema is the art of our time, the modern art par excellence. It is a form of expression that has no antecedents. When it mistakenly tries to be literary, theatrical or pictorial, it is bad cinema, it fails ".
- “… And I have not been able to fulfill any of the promises I made to you. That is to say, the literary ones, because what is eternal love continues ".
- "... The other portion is the one that has totally lost this feeling of submission: the one that discovers somewhat astonished that the teacher can be wrong and that he does not agree with many of the things that the current book says ...".
- "There are times, believe me, that this pod of dying scares".
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