In the second half of the 1990s and the beginning of the 00s, several culture and narrative journalism magazines flourished in Latin America. This was the case of “Etiqueta Negra” (Peru), “Malpensante” (Colombia), “Amphibia” (Argentina) and “Arcadia” (Colombia), among many others. Today, many have disappeared, with the crisis of the printing press, others have reinvented themselves in the digital world and remain as journalism made and consumed by few, but with good quality productions, despite the scarce resources.
The most interesting of them was “Gatopardo”, which was born in Colombia and brought together the pens of great writers and journalists: Juan Villoro, Leila Guerriero, Gustavo Gorriti, Jon Lee Anderson, Ernesto Sábato, Vargas Llosa, Alma Guillermoprieto, Tomás Eloy MartÃnez , Umberto Eco, Antonio Tabucchi, Carlos Fuentes and many others. Edited with care, good paper and great photos, it was doomed, unfortunately, to failure, in a world where there were no longer any investors or advertisers for such an ambitious project and social networks would begin to compete for public with paper vehicles. After 68 luxurious numbers, between 2000 and 2008, “Gatopardo” capitulated.
It is true that the brand still exists, it was bought by a Mexican publishing group, which maintains something of the spirit of the original, but is far from equaling it. Colombian “Gatopardo” was a cross between “The New Yorker” and “Vanity Fair”, with an obsession with being fully Latin American. In its editions, there were texts on politics, culture and society from almost every country in the region. Long and quality texts, photos carefully purchased or commissioned from stars like Daniel Mordzinski and tremendous ambition, coming out with more than 200 pages and a circulation of 70,000 copies per issue.
In the book “Los Últimos DÃas de Gatopardo” (imported, available on Amazon), one of its founders, Miguel Silva, tells the story of the main texts and the saga to keep the magazine alive while it lasted.
One of the best anecdotes is the case of the profile of the Peruvian Vladmiro Montesinos, adviser to the autocrat Alberto Fujimori, currently imprisoned for crimes of corruption and against humanity. For the task, the main journalist in Peru, Gustavo Gorriti, then exiled in Panama for being persecuted by that same government, was summoned. Gorriti showed Montesinos how he was, among other things, the head of the Colina death squad that, to this day, has crimes against Peruvian civilians for being clarified and judged.
Happy with the text, the editors of “Gatopardo” sent more than 2,500 copies of the magazine to Peru, and almost fell behind on learning that they had sold out in a few days. Then came the confirmation of how terrible Montesinos was and what a good journalist Gorriti is. The copies sold out because the government ordered to buy all the copies, to take them off the market.
There were other memorable texts, such as the Mexican Nobel laureate Carlos Fuentes covering an American election, or the Argentine Ernesto Sabato telling what life was like in the small town of Santos Lugares, where he lived and died, at the age of 100, in 2011.
It is true that reading “Los Últimos DÃas de Gatopardo” produces a feeling of nostalgia, for times when print and cultural journalism had better days and the irreplaceable pleasure of leafing through a magazine was much more common. But it is also worth reading the book as an inspiration for these challenging and transformative times. After all, there will always be a place to tell and read good stories.
