The personal library and archive of the Colombian writer Alfonso Fuenmayor is now housed in the Library of the Universidad del Norte (Uninorte), in Barranquilla, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and comprises some 3795 books, 704 journals (many of them rare), together with mimeographs and manuscripts by Fuenmayor and other Colombian authors. The collection is especially relevant to the study of the “Grupo de Barranquilla”, which recognised Fuenmayor as its “Maestro”, and also included Ramón Vinyes, Álvaro Cepeda Samudio, Germán Vargas Cantillo, Alejandro Obregón, Julio Mario Santodomingo, Orlando Rivera (“Figurita”), and Gabriel García Márquez.
García Márquez has written (beautifully) about the Barranquilla group and especially Fuenmayor in his autobiographical work Vivir para contarla. The Fuenmayor Collection was gifted to Uninorte by his family, and will be an essential source for the study of Colombian literature.
A fuller description of the collection and its significance, in Spanish, can be accessed here.
See also Alfonso Fuenmayor: Crónicas sobre el Grupo de Barranquilla. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura-Gobernación del Atlántico, 1981.
Literary and Artistic Archives: the blog of the Section on Literary and Artistic Archives of the International Council on Archives 
“Alternaba mis ocios entre Barranquilla y Cartagena de Indias, en la costa caribe de Colombia, sobreviviendo a cuerpo de rey con lo que me pagaban por mis notas diarios en ‘El Heraldo’, que era casi menos que nunca, y dormía lo mejor acompañado posible donde me sorpriendera la noche. Como si no fuera bastante la incertidumbre sobre mis pretensiones y el caos de mi vida, un grupo de amigos inseparables nos disponíamos a publicar una revista temeraria y sin recursos que Alfonso Fuenmayor planeaba desde hacía tres años. ¿Qué mas podía desear?” GGM: ‘Vivir para contarla’, p. 10.
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