Few associate Gabriel García Márquez with the asphalt jungle of New York. Collective memory places the Nobel Prize-winner in the heat of Mexico, the hustle and bustle of Barranquilla or the elegance of Barcelona. But for Colombian graphic designer and author Iván Onatra, the Big Apple was a crucial — and at times, forgotten — stage in the scribe’s life. García Márquez’s time in the city that never sleeps takes on new life in Onatra’s bilingual design book Macondo York, in which he explores the writer’s love-hate relationship that lasted for six months, while he worked as a journalist for the Prensa Latina news agency.

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When a Cuban person on the island wants to refer to “those in charge,” they lightly tap their shoulder with two fingers. The subtle gesture, shaped by nearly seven decades of censorship, is a reference to the epaulet of a military uniform. In Cuba, people do not speak of the government or the party (the Communist Party of Cuba, the only legal one), but rather of the “country’s leadership.” It is a euphemism that points to the real political and economic power: the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).

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