Gabo's town stays book-bound but Love emerges as a film

A move to change the name of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's birth town to the fictitious town name in one of his books has been abandoned.
Even though 93 percent of the votes were in favor of the name change of Aracataca to Macondo, the name of the town that features in Marquez's famous book One Hundred Years of Solitude, not enough people turned up to vote - Only 3,600 of the required 7,400 people voted.
The idea had been introduced by the banana-growing town's authorities who predicted the name change would increase tourism and so bring in money to make improvements. The town, located near the Caribbean coast in Colombia doesn't have a hotel and only half of its streets are paved.
Marquez, who now lives in Mexico and hasn't been back to Aracataca for twenty years, says he got much raw material for his books' unique magic realism from the town.
Marquez, 79, may not see the name of his birth town changed, but he will see one of his literary classics made into a film in the near future.
Stone Village Pictures and New Line Cinema are producing a film version of Marquez's beautiful novel Love in the Time of Cholera. The film is currently in pre-production.
Benjamin Bratt and Oscar nominees Catalina Sandino Moreno and Javier Bardem are set to star in director Mike Newell's adaptation of the novel.