Alberto Salcedo Ramos / Popular Culture, the Colombian Chronicle, and North American Journalism

Colombian journalist Alberto Salcedo Ramos on the campus of the University of Oklahoma.

Alberto Salcedo Ramos: Popular Culture, the Colombian Chronicle, and North American Journalism

A Conversation with Luvia Estrella Morales Rodríguez

Alberto Salcedo Ramos / Cultura popular, crónica colombiana y periodismo norteamericano

May 2018

Alberto Salcedo Ramos is intelligent, observant, and anchored in literature, as is demonstrated by this interview, which took place in Kaufman Hall, the designated building for learning modern languages, literatures, and linguistics at the University of Oklahoma. The conversation began in a spontaneous way during the beginning of the Tierra Tinta Conference where Salcedo Ramos participated as keynote speaker.  The questions are centered on his book El oro y la oscuridad: La vida gloriosa y trágica de Kid Pambelé [Gold and darkness: The glorious and tragic life of Kid Pambelé] (2005), which earned the chronicler Le Prix du Livre du Réel (2017), in France, awarded by Les Éditions Marchialy. It should be mentioned that the book in question served as the inspiration and basis for the television program Kid Pambelé (2017) by Channel RCN in Colombia. During the interview, the chronicler reveals his acute knowledge of popular culture, he tells about his methodology for writing chronicles, and he gives us the opportunity to get to know him as a man of letters.

Darío Jaramillo Agudelo / Sergio Pitol, Translator

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Mexican writer Sergio Pitol.

Sergio Pitol, Translator

by Darío Jaramillo Agudelo

Translated by Christina Miller

Darío Jaramillo Agudelo / Sergio Pitol, traductor

Whoever has met Sergio Pitol, let’s say for example, in a book fair in whatever part of the world, who has seen him in some writers’ conference, who—getting into a time machine—had treated him like a diplomat, without digging too deep into intentions or into the nooks of his way of being, will always say that Pitol is an elegant, sober, attentive, chivalrous, elegantly mannered man. They will say, in short, that he is a well-balanced man.