Shooting the Breeze Trivia Quiz

Answer: Magic realism

Magic realism, a genre of fiction made popular by various authors including Marquez, Salman Rushdie and Isabel Allende, combines magical elements with real life making no distinction between the two.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez rose to prominence with his second novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" which was hailed as a masterpiece and achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim. In 1982, he became the first Colombian and fourth Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The honour was awarded "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".

Zorba_scank hovered around ensuring Gabo, as he is fondly called, was well-fed.

Answer: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) kidnapped this politician and anti-corruption activist on 23rd February 2002. She was campaigning for the Colombian presidency in a zone previously declared by the government to be free of guerrillas. Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio was rescued along with 14 other hostages and has since been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (2008).

Lones78 has verified with her own eyes that Ingrid is all right at the garden party.

Answer: His synthetic vaccine for malaria was listed as 'inactive' by the World Health Organisation (WHO)

Manuel Elkin Patarroyo developed the world's first synthetic malaria vaccine in 1987. Results of clinical trials in several regions were mixed and, after 33 years of researching the vaccine and its effects, the World Health Organisation (WHO) listed the vaccine as 'inactive'. Malaria is a disease transmitted by mosquitoes and causes illness (generally headache and fever), sometimes ending in coma or death.

Patarroyo is quite loquacious, enough to give Lones78 a splitting headache.

Answer: The Uprising

'El Alzamiento' (published 1962), 'The Uprising' in English, is based around the 1781 uprising of Santander and Boyacá peasants against the Spanish. The story follows the lives of a farming family who find themselves in trouble with Spanish tax agents and their home and family subsequently being destroyed.

Luis Castellanos Tapias was also a politician, attorney and historian as well as writer and publisher.

Lones78 chooses this very moment to rise up from behind her own typewriter.

Answer: Matricide

Pablo Escobar became a millionaire largely by smuggling cocaine into the United States. He was one of the founders of the Medellin Cartel, an organized network of drug smugglers operating in the city of Medellin, Colombia. Escobar dealt with any obstacles to his business from law enforcement authorities through "plata o plomo", literally translating to "silver or lead" (bribe or murder). At the height of his power, the Medellin Cartel controlled around 80% of the world's cocaine market and in 1989 Forbes magazine estimated that Escobar was the seventh richest man in the world. His crime sheet included bombing, racketeering, money laundering, political assassinations and bribery among others and shockingly despite all this he even had a brief political stint. He was finally killed in 1993 in an encounter with Colombian National Police.

Zorba_scank picked the short straw and ended up with the task of supervising him all night.

Answer: Jorge Eliecer Gaitan

Gaitan was a Liberal Party lawyer with widespread popular appeal and the candidate that most felt would win the presidential election. His murder set off a reaction that lasted until 1958, where people would kill each other simply because of their political affiliation. Conspiracy theories abound and the true identity of Gaitan's killer has never been proven, though a mentally challenged man known to have frequented the area was made a scapegoat and killed by the mob shortly after Gaitan's death. Rioting ensued and the Conservatives came into power, with the solution finally being that the parties would alternate power in six-year terms so that all voices would have a say in government.

Shuehorn compromised with the other Winds to write this question.

Answer: Omar Gordillo

Only Omar Gordillo of the artists mentioned was actually born in Colombia, though Alejandro Obregon did move there at a young age. Gordillo's work with children is known the world over, and in recent years, he has also branched out to portray important moments in Michael Jackson's life in illustrations. The Jackson family has endorsed his work, giving Gordillo greater exposure outside of Colombia than he had achieved when his subjects were only poor Colombian street kids.

Shuehorn wholeheartedly consents to better the fate of the Colombian street kids.

Answer: Alvaro Uribe

Alvaro Uribe did much in his two terms as president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010, after having been famous as an uncorruptible politician and governor of the Department of Antioquia in Colombia. He reformed the military and the police forces, eliminating much of the corruption, though his critics claim that he turned a blind eye to paramilitary forces that used unsavory tactics to clean up problems all over the country. No doubt Uribe would have been elected to a third term, had it been allowed, because he enjoyed an unprecedented level of popular support.

Shuehorn won't reveal if she would have voted for Uribe. Elections should remain anonymous.

Answer: Fernando Botero

Fernando Botero is a Colombian painter and sculptor whose distinctive style is based on exaggerating the proportions of the people in his portraits. He once referred to them as 'fat figures'. His well known Abu Ghraib series of paintings and drawings were inspired by the alleged abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War.

Zorba_scank doesn't mind having some curves added to her portrait.

Answer: Luis Carlos Sarmiento

Luis Carlos Sarmiento was born in 1933 in Bogota. In the 1950s he started a real estate group. Later he diversified into banking and telecommunication. He is the main shareholder of Grupo Aval (Acciones y Valores), a holding company that controls almost a quarter of the Colombian financial sector. Its shares are traded on the stock exchange of Bogota.

Carlos Slim Helu is a Mexican investor whose main interest is in telecommunication. Lakshmi Mittal is an Indian multi-billionaire invested in steel and other metallic industries. Li Ka-Shing is a Chinese business tycoon based in Hong Kong. His fortune comes from diversified investments: real estate, plastics, electricity, and so on.
JanIQ also works in the financial sector, but gains only a tiny fraction of Sarmiento's revenues.