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Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel García Márquez: Filming of his book Memories of My Melancholy Whores has been delayed. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AP
Gabriel García Márquez: Filming of his book Memories of My Melancholy Whores has been delayed. Photograph: Guillermo Arias/AP

Filming of García Márquez novel delayed by anti-prostitution group

This article is more than 14 years old
Lawsuit filed claiming that film of Memories of My Melancholy Whores would promote paedophilia

Filming of the latest novel by Gabriel García Márquez has been delayed by an anti-prostitution group that claims the movie would promote child prostitution.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores tells the story of a bachelor who for his 90th birthday decides to give himself the gift of a night of "wild love with an adolescent virgin".

The Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office on Monday. The complaint does not specifically name García Márquez, but instead "whoever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution".

Coalition director Teresa Ulloa said that a movie adaptation of the Colombian author's novel would promote paedophilia and make the story accessible to a wider audience.

"As a book, it does not have access to the most vulnerable people in society," she said. "Once they make the movie, it will be in movie theatres and later it will surely be on television."

The film's co-director and producer, Ricardo del Rio, told Mexico's Reforma newspaper in an interview published yesterday that the lawsuit's claims were inaccurate and unfair.

"They are censoring a film before it's been made, without knowing either the script or the vision of the director," he said.

He told Reforma that filming, scheduled to begin late this month, had been postponed because government officials in the Mexican state of Puebla had decided to withdraw funding for the movie in light of the lawsuit.

Puebla's government said yesterday that they would not help fund the $8m film.

Del Rio said producers had picked a 21-year-old actress, Ana de Armas, for the movie, and that the character's age would not be dealt with in the film.

"Here they have simply killed our adaptation. They have dealt us a fatal blow because we can't film without all the resources," he said.

Representatives of Memorias del Sabio Producciones, listed as the producer of the movie on a Mexican government website, confirmed that filming has been delayed.

"We are actively working to make this film project … We know it is a film that will awaken an interesting debate, just as it will make us grow as a society," producer Raquel Guajardo said.

Ulloa said stopping the adaptation was her organisation's goal.

"We don't want them to put García Márquez in jail. What we want is for them not to film the movie."

She said the governments of Denmark and Spain were providing funding for the film. The coalition planned to ask them to reconsider their participation.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores, published in Spanish in 2004, is the Nobel Prize-winning novelist's most recent book. When it was released in Mexico, publishers described it as a "hymn to life"

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