The translation process (done by a Language Expert Super Prompt, using Grok 3) involved a careful reading of the original Spanish text to capture its tone, intent, and cultural nuances. I prioritized fidelity to the author’s voice, maintaining the reflective and critical style while adapting idiomatic expressions and cultural references for natural English flow.
On the morning of Friday, June 8, 2018, a terse headline announced: «Chef Anthony Bourdain has been found dead. He was 61 years old», CNN, the network for which he produced the series Parts Unknown, confirmed the news. The coverage by English-speaking media addressed the matter with a sensitivity unthinkable in our violent and intolerant Latin American countries, where it feels like we’re one step away from broadcasting massacres live. CNN reported a hanging in the bathroom of a hotel in France. Anderson Cooper spoke to viewers with a concern that seemed genuine, startling for those of us accustomed to the cynicism of anchors on Colombia’s dominant media outlets. Cooper repeated the phone numbers displayed on one side of the screen, urging viewers to call if they felt suicidal impulses, which, he explained, had been multiplying in a contagious wave since Trump began implementing arbitrary policies.
That sensitive media coverage made me reflect on the state of mental health in Colombia, a nation so desensitized to pain and death that seven million people voted in the first round for a presidential candidate who promised to reignite the armed conflict. Why doesn’t the Ministry of Health publish studies on the scars of war? Isn’t it necessary to understand how to address post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression? Watching those reports about Bourdain’s death, I couldn’t help but think we’re in worse shape than I had realized. In our country, news programs thrive on stoking fear, only to pivot to images of «successful» military campaigns. Under the pretense that we’re the happiest country in the world, we’re being pushed toward a lifestyle where psychopathy, predation, individualistic competition, extroversion, cynicism, and narcissism have become the new ideals.
Unlike American news outlets, Colombian media rushed to publish stories focusing on Bourdain’s visit to our country. They couldn’t resist navel-gazing. With that shallow approach centered solely on the gastronomic aspect, it was clear that in Colombia, he was seen merely as another eccentric gringo who liked to eat weird things, missing the full scope of his three dimensions: chef, chronicler/writer, and globetrotter.
Why wasn’t he perceived in his three dimensions in Latin America? I’d like to think the issue lies in the fact that most viewers knew the Bourdain of subtitles, which, in the end, only capture the main ideas, stripping away the complexity of sonic nuances, cadence, and humor.
It was this injustice to his journalistic work that compelled me to write this.
Bourdain described CNN’s Parts Unknown as a series of essays from conflict zones, in contrast to No Reservations, which he called a self-indulgent exercise meant to engage viewers through sensory experiences. From the days of No Reservations, the similarities to Gonzo journalism were evident —see the episode titled «Vegas»—. Bourdain’s chronicles, like those of Hunter S. Thompson, followed the American tradition of explorer-writers and adventurers, with Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Conrad as two of its greatest touchstones. Anthony Bourdain, much like Hunter S. Thompson, developed a style whose value lay in questioning rather than asserting categorically. Both used humor to disarm their interlocutors, forcing them to reveal their true selves. Those who took themselves too seriously grew uncomfortable and took on villainous traits, while with others, he forged fraternal bonds —see «Jamaica» from Parts Unknown—. His empathic ability was providential, allowing him to build bridges effortlessly —see «Trinidad» from Parts Unknown and «Boston-Southie» from No Reservations—.
In the 1960s, before achieving celebrity status with the publication of Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga, Hunter S. Thompson traveled through Latin America, from Aruba to Brazil. It was on that journey that what he would later call Gonzo journalism was born (see «Chatty Letters During a Journey from Aruba to Rio». Back home, he wrote one of the most visceral reports ever produced about the American elite: «The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved». The article opened doors to the publishing world and changed his life overnight, just as it did for Bourdain, who at 44 wrote the humorous piece «Don’t Eat Before Reading This (A New York Chef Spills Some Trade Secrets)» for The New Yorker. Within a week, he secured a book deal to publish Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Almost immediately, he received an offer to produce his first television series. The rest is history. In his short career as a writer, he produced a dozen books, including crime novels, graphic novels, and nonfiction works. He also created multiple audiovisual series.
Bourdain, like many born in the Americas, was a child of migration, in his case, a descendant of French immigrants. His connection to the land of his ancestors was so strong that it was there he chose to end his life. To understand the significance of that cultural heritage, one need only watch the No Reservations episode titled «Beirut», where they managed to film for just one day before war broke out. The rest of the episode unfolded inside a hotel while they waited for the embassy to send «Mr. Wolf», who would transport them to a secret location where the Marines were evacuating nationals to an aircraft carrier. Amid the forced house arrest, Bourdain decided to prepare a French dish that lifted the spirits of the production team and allowed them to capture a bittersweet climax for an episode that feels more like a war chronicle than a culinary show. Watching that episode, it’s impossible not to think of other works by war journalists, like Jon Lee Anderson’s The Fall of Baghdad, a report woven with such humanistic finesse that at times you forget it documents a tragedy, or Kapuściński’s Ebony, essential for understanding how those accustomed to hardship endure anguish as if it were a lesser evil.
Both Hunter S. Thompson and Anthony Bourdain were restless adventurers who spoke out unapologetically. They were the voice of the silenced, the oppressed, the voice of minorities, and on many occasions, they risked their lives without being war journalists —see «Cambodia» from No Reservations—. Bourdain and Thompson embodied a kind of journalism that is on the verge of extinction—independent, committed, a journalism that engages with the causes of the poorest, the hungriest, and the weakest.
Since that fateful Friday, June 8, I can’t stop thinking about the words Raoul Duke, Hunter S. Thompson’s alter ego in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, used to describe his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo: «There goes one of God’s own prototypes. Too weird to live, too rare for mass production».
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