Today at The Coffee Shop, we'll talk about the history of Colombia's literary cafés , a topic we touched on in the article " Iconic Places to Drink Coffee: Colombia," specifically in Bogotá. A common thread connects coffee to the art world, and literature in particular. Before, when there were no publishing houses, the selection of works was entrusted to literary societies, voluntary associations of writers who exchanged advice and support based on unwritten and non-notarized agreements. These agreements and selections were made by meeting in exclusive locations, bookstores, but especially in cafés.
Poets, novelists, and intellectuals have gathered in Bogotá's literary cafés since the mid-20th century. A literary café is a space where people can discuss literature and art, and where they can eat and drink. They discussed, created, conceived, or commented on several of Colombia's most important literary works in these places, which saw the growth of new relationships between different eras and different writers. Cafés are a way to unite this diversity of authors, personalities, and readings, as well as the similarity of the fictional characters they describe in their works, who can live in different spaces and times and yet meet in cafés.
Poetry, literature, and coffee seem to be part of the DNA of the Colombian people and are inseparable from their very nature. As birthplaces of avant-garde ideas, they were of great importance to political and cultural progress in general, as well as to Colombian literature. Names like Germán Arciniegas, Alberto Lleras Camargo, Ricardo Rendón, León de Greiff, Gabriel García Márquez, to name just a few, could not be remembered without mentioning their presence in Bogotá cafés such as the Windsor, the Asturias, the Automático, and others. Thus, the Café Literario became a symbol of the avant-garde in the 20th century.
The café as a public gathering place has a long history in Europe. At the beginning of the 20th century, several cafés emerged on this continent, becoming centers for literary gatherings. In the atmosphere of these gatherings, avant-garde political, cultural, and literary ideas, as well as works of literature, were born. Much the same occurred in Latin America, especially in Bogotá; the historical development of these cafés, their gatherings, and the generations and groups that gathered there were shaped.
When looking for exact or approximate dates for when literary cafés were born, one can find in the literature that the exact date was in the 20th century and the approximate date was in 1920, but when one analyzes the two words café and literature in depth and wants to consider the history, context and essence, we can see that it all began earlier.
Literary cafes, like other more common forms of entertainment, refuse to disappear, and as society advances, they try to evolve and enter the context of a new era. Regarding literary cafes, some that existed in Bogotá before the Bogotazo and still exist are El Pasaje and San Mortiz, which were not very popular at the time but survived from the 1990s and were established before 1948.
Likewise, we must take into account El Automático, which was open until the 1980s and was important because it was the first to allow women in, as there were no ladies' restrooms in the cafes of the time.
Although there's no definitive definition of a literary café , we can say it's a space where coffee, literature, and all their forms of expression come together. I think those interested in the history and culture of these places can attest to this and, if they wish, can also open their own with different characteristics and without truly competing with others. Today, local or neighborhood libraries host literary cafés based on a theme or author, and the aroma of coffee is never far from the atmosphere. It's a way to remember the essence of literary cafés of the time and escape from that world invaded by television, the internet, and shopping malls.
A literary café , then, is where the written and spoken words are present, as books and coffee lead us to imagine beyond our memories and our senses. Visiting these places is necessary to rewrite history. Cafés throughout time are not foreign to everyone. Although they are recognized as historical due to the well-known names that passed through them or the political outcomes that emerged there, they were also, and are, places that helped the inhabitants of their areas explore the benefits of literature and coffee.