Our Causes

We believe in giving back to our community. These are some of the causes to which we are committed.

Gabriel García Márquez Ashes Memorial

The ashes of our former client and Nobel Prize-winning novelist, the late Gabriel García Márquez, rest in a memorial standing in La Merced monastery, which is attached to Cartagena University. Raimundo Angulo, president of Colombia Beauty Pageant, and Cecilia Restrepo de Bustamante, our general manager, led the construction of this monument, which has become a tourist attraction.

Gabriel García Márquez’s Personal Effects

To complement the Ashes Memorial, the president of Colombia Beauty Pageant and our general manager arranged with the García Márquez family to donate personal effects belonging to the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. The objects are exhibited for the public at a hall honoring the writer’s life.

Gabriel García Márquez at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm

To commemorate what would have been Gabriel García Márquez’s 91st birthday, and thanks to our general manager’s initiative, the late novelist’s family donated two pairs of his emblematic eyeglasses, a handbag, and a wristwatch to the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. Our communications director, Juan Pablo Bustamante, gave a speech during the ceremony and was in charge of handing over the Nobel Laureate’s personal effects.

Martín Murillo’s Literary Pushcart

Martín is a Chocoano who turned the pushcart he used for selling water into one for lending books. His mission is to promote reading not only in Cartagena, but also in remote regions that have been affected by violence. In honor of our co-founder Luis Bustamante del Valle, whose personal library included more than two thousand books, we support Martín’s Literary Pushcart.

Lennin Martínez Pautt, the Concertmaster

When he was eleven years old and attending INEM Elementary School, Lennin discovered his passion for the violin. Then, when he was a teenager, our general manager heard him play in a concert hosted by the Tocando Puertas Foundation, and she promised him sponsorship. Because of his talent, he was the concertmaster in the Cartagena Symphony Orchestra and earned a scholarship to study music at Andes University.