Mexico's Secret Service: Gabriel Garcia Marquez Was a Cuban Spy
Uncovered records reveal that Columbian author and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez was spied on for decades by the Mexican intelligence agency DFS, which is now defunct. The DFS, which was roughly equivalent to the CIA, considered Garcia Marquez to be a Cuban agent.
The defunct DFS agency bugged the Nobel laureate's phone and monitored his movements from 1967 after he moved to Mexico with his family. The authorities suspected the Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude because of his leftist sympathies and friendship with Fidel Castro. Declassified documents published in the newspaper El Universal revealed the DSF kept a bulging file at least up until 1985, after which documents remain secret. It was era of the "dirty war" waged by rightwing Latin American governments against suspected subversives.
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The agency closely monitored the author's mediation between leftist movements and the French president, Francois Miterrand. It also kept tabs on Mexican writers such as Octavio Paz, who won the Nobel prize in 1990, and Salvador Novo.
The declassified information contains a wiretapped conversation between Garcia Marquez and Jorge Timossi, the director of Cuba's Prensa Latina news agency. It reveals the Garcia Marquez gave the rights to his book Chronicle of a Death Foretold to the Cuban government. The DFS report noted that
"The above proves that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, besides being pro-Cuban and pro-Soviet, is a propaganda agent at the service of the intelligence agency of that country."
Garcia Marquez is now 82 and divides his time between Cartagena and Mexico City. He still loves to visit Cuba and has maintained his friendship with Castro.
