The F.B.I. has declassified a 170-page dossier on late Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, which shows that between the early 60s and the late 70s, the agency kept a close eye on his activities and relationships.
The Mexican author is described as a "prominent Marxist intellectual" with a history of "subversive relations."
No wiretapping or surveillance ever reportedly took place, but the FBI did keep a detailed record of the writer's public activities.
According to Fuentes' widow Silvia Lemus, the file has one glaring mistake: Although the author was a staunch leftist, he was never a communist.
"Carlos was not a communist, he never belonged to the Communist Party. That just shows how little they knew about him", Lemus told Spanish newspaper El Pais. She also said that the author had a slight suspicion of the FBI's file: "He was aware of their paranoia," she added.
Fuentes has a close relationship with the Unites States. As a diplomat's son, he grew up in many cities around the world, one of them being Washington D.C. He also became good friends in the nineties with President Bill Clinton. Lemus categorically rejected the label "anti-American" that the F.B.I set on the author: "Of course he wasn't. He valued the country profoundly."
The file on Fuentes began in 1962, when he was invited to a televised debate with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Goodwin, who was in charge of U.S. Policy towards Latin America. The F.B.I. instructed that Fuentes' entry VISA be delayed as much as possible.
In 1970, the agency reported that Fuentes had "publicly declared his divorce from Marxism" but the orders to monitor his public activities remained.
One of the last documents in the dossier is a brief profile of the writer that dates to 1978, which details how the author refused to become a lecturer at Colombia University because of the Vietnam War: "It is impossible to talk serenely about literature while American imperialism is killing women and children abroad," Fuentes is quoted as saying.