Carlos Fuentes, Mexican Writer, Dies at 83 MEXICO CITY (AP) - Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in Latin America's novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals of the Mexican revolution, died Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital. Mexico's National Council for Culture for the Arts confirmed the death of Mexico's most celebrated novelist. The cause was not immediately known, said the culture official, who was not authorized to speak to the media. Mexican media reported Fuentes died at the Angeles del Pedregal hospital, where he was being treated for heart problems. The loss was immediately mourned worldwide via Twitter and across Mexican airwaves. A message on President Felipe Calderon's Twitter account said "I deeply lament the death of our beloved and admired Carlos Fuentes, a universal Mexican writer." Fuentes himself tweeted only one day, March 19, 2011, his last saying: "There must be something beyond slaughter and barbarism to support the existence of mankind and we must all help search for it." The prolific Fuentes wrote his first novel, "Where the Air is Clear," at age 29, laying the foundation for a boom in Spanish contemporary literature during the 1960s and 1970s. He published an essay on the change of power in France in the newspaper Reforma on Tuesday, the same day he died. His generation of writers, including Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa, drew global readership and attention to Latin American culture during a period when strongmen ruled much of the region. "The Death of Artemio Cruz," a novel about a post-revolutionary Mexico that failed to keep its promise of narrowing social gaps, brought Fuentes international acclaim. The elegant, mustachioed author's other contemporary classics included "Aura," "Terra Nostra," and "The Good Conscience." Many American readers know him for "The Old Gringo," a novel about San Francisco journalist Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared at the height of the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. That book was later made into a film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. Fuentes was often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel prize but never won one. A busy man, Fuentes wrote plays and short stories and co-founded a literary magazine. He was also a columnist, political analyst, essayist and critic. And he was outspoken. Once considered a Communist and sympathizer of Cuba's Fidel Castro, Fuentes was denied entry into the U.S. under the McCarren-Walter Act. Having spent some of his childhood in the U.S. as the son of Mexican diplomat, he said it grated on him that his left-of-center politics meant he often was portrayed as anti-American. He was often critical of American governments and of a rich country that should attend to its poor, but not of Americans and American culture. To call me anti-American is a stupendous lie, a calumny. I grew up in this country," he said during an interview in the United States. When I was a little boy I shook the hand of Franklin Roosevelt and I haven't washed it since. More recently, as a moderate leftist, Fuentes strongly opposed harsh tactics against immigration and in the war on terrorism in the U.S. He warned about Mexico's religious right but also blasted Venezuela's Hugo Chavez as a "Tropical Mussolini." He also was critical of Mexico's drug violence that has killed more than 47,500 people since 2006, something he blamed on a failed policy by Calderon to attack organized crime. Described by Mexican cultural officials as the country's most distinguished living author, Fuentes in 1987 won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honor. Fuentes was named a commander of the National Order of Merit, France's highest civilian award given to a foreigner, in 1997. Spain gave him a Prince of Asturias Award for literature in 1994. Throughout his life, Fuentes also taught courses at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Brown universities in the United States.