US intelligence agencies have been watching Gabriel Garcia Marquez for more than 20 years.

The Washington Post newspaper declassified documents received from the FBI, which say that the American intelligence services for 20 years followed the world famous Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

According to the newspaper, surveillance of the Nobel Prize in literature began in 1961 year by order of the then head of the bureau, Edgar Hoover. At that time, 33-year-old Marquez arrived in New York with his wife and son to work for the Prensa Latina news agency. Two years before, Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. The writer himself was considered his friend.

The FBI, at the request of the publication, had to publish the 137 pages accumulated over the year 24. At the same time, still 133 pages of the document remain classified. Perhaps they contain information about the reason why the US authorities have generally begun to monitor the famous writer.

The son of the writer Rodrigo Garcia said that family members never noticed spying for themselves or their father, but he was not surprised by this fact. “Given the fact that this Colombian guy opened a Colombian news agency in New York, it would be strange if the special services didn’t follow him,” Rodrigo noted.

Gabriel García Márquez died on April 17, 2014 in Mexico City at the age of 87 from kidney failure. The farewell ceremony took place at the Palace of Fine Arts in the center of the Mexican capital. Fans accompanied the famous writer to his last journey with loud applause and thousands of yellow paper butterflies.