FILE - This undated file photo shows Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez at an undisclosed location. The University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center has acquired Marquez's archive. The writer died on April 17, 2014. (AP Photo, File) (The Associated Press)
AUSTIN, Texas – The archive of celebrated Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been acquired by the University of Texas — meaning the critic of U.S. foreign policy is having his papers end up in a country he wasn't always too fond of.
The Harry Ransom Center, a top literary archive located on the university's Austin campus, announced Monday that the collection spans more than 50 years and features original manuscript material for 10 books, including Garcia Marquez's acclaimed 1967 novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
Also included are drafts of Garcia Marquez's acceptance speech for his 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature and 2,000 pieces of correspondence, such as letters to novelists Carlos Fuentes and Graham Greene. There are also typewriters and computers used by Garcia Marquez, who lived most of his life in Mexico City and died there in April at age 87.
Most of the collection is in Spanish. The center plans to digitize part of it eventually to increase accessibility to the university community.
"The University of Texas at Austin — with expertise in both Latin America and the preservation and study of the writing process — is the natural home for this very important collection," University of Texas President Bill Powers said in a statement.
The university said Monday it bought the collection from Garcia Marquez's family, but wouldn't say how much it cost, citing a competitive bidding process.
Garcia Marquez was a close friend of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and was sometimes outspoken in his opposition to U.S. policy in Latin America. The Mexican poet and novelist Homero Aridjis said Monday that it was an "ideological irony" that Garcia Marquez's papers will now rest on American soil.
But Aridjis said it was likely a practical decision based on money, quality of care for the collection and better accessibility.
"The University of Texas, they catalog, take good care of the archives ... and make them available to researchers," Aridjis said. He later added: "It's contradictory, because on one hand it's pragmatic on the part of the heirs. But on the other hand, it's contradictory to the career of Garcia Marquez."
The Ransom Center already has extensive archives on writers Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner and James Joyce. Other Nobel laureates included in its collection are Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.
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Associated Press Writers Jim Vertuno in Austin and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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