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MEXICO CITY – Author Carlos Fuentes, who played a dominant role in LatinAmerica's novel-writing boom by delving into the failed ideals ofthe Mexican revolution, died Tuesday in a Mexico City hospital. Hewas 83. Mexico's National Council for Culture for the Arts confirmed thedeath of Mexico's most celebrated novelist. The cause was notimmediately known, said the culture official, who was notauthorized to speak to the media. Mexican media reported Fuentes died at the Angeles del Pedregalhospital, where he was being treated for heart problems. The losswas immediately mourned worldwide via Twitter and across Mexicanairwaves. A message on President Felipe Calderon's Twitter account said "Ideeply lament the death of our beloved and admired Carlos Fuentes,a universal Mexican writer." The prolific Fuentes wrote his first novel, "Where the Air isClear," at age 29, laying the foundation for a boom in Spanishcontemporary literature during the 1960s and 1970s. He published anessay on the change of power in France in the newspaper Reforma onTuesday, the same day he died. His generation of writers, including Colombia's Gabriel GarciaMarquez and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa, drew global readership andattention to Latin American culture during a period when strongmenruled much of the region. "The Death of Artemio Cruz," a novel about a post-revolutionaryMexico that failed to keep its promise of narrowing social gaps,brought Fuentes international notoriety. The elegant, mustachioed author's other contemporary classicsincluded "Aura," 'Terra Nostra," and "The Good Conscience." ManyAmerican readers know him for "The Old Gringo," a novel about SanFrancisco journalist Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared at the heightof the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution. That book was later made intoa film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. Fuentes was often mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel prize butnever won one. A busy man, Fuentes wrote plays and short storiesand co-founded a literary magazine. He was also a columnist,political analyst, essayist and critic. And he was outspoken. Once considered a Communist and sympathizerof Cuba's Fidel Castro, Fuentes was denied entry into the U.S.under the McCarren-Walter Act. More recently, as a moderate leftist, Fuentes strongly opposedharsh policies against immigration and the war on terrorism in theU.S, though he expressed deep affection for the United States. Hewarned about Mexico's religious right but also blasted Venezuela'sHugo Chavez as a "Tropical Mussolini." Described by Mexican cultural officials as the country's mostdistinguished living author, Fuentes in 1987 won the CervantesPrize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary honor. Fuentes also 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. The son of a career diplomat, Fuentes himself served as anambassador to England. He resigned from Mexico's foreign service inprotest over Mexico's 1968 student massacre, but returned to serveas ambassador to Paris beginning in 1975. Fuentes resigned from the foreign service again in 1977 when formerPresident Gustavo Diaz Ordaz was appointed ambassador to Spain,saying he wouldn't serve with the man who ordered the studentmassacre in Mexico City, which activists said killed up to 350people. A believer that literature allowed him to say what would becensored otherwise, Fuentes also was the subject of censorship. His mystery novel "Aura," which narrates a romantic encounterbeneath a crucifix with a black Christ that some officials claimedwas too racy, was banned from public high schools in Puerto Rico.It also sparked controversy in Mexico in 2001 when a formerinterior secretary asked the novel to be dropped from a suggestedreading list at his daughter's private junior high school. Fuentes was born in Panama City on Dec. 11, 1928 to Mexicanparents. He lived most of his life abroad, growing up inMontevideo, Uruguay; Rio de Janeiro; Washington, D.C.; Santiago,Chile; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. He later divided his timebetween homes in Mexico City home and London, where he did most ofhis writing. Fuentes was married from 1959 to 1973 to actress Rita Macedo, withwhom he had his only surviving daughter. After the couple divorced, Fuentes married journalist Silvia Lemusand they had two children together. Their son Carlos Fuentes Lemusdied from complications associated with hemophilia in 1999, andNatasha Fuentes Lemus died in 2005 after a cardiac arrest. Fuentes also acknowledged having affairs with actresses includingJeanne Moreau and Jean Seberg. As he grew older, Fuentes left many novels unfinished withimperfections and "wounds that make the book bleed," he said. But Fuentes said in 2008 that he agreed with Mario Vargas Llosa togather 12 writers, including Garcia Marquez, to each create a pieceabout their favorite dictator. Fuentes wrote a 2008 opera inspired by Gen. Antonio Lopez de SantaAnna, the five-time president of Mexico during the TexasRevolution. He said he wanted to see the man he considered the most flamboyantcharacter in Mexican political history dancing and singing with hiswooden leg. But Fuentes always postponed writing about himself. "One puts off the biography like you put off death," he said. "Towrite an autobiography is to etch the words on your owngravestone.". 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