Writer Carlos Fuentes to be buried in famed Paris cemetery

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The remains of Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes will be buried in the famed Montparnasse cemetery in Paris alongside those of two children who died before him, his widow, Silvia Lemus, told reporters in Mexico (link in Spanish).

Fuentes, who died Tuesday in Mexico City at 83, served as Mexico’s ambassador to France in the 1970s. He was given the country’s highest award for a non-Frenchman, the Legion of Honor medal, in 1992.

He told a reporter as early as 1995 that he was considering Paris for his burial, saying that Montparnasse ‘would be a great place to spend eternity.’

The cemetery is the resting place for a litany of artists and other famous names, including Fuentes’ friend and fellow Latin American man of letters Julio Cortazar of Argentina and the former Mexican dictator Gen. Porfirio Diaz.

The Fuentes family plot at the Montparnasse cemetery already holds the remains of his son Carlos, who died in 1999, and his daughter Natasha, who died in 2005. The plot also reserves a space for Lemus, reports said.

The author of ‘The Death of Artemio Cruz’ and ‘Aura’ consistently declined to discuss his children’s deaths, although some news outlets have noted this week that Natasha Fuentes died in tragic circumstances in a tough Mexico City neighborhood (link in Spanish). Among conflicting accounts of her death was that she suffered a drug overdose.

Fuentes was honored by President Felipe Calderon during a wake Wednesday at the Palace of Fine Arts in the heart of Mexico City.

RELATED:

Carlos Fuentes: The realist magician

Carlos Fuentes dies at 83; Mexican novelist

Novelist Carlos Fuentes confronts mortality and his country’s future

-- Daniel Hernandez in San Diego