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Gabriel García Márquez's support of Fidel Castro takes the novelist down a bitter street. A wave of denunciations against the comandante, unleashed by the West's most important intellectuals, has swamped the Nobel laureate. It all happened as a result of the recent executions of three young men, shot dead ''to prevent an American invasion'' -- as if Castro had become an Aztec priest who conjures fate by means of human sacrifices. Suddenly, the mutiny was directed at García Márquez, the prior of Latin American literature. ''Where is García Márquez's signature, in the face of this limitless cruelty?'' everyone asked. The...

Reuters Still friends after all these years: Fidel Castro met in 2000 with the writer Gabriel García Márquez, who continues to support Cuba's aging caudillo. BUENOS AIRES — More than 100 Latin American intellectuals published a vigorous protest last month after Cuba sentenced 75 dissidents to long prison terms and executed three men who had hijacked a ferry and tried to flee to the United States. "We appeal to the conscience of the world to avoid a new trampling of the principles that guide" civilization, their manifesto read. But the group, which included the writers Gabriel García Márquez, Ariel Dorfman,...

In the wake of the execution without trial of three hijackers and the sentencing of 75 Cuban dissidents to long prison terms, more that 160 so-called intellectuals from around the world, including two Nobel Prize winners, have signed a declaration defending Fidel Castro's brutal regime. Among the "intellectuals" signing the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World," a vicious attack on their own country, were two Hollywood has-beens: Democrat house slave and washed-up calypso singer Harry Belafonte, who has a far higher opinion of the Cuban tyrant than of Colin Powell and Condi Rice, and former movie star...

More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island, one of the campaigners said on Thursday. Reuters Photo   Latin American Nobel laureates Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner, have signed a declaration of support, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez said. U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience...

BOGOTA (AFP) - Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a friend of Fidel Castro, condemned the death penalty "anywhere and for any reason," in reply to US writer Susan Sontag, who said she was troubled that the Colombian writer had not condemned recent executions in Cuba. The Colombian writer, who won the 1982 Nobel prize for literature, and the Cuban revolutionary have been friends for years. Sontag, on a visit to Bogota's book fair, Sunday said that while she admired Garcia Marquez as an author, it did not seem correct to her that he had not spoken out after Cuba executed...