Havana, April 7 (RHC)-- Daniel Chavarría, author of a work that revolutionized crime literature in Latin America, died Friday in Havana at the age of 84.  He was born in San Jose de Mayo, in Uruguay, in 1933.
 
Cuba was his adopted homeland.  In 2010, he was recognized on the island with the National Literature Prize.  He considered himself "a Cuban writer born in Uruguay."  He underlined his essential link with Cuba, where he arrived in 1969 and began a literary career in 1978 when he published his novel "Joy."
 
Since then, he'd achieved the admiration of readers and the endorsement of critics both in Cuba and abroad through detective intrigues novels like "The Sixth Island," "The Eye of Cybele, Alla Ellos," "The Red in the Feather of the Parrot," and "Widows of Blood."
 
Daniel Chavarría was the recipient of the Dashiell Hammet Award for the best crime novel in the Spanish language in 1992 -- the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2002 -- granted by the Mystery Writers Association of America and the Casa de las Americas Prize in 2002.
 
Among his most recent works, Daniel Chavarría devoted special attention to one that he owed to his country of birth and to all those who defend the emancipatory ideal of the peoples of the continent: "I am the Rufo and I Do Not Surrender" -- a fictionalized biography of the founder of the guerrilla group Tupamaros, Raúl Sendic.