"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 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."

Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, president of Mexico's National Council of Arts and Culture, said he thought the collection would be "well taken care of there in Austin," but disappointment came Monday in Garcia Marquez's home country, where the National Library announced it had been negotiating for the collection eventually to be housed there since late last year.

"There's some regret that this entire archive we're talking about didn't go to Colombia, but I understand there were private negotiations and we respect those," said National Library of Colombia spokesman Sergio Zapata.

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.