Mexican Artist Carlos Jurado Delmar Tied to Espionage in JFK Files

Carlos Jurado Delmar was celebrated as a muralist, a pioneer of pinhole photography, a man whose artistry defined much of the twentieth century in Mexico. Declassified Cold War files reveal another truth. During the 1960s, Jurado served unwittingly as a CIA informant.

According to Milenio, over 400 pages of documents expose his role in gathering intelligence on Fidel Castro’s government and disrupting guerrilla operations trafficking weapons from Mexico to Guatemala. Jurado, according to the records, met with Cuban military figures such as Osmany Cienfuegos and assisted in the arrest of Cuban diplomats on Mexican soil.

A Hidden Operation Beneath the Canvas

The revelations deepen. Jurado believed he was aiding a Greek businessman named Nicolás Harris. Harris was in fact Wallace B Rowton, a covert CIA operative.

His assignment was crafted with precision. Forge commercial ties while quietly uncovering the financial roots supporting leftist intellectuals sympathetic to Cuba. The goal remained clear. Infiltrate the political ecosystem surrounding Castro and identify priority targets.

A report to Winston Scott, the CIA’s station chief in Mexico operating under the name Willard C Curtis, noted that Jurado was more valuable as an unwitting agent. Unaware of his handlers, he could operate without the paralyzing fear of capture. It remains uncertain whether Jurado, who died in 2019 at the age of 92, ever realized that his comfortable lifestyle had been subsidized by American intelligence.

The Making of a Perfect Target

Jurado embodied the ideal profile. A leftist intellectual with political ambitions, financial instability, emotional vulnerabilities, and the right social connections. The files describe him as well entrenched among communist circles across Mexico, Cuba, and Central America, with ties to public officials and traces of military training in his past.

Official biographies state that Jurado was born in 1927 in Chiapas. The CIA found otherwise. Born in 1930 in Mexico City, he falsified documents to enlist in the Navy at fifteen. His grandfather was a prominent textile entrepreneur. His uncles owned sprawling properties. After his parents’ divorce, Jurado severed family ties.

Following three years in the Navy, he studied Anthropology and Archaeology at the UNAM and later developed his artistic talents under masters such as María Izquierdo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. At twenty, he married a woman from León, Guanajuato, and fathered four children.

Between 1954 and 1960, he worked for the National Indigenous Institute, a job that strained his marriage. After his divorce, he traveled to Cuba, embraced the Revolution, worked as a muralist, and fell in love with Miriam Chicay, a Cuban woman of Chinese descent.

The CIA described him as a slim, youthful-looking man, standing at 1.67 meters, with dark brown hair and sharp, slightly slanted eyes.

When Jurado returned to Mexico in 1964 with his new family, he lived modestly in the San Ángel neighborhood, balancing exhibitions with art classes at public and private schools. Despite a scholarship from the National Institute of Fine Arts, his income remained meager. CIA records indicate that between 1965 and 1966, Jurado’s earnings never exceeded 3,000 pesos.

His murals adorned public institutions in Chiapas and Havana. The fate of his Cuban works remains unclear. Commercial success eluded him, leaving him isolated and frustrated.

Carlos Jurado Delmar, a Pawn in a Game He Never Understood

In 1966, Jurado met Wallace B Rowton, introduced to him as a Greek businessman enamored with his art. Rowton offered an irresistible proposal. A mural commission at La Chansonette, a famed nightclub in Manhattan. The project was a ruse designed to test Jurado’s political convictions by immersing him in an elite capitalist environment.

Rowton lavished him with invitations to lavish dinners, probing not only Jurado’s beliefs but those of Miriam Chicay. During one dinner at El 77, a restaurant on London Street in Mexico City, the couple expressed support for Castro and disillusionment with Mexico’s endemic corruption.

Jurado, eager to escape his stagnant life, accepted Rowton’s formal offer in May 1966. Presented as an informal business partnership, the agreement involved Jurado acting as a proxy in Latin American commercial ventures that were, in reality, CIA operations.

The painter admitted his lack of business experience but promised valuable contacts in Cuba. In return, the CIA provided him with a steady income, credit cards monitored through the Bank of London and Mexico, Sears shopping privileges, and extravagant gifts for his children.

Despite promises of artistic commissions, no projects materialized. Jurado became an unwitting informant. The agency established a safehouse in Mexico City, which he used both for clandestine meetings and a secret affair with a wealthy former student. The CIA documented every detail, fearing that his infidelity could destabilize the operation if discovered by Miriam.

His rise in Mexico’s intellectual circles continued under silent supervision.

Deemed easily corruptible and motivated by comfort, Jurado and his wife were classified as unwitting informants under the codenames Liring-3 and Liring-4. The agency emphasized the advantage of his ignorance. He worked against the enemy with a clear conscience, his leftist sentiments untouched.

In July 1966, through his contacts, Jurado reported that Castro suffered from mental instability exacerbated by excesses during the Cuban Revolution Day celebrations. CIA cables portrayed the Cuban leader as erratic, sleepless, and physically weakened by a recent double hernia operation.

Carlos Jurado Delmar, once a man of ideals, was drawn into a clandestine world where paint and politics collided, where every conversation and every fragile human failing became a tool in a much larger game he never fully understood.