team was unable to help Puig and they had to secure him to the bed. He died from acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) at 4:55 a.m. on July 22, 1990. His death leaked quickly through the media. Although he had a background of cardiac problems, the first public assumption was that he had died from AIDS. It was soon ascertained that Manuel Puig did not have HIV. Nevertheless, the public had already contested that fact several times. Only six people attended his funeral service, including his mother, his friends Javier Labrada and Agustín Garcia Gil, and his colleague Tununa Mercado who happened to be on his way to Xalapa city in Veracruz. When Jorge Abelardo Ramos, the Argentine ambassador of Mexico was asked to speak to the media about the death of Manuel Puig, he responded by saying that he was not aware of the death of an Argentine with that name. Regardless, they had his body sent to the Federal District of Mexico for his funeral rites with the Writer's Society, and the ambassador arrived and gave a speech. Manuel Puig's bodily remains were sent to Argentina a few days later and were placed in the Puig family tomb in the cemetery of La Plata. The 2004 film Vereda Tropical, directed by Javier Torres, depicts the period during which Puig lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The writer's role is played by the actor Fabio Aste. Work Critics such as Pamela Bacarisse divide Puig's work into two groups: his early novels, which "attracted an enormous audience by weaving into his narratives the artistic 'sub-products' of mass culture"; and his later books, which have "lost their popular appeal" as they evidence "a depressing, even unpalatable, vision of life, no longer even superficially sweetened by palliatives as the mass-media elements are left behind". Three translations of his work have been reprinted by Dalkey Archive Press: 2009: Betrayed by Rita Hayworth 2010: The Buenos Aires Affair 2010: Heartbreak Tango List of works Novels 1968: La traición de Rita Hayworth Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Translator Suzanne Jill Levine, Dalkey Archive Press, 2009, 1969: Boquitas pintadas; Seix Barral, 2004, Heartbreak Tango 1973: The Buenos Aires Affair (The Buenos Aires Affair) 1976: El beso de la mujer araña; José Amícola, Jorge Panesi, Editors, Fondo De Cultura Economica, 2002, Kiss of the Spider Woman, reprint Random House, Inc., 1991, 1979: Pubis angelical (Pubis Angelical) Seix Barral,