“Pablo Neruda Killed”

Pablo Neruda was poisoned. This is the conclusion of new analyzes by a panel of experts on the remains of the Chilean poet who died on September 23, 1973, less than two weeks after the coup of Augusto Pinochet.

For over 40 years, the official version was that the Nobel Prize winner for Literature died after the precarious health conditions he had lived through for several years worsened from prostate cancer. Pinochet’s US-backed coup, in which Allende committed suicide as soldiers stormed the presidential palace, devastated Neruda and prompted him to plan a deportation to Mexico. However, the day before his departure, the poet was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Santiago de Chile, where he later died.

Many people, especially among the ranks of the Chilean Communist Party and family members, cast a shadow over this version the day after his death. The turning point ten years ago: his former driver, Manuel Araya, said that Neruda called him from the hospital where he was admitted to the hospital, claiming that someone had injected something into his body. In a few hours the poet would be dead. A Chilean judge therefore decided to exhume the body.

Samples of Neruda’s remains were sent to forensic laboratories in four countries, and in 2015 the Chilean government said it was “highly likely that a third person was responsible” for his death. Two years later, an international team of scientists said they were “100% convinced” that the poet did not die of prostate cancer, noting that the bacteria Clostridium botulinum was present inside the body and that this could be the true cause of death. But one last piece remains to close the circle: determining whether the bacterium was actually injected by someone. And according to a statement by Neruda’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes, recent analysis has focused on exactly that.

Reyes had recently predicted the results of an expert report by an international team of scientists: Based on this analysis, which should be published within the next few hours, the team determined that this bacterium should not have been found in Neruda’s bones: “Reyes told the newspaper El Pais. we know that it was injected before, without knowing whether the bacterium was exogenous or endogenous.

The publication of the official results of the analyzes has been officially delayed several times due to the serious fires that have recently swept the whole country and endangered the internet network through which experts communicate remotely. Indeed, the reason for the delay will be disagreement among panel members about the actual level of toxicity of the bacteria found in one of the poet’s molars, and the possibility of proving that the poet was killed for political reasons depends on it.