Poet Pablo Neruda receives the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 12, 1971 in Stockholm, Sweden. – / AFP
September 23, 1973. Chile fell into dictatorship just twelve days earlier after the army under General Augusto Pinochet staged a coup d’état. Salvador Allende, the socialist president democratically elected in 1970, committed suicide in the presidential palace which was bombed by the army. This other piece of information rings out on the radio: the poet Pablo Neruda is dead at the age of 69. The official reason? The prostate cancer he suffered from eventually won. But when his family heard the news, his family trembled: “My mother immediately said to me, ‘Your uncle was murdered! “, reminds Rodolfo Reyes, now 73 years old and nephew of the poet Ricardo Eliécer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, of his birth name.
Also Read (2015): Chile Still Trying to Answer the Question, “Was Pablo Neruda Murdered?”
Years of fear followed, marked by the impossibility of formulating this suspicion openly, until democracy returned in 1990. In 2011, investigations into the cause of the death of the Nobel Prize winner for literature were initiated. Twelve years later, this leads to the analysis by scientific experts revealed by lawyers for Pablo Neruda’s family on Monday February 13: Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium at the source of a deadly toxin, has been found in Pablo Neruda’s bone remains .
According to lawyers for family members – including Rodolfo Reyes – this leaves no doubt: Pablo Neruda was poisoned. The bacteria “were administered and circulated through his bloodstream. It’s a biological weapon,” says Rodolfo Reyes. Nevertheless, two members of the panel of experts are on the safe side. The bacterium Clostridium botulinum “was present at the time of his death, but we still don’t know why. All we know is that it shouldn’t be there,” Hendrik and Debi Poinar of Canada’s McMaster University told Agence France-Presse on Thursday, February 16.
Died after an injection in the stomach
As early as 2017, a group of experts ruled out death from “cancer cachexia”, i.e. a worsening of the cancer, as stated on the death certificate. However, these experts could neither confirm nor refute the poisoning theory. This is notably carried by the poet’s former driver, Manuel Araya. In an interview with the Associated Press in February, he assured that Pablo Neruda died after “an injection in the stomach” at the Santa Maria Clinic, where he was hospitalized in Santiago. According to Manuel Araya, a version obtained from a nurse.
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