Investigation into the death of Pablo Neruda reopened in Chile

Did the great poet, close to Allende, die of cancer or was he assassinated by Pinochet? The court of appeal reopens the case.

Did Pablo Neruda, the rebel, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the former Chilean ambassador to France really die of cancer, as the official version maintains? We are talking about prostate cancer which has suddenly worsened. Or was he murdered?

When he died, at the age of 69, on September 23, 1973, General Pinochet’s putsch was still very fresh. Twelve days he has been in power, 12 days since Neruda’s great friend, socialist president Salvador Allende, was overthrown and committed suicide.

“Come quickly, I received an injection, I feel bad”

At the time of his death, Pablo Neruda was to leave Chile and go to Mexico, to lead the opposition to the Pinochet regime. He was hospitalized in room 406 of a clinic in Santiago. These relatives assure that he was not dying. They demanded the reopening of an investigation, as did the Communist Party to which Neruda belonged.

Pablo Neruda’s wife and his driver also recounted this disturbing phone call they received from the agitated poet a little before his death. He told them: “Come quickly, I received an injection, I feel bad.” This is the theory of poisoning, an injection of germs or bacterial toxins. But until the return of democracy in 1990, the fear of dictatorship and repression largely muzzled protest voices.

A deadly toxin found in one of his molars

It was the testimony, in the press, of Pablo Neruda’s driver, which really launched the investigation in 2011. The poet’s body was exhumed in 2013 and 16 international specialists delivered their conclusions four years later. On the injection they do not decide. Even if, and this is not normal, according to them, a very toxic, potentially fatal bacteria is found on a Neruda molar. On cancer, on the other hand, they are categorical: Pablo Neruda was not terminally ill.

The investigation was closed without prosecution in December. The Santiago Court of Appeal therefore reverses this decision and requests, among other things, a calligraphic examination of the death certificate and new interrogations. Today, many witnesses have died. His doctors, his wife and his driver, who played such a central role, who died last June. A few months before, he still said: “Neruda was a danger to Pinochet and Pinochet did not want him to leave the country, for any reason.”