[ The toxin clostridium botulinum was in his body when he died in
1973, days after Chile’s military coup. Nobel prize-winning Chilean
poet Pablo Neruda died after being poisoned with a powerful toxin.
Neruda was internationally known Communist poet.]
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FORENSIC STUDY FINDS CHILEAN POET PABLO NERUDA WAS POISONED  
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Sam Jones and John Bartlett
February 14, 2023
The Guardian
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_ The toxin clostridium botulinum was in his body when he died in
1973, days after Chile’s military coup. Nobel prize-winning Chilean
poet Pablo Neruda died after being poisoned with a powerful toxin.
Neruda was internationally known Communist poet. _

Pablo Neruda talks to reporters in Paris after being named the 1971
Nobel laureate for literature., Photograph: Laurent Rebours/AP // The
Guardian

 

One of the most enduring mysteries in modern Chilean history may
finally have been solved after forensic experts determined that the
Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
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poisoned with a powerful toxin, apparently confirming decades of
suspicions that he was murdered.

According to the official version, Neruda – who made his name as a
young poet with the collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of
Despair – died from prostate cancer and malnutrition on 23 September
1973, just 12 days after the military coup that overthrew the
democratically elected socialist government of his friend, President
Salvador Allende.

But some, including Neruda’s nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, have long
believed he was murdered
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of his opposition to the then incipient dictatorship of Augusto
Pinochet.

Ten years ago, a Chilean judge ordered the exhumation of the poet’s
remains
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his former chauffeur, Manuel Araya, revealed that an agitated Neruda
had called him from the Santiago hospital where he was being treated
to say that he had been injected in the stomach while asleep. The poet
died hours later.

Samples of Neruda’s remains were dispatched to forensic laboratories
in four countries for analysis, and in 2015 the Chilean government
said
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was “highly probable that a third party” was responsible for his
death. Two years later, a team of international scientists said
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were “100% convinced” the poet did not die from prostate cancer.

On Monday, Reyes said scientific tests had shown the toxin clostridium
botulinum was present in his uncle’s body when he died, suggesting
he was indeed “poisoned” in the aftermath of the coup. The results
of expert analysis are due to be published in a report on Wednesday.

“We now know that there was no reason for the clostridium botulinum
to have been there in his bones,” Reyes told the Spanish news agency
Efe. “What does that mean? It means Neruda was murdered through the
intervention of state agents in 1973.”

The bacteria, which produce the neurotoxin that causes botulism, were
discovered on one of Neruda’s exhumed teeth in 2017. Reyes said
analysis by experts at McMaster University in Canada and the
University of Copenhagen had established the bacteria did not find
their way into Neruda’s body from the coffin or the surrounding
area.

“We’ve found the bullet that killed Neruda, and it was in his
body,” Reyes told Efe. “Who fired it? We’ll find out soon, but
there’s no doubt Neruda was killed through the direct intervention
of a third party.”

Pinochet’s US-backed coup, during which Allende killed himself
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troops stormed the presidential palace, devastated Neruda and led him
to plan an exile in Mexico.

But a day before his planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to
the hospital in the Chilean capital where he had been treated for
cancer and other conditions. He died there on the evening of 23
September, purportedly from the wasting effects of the prostate cancer
that had first been detected four years earlier.

However, the official version of the events surrounding his death has
frequently been called into question. Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, who
was Mexico’s ambassador to Chile at the time of the coup, told the
Associated Press he had seen Neruda two days before his death, and
that the poet had weighed almost 100kg (15st 10lbs) – contradicting
claims that he was fatally malnourished because of his cancer.

Last month, Araya told AP that if Neruda “hadn’t been left alone
in the clinic, they wouldn’t have killed him”.

The chauffeur said he and Neruda’s wife, Matilde Urrutia, had been
at the couple’s mansion to pick up their suitcases for Mexico when
the poet rang, asking them to come back to the hospital quickly.
Neruda died later the same day.

Following Neruda’s death Urrutia maintained that he had been
increasingly agitated as he learned of the early atrocities of the
dictatorship and that it was the anguish of the coup d’état which
led to his demise.

The lengthy investigation hit a number of obstacles, from
non-cooperation on the part of the clinic where the alleged injection
was administered to difficulty in funding foreign lab tests.

In the years after Neruda’s death, much of the focus has been on
locating a mysterious “Dr Price” who had apparently been on duty
at the clinic that night. However, there was no mention of the doctor
in the records of Chile’s medical union, and it was eventually
deduced that he had been invented to stall investigations.

Though described by his friend Gabriel García Márquez as “the
greatest poet of the 20th century in any language”
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Neruda’s reputation has been damaged in recent years by details of
his personal life. Not only was the writer a self-confessed rapist, he
was also a man who abandoned his first wife and their daughter, Malva
Marina, who was born with a neurological disorder and died at the age
of nine.

In his posthumously published memoirs, Confieso Que He Vivido (I
Confess That I Have Lived), Neruda admitted raping a Tamil woman
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worked as his servant when he was posted to Ceylon as a young
diplomat. After describing the rape, he wrote: “She was right to
despise me.”

The rape confession, which resurfaced almost five years ago, led
human rights activists to oppose
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attempt to rename Santiago airport in honour of the poet.

Speaking at the time, the author and women’s rights campaigner
Isabel Allende told the Guardian that Neruda’s criminal and callous
behaviour did not devalue his work.

“I am disgusted by some aspects of Neruda’s life and
personality,” she said. “However, we cannot dismiss his writing.
Very few people – especially powerful or influential men – behave
admirably. Unfortunately, Neruda was a flawed person, as we all are in
one way or another.”

_The Associated Press contributed to this report_

_[SAM JONES is Madrid correspondent for the Guardian._

_JOHN BARTLETT covers Latin America for the Guardian, based in
Santiago, Chile.]_

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* Pablo Neruda
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* Chile
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* Augusto Pinochet
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* Chilean coup
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* CIA
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* Henry Kissinger
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* Latin America
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* US policy towards Latin America
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* Chilean Communist Party
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* Salvador Allende
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* Fascism
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* Richard Nixon
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