New Findings in Chile: Really Poisoned? How did Pablo Neruda die?

Poet, politician, revolutionary – Pablo Neruda died almost 50 years ago. His mysterious death is still a mystery to this day. New laboratory tests should now provide information.

Pablo Neruda spent his last days in Isla Negra, in his house on a wild beach, south of Santiago de Chile. From the bed he could see the sea, saw the sun rise and set, and the incessant breaking of the waves.

“He said Chile was the light at the bottom of a sleeping South America,” Volodia Teitelboim once recalled. The poet and communist, who died in 2008, was a close friend of the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate, who had actively supported Salvador Allende’s socialist government.

Neruda dies twelve days after Pinochet’s coup

While the rest of Latin America was ruled by dictatorship, oppression and cruelty, Chile was an exception in Allende’s time. But on September 11, 1973, the military staged a coup, General Augusto Pinochet took power, and Allende took his own life.

Neruda planned to go into exile in Mexico. But shortly before leaving the country, just twelve days after the putsch, the poet died at the age of 69. The official cause of death: a drastic loss of weight, the weakening of the body as a result of the poet’s cancer.

“My uncle was fine a short time before”

Did the putsch rob him of all illusions, did his disgust at the Pinochet regime accelerate the poet’s decline? “That made no sense,” says Rodolfo Reyes, a nephew of Neruda today. At first they had to accept the official autopsy, also due to the circumstances of the time, but doubts were there from the beginning:

“My uncle was fine, we had lunch with him a little while ago in Isla Negra. He was tired, yes, he had cancer, but he didn’t die from it,” Reyes told news agencies on Monday.

Neruda’s driver, Manuel Araya, claimed in 2011 that the world-famous poet was killed by lethal injection while driving to a hospital. In 2013, a judge ordered the body to be exhumed and examined.

Forensic scientists found evidence of poisoning

No traces of violence were found at the time. But the poet’s family persisted and asked an international forensic team to re-examine the bones.

The experts explained as early as 2015: The official description of the cause of death was not tenable, instead there were indications of possible poisoning with bacteria.

Tests in Danish and Canadian laboratories have now confirmed this, explained Reyes, who is also pursuing the case as a lawyer. A toxin has been identified that leads to paralysis of the nervous system and death. On Monday, Reyes expressed a suspicion that has been around for a long time: there were external influences. In plain language he says: It was murder.

Neruda was considered an icon of the Latin American left

“There’s a lot to be said for that, especially when you look at who Pablo Neruda was.” In 1971 he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda, who had also worked as a diplomat and was always politically involved, was one of the icons of the Latin American left, along with Salvador Allende and the singer Victor Jara, and thus a mortal enemy of the military. “A Pablo Neruda in exile would have had the opportunity to unite all forces against the dictatorship like no other.”

There is no official confirmation yet, the report is to be presented now. Recently, however, the presentation had been postponed several times.

criticism from feminist groups

The results are likely to reignite discussions about Pablo Neruda, almost 50 years after his death. The poet, who was also a fervent supporter of Stalin throughout his career, has become internationally known primarily for his love poems.

In recent years, however, feminist groups have denounced the fact that Neruda committed a rape in the 1930s, which he admitted in a book. There is also criticism of Neruda because he is said to have turned away from his only daughter Malva Marina, apparently because of an illness that she had since birth.