New investigations confirm the suspicion that the Nobel Prize winner may have been poisoned, but prove nothing.
To this day, the mysterious circumstances of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel Prize winner for literature, who died in 1973, have not been clarified. Officially he died of cancer, but there are doubts about the version. The theory has been floating around for years that Neruda was poisoned in the hospital. A new report by forensic scientists is now available, which according to the Chilean media has now been handed over to the judge in Santiago de Chile, who specializes in human rights crimes, Paola Plaza. Nothing has been officially released about the content yet, the New York Times but shows offto already have a one-page summary of the report.
In it, the scientists confirmed loudly New York Timesthat there were bacteria in Neruda’s body when he died. However, it is not possible to distinguish whether it is a toxic strain of bacteria, whether Neruda had been injected with it or whether he had eaten contaminated food. This should not be proof of intentional poisoning by third parties either. Neruda’s body was exhumed back in 2013 after the poet’s former chauffeur and friend, Manuel Araya, testified that Neruda told his wife in a phone call shortly before his death that a doctor had given him an injection while he was sleeping. As early as 2015, forensic investigations had revealed evidence of possible poisoning with bacteria.
Pablo Neruda was a communist, a friend of socialist President Salvador Allende, and had many political opponents. He died on September 23, 1973 at the age of 69 in a hospital in Santiago de Chile, just a few days after General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup that overthrew the left-wing government “Unidad Popular” and established a dictatorship.