Pablo Neruda
 Pablo Neruda    (poet) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto July 1904 |
| Died | 23 September 1973 (Age 69) |
| Nationality | Chilean |
| Victim of | poisoning |
Chilean national poet and Nobel Prize winner who was poisoned by the secret police, possibly with participation of the CIA, after the 1973 coup d'état. | |
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet-diplomat, and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature.[1]
Neruda is often considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential worldwide. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language",[2]
He was poisoned by the secret police, possibly with the participation of CIA, after the 1973 coup d'état.
Political Career
Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and sat a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaíso, and in 1949 he escaped through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina; he would not return to Chile for more than three years. He was a close advisor to Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende, and, when he got back to Chile after accepting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.[3]
Death
Neruda was hospitalized with cancer in September 1973, at the time of the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet that overthrew Allende's government, but returned home after a few days when he suspected a doctor of injecting him with an unknown substance for the purpose of murdering him on Pinochet's orders.[4]
Neruda died at his home in Isla Negra on 23 September 1973, just hours after leaving the hospital. Although it was long reported that he died of heart failure, the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement in 2015 acknowledging a Ministry document indicating the government's official position that "it was clearly possible and highly likely" that Neruda was killed as a result of "the intervention of third parties".[5] However, an international forensic test conducted in 2013 rejected allegations that he was poisoned. It was concluded that he had been suffering from prostate cancer.[6][7]
In 2023, after forensics testing, it was discovered that the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, some strains of which produce toxins, was present in his body.[8][9] The bacteria were likely injected by medical personnel while Neruda was in a hospital, as he had told his chauffeur Manuel Araya on a phone call shortly before his death.[10]
References
- ↑ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1971/neruda/biographical/
- ↑ https://books.google.com/books?id=oIpdAAAAMAAJ
- ↑ Wyman, Eva Goldschmidt; Zurita, Magdalena Fuentes (2002). The Poets and the General: Chile's Voices of Dissent under Augusto Pinochet 1973–1989 (1st ed.). Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones. p. 18. ISBN 978-956-282-491-0. In Spanish and English.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210615234312/https://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=269909
- ↑ http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/11/05/inenglish/1446738467_173724.html
- ↑ https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/13/world/americas/chile-pablo-neruda-investigation/index.html%7Caccess-date=10 September 2020
- ↑ https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/11/08/243949324/poet-pablo-neruda-was-not-poisoned-officials-in-chile-say
- ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/14/forensic-study-finds-chilean-poet-pablo-neruda-was-poisoned-says-nephew
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/world/americas/pablo-neruda-death.html
- ↑ Junge Welt newspaper, Volker Hermsdorf, Mord an Neruda bewiesen, February 17 2023, https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/445236.vor-50-jahren-mord-an-neruda-bewiesen.html
