Judge orders formal investigation into Neruda’s death
New insight into case questions death record that state poet died of prostate cancer.
The circumstances surrounding the death of Chile’s legendary poet Pablo Neruda have caused rumors and speculations for years.
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| photo by Menno Hordijk |
The date, for example, September 23, 1973 — only 12 days after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup and the death of then President Salvador Allende — sparked legends that Neruda, a leader of the communist and close friend of Allende, died of a broken heart.
Up until recently, however, most Chileans — including the Neruda family — consented with death records stating that the writer died on September 23, 1973 at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago of advanced prostate cancer.
But in light of new information on the case, investigators have reconsidered this position. Most recently, after pressure from the Chilean Communist Party, Marío Carroza, the judge leading the investigation, reopened the case last month.
Suspicion over Neruda’s death arose this year after Manuel Araya, Neruda’s personal assistant and chauffeur, claimed during an interview with Mexican newspaper Proceso that the writer did not die of cancer but was assassinated.
Araya’s claims have been backed by testimony from Mexican ambassador Gonzalo Martínez Corbala, who was with Neruda when he died.
Upon admission to the clinic, Corbala claims, Neruda was in a stable condition and was finalizing plans to flee to Mexico in the wake of coup. Corbala has not personally expressed suspicion over Neruda’s death, but has confirmed that later that day a clinic doctor injected Neruda with a “calming substance” and he went into cardiac arrest and died soon after.
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