Pablo Neruda: Chile exhumes poet’s body in murder probe

The grave of Pablo Neruda in the garden of his home in Isla Negra, Chile Members of Chile’s Medical Legal Service have begun digging up the grave Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in Isla Negra

Forensic experts in Chile will shortly exhume the remains of the poet, Pablo Neruda, who died in 1973.

The Chilean authorities want to establish whether he died of cancer or was poisoned on the orders of Chile’s military ruler, Gen Augusto Pinochet.

Pablo Neruda, a Nobel Prize winner, was a member of the Communist Party and a staunch supporter of ousted Chilean president Salvador Allende.

He died aged 69 just 12 days after Gen Pinochet’s coup against Mr Allende.

The poet’s family maintains that he died of advanced prostate cancer.

In 2011, Chile started investigating allegations by his former driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, that Mr Neruda had been poisoned.

Mr Araya says Pablo Neruda called him from hospital, and told him he was feeling sick after having been given an injection in the stomach.

Pablo Neruda in a file photo from 1971 Pablo Neruda had planned to go into exile in Mexico

Mr Araya’s allegations are backed by the Chilean Communist Party, which says that Mr Neruda did not exhibit any of the symptoms associated with the advanced cancer he is reported to have died from.

Members of Chile’s Medical Legal Service began to dig up Mr Neruda’s grave on Sunday.

The poet is buried next to his wife Matile Urritia in the garden of their home on Chile’s Pacific coast in Isla Negra, some 120 km (75 miles) west of the capital, Santiago.

A nephew of Mr Neruda, Rodolfo Reyes, said the family wanted to know the truth “regardless of whether he died of natural causes or was murdered”.

Mr Neruda, best known for his love poems, was a close friend of the socialist president Salvador Allende.

After Mr Allende was toppled in the 11 September 1973 coup, the poet arranged to go into exile in Mexico, where he was expected to join the opposition to the military rule of Gen Augusto Pinochet.

Historian Fernando Marin is one of those who thinks Mr Neruda’s plans to go abroad, and his sudden death, were linked.

“No one doubts that there was a plane waiting for Pablo Neruda at Pudahuel airport when he died,” according to Mr Marin.

“He had a urinary infection and an adenoma (benign tumour) on his prostate according to the medical tests, but he wasn’t going to die,” Mr Marin told Reuters news agency.

More than 3,000 people were disappeared and killed under the 17 years of Gen Pinochet’s military rule (1973-1990).

R.Sawas