Was Pablo Neruda poisoned? Why there’s mystery around his death, what latest findings say
On September 23, 1973, poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda breathed his last at the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago, the capital of Chile. He had suffered from prostate cancer and the cause of death is said to have been heart failure.
Only not everyone believed that. The timing seemed wrong — Neruda, a left-wing politician and diplomat, had died less than two weeks after a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet toppled the socialist government of Neruda’s friend and ally, President Salvador Allende. Allende’s death was said to have been a suicide but was also contested at the time.
In addition, Neruda’s driver, Manuel Araya, had said that the poet had called him a few hours before he died, concerned that he had received an injection in his stomach while he was sleeping.
This spurred several investigations over the years, with Neruda’s exhumed remains being tested by experts in several countries. A report on the examination of his exhumed remains was presented on Wednesday.
seek meaning
On February 14, Neruda’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes told the Spanish news agency EFE that the forensic tests had shown that the poet had been poisoned. The Associated Press has reported that “Reyes said that forensic tests conducted in Danish and Canadian laboratories indicated the presence of large amounts of Cloristridia botulinum, which is incompatible with human life. The powerful toxin can cause nervous system paralysis and death.”
The New York Times received a summary of the expert report on February 16 and found that it confirmed the bacteria were in Neruda’s body when he died. What the experts couldn’t determine was whether the poet had the bacteria from eating contaminated food or if he had been injected with it. They also could not distinguish whether it was a toxic strain of bacteria. “The results again raise the question of whether Mr. Neruda was murdered,” he says NYT.
The poet of passion
To appreciate the continuing interest in Neruda’s death, it is necessary to understand who he was. Neruda was one of the greatest poets in Latin America, whose words like “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” and “If suddenly / you forget me / don’t look for me / for I will have forgotten you by now” expressed far beyond the region where his poems were read in the original Spanish.
He came from a modest family and had reportedly sold his belongings to publish his first book. dusk. In 1924, when Neruda was only 20, he published Twenty love poems and a song of despairhis collection that made him famous.
In his long career as a poet, Neruda was exposed to the chaos of the world and different styles of poetry. He was a person who dealt with dictators and fascists in his life and work and wrote about everything that moved him. His themes were his country, exile, love, politics, conflict, class struggle, the Spanish Civil War and common objects such as Ode to my socks. His greatest work is considered to be General singing (General Song), an epic history of America in verse.
representative of the state
Neruda spent many years as a diplomat and was posted to countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Spain and France. While in Spain, Neruda was drawn into the Spanish Civil War when he became a Republican supporter and was removed from his position. The Republicans surrendered to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco. So Neruda worked to rescue thousands of refugees fleeing Franco’s regime.
Neruda’s last post was as ambassador to France, from which he resigned in 1972 for health reasons. He continued to write about politics. Neruda’s last poem against Pinochet’s coup is said to have been written about a week before his death.
Confessed Rapist
In Neruda’s memoirs, Confieso Que He Vivido (I Confess That I Have Lived), published posthumously in 1974, he spoke of the rape of a Tamil woman who worked for him as a domestic help during his diplomatic post in Ceylon, Sri Lanka, in 1929.
The woman had ignored his advances and Neruda wrote that he firmly grabbed her wrist and led her to his bedroom. “The encounter was like that of a man and a statue. She kept her eyes wide open the whole time and didn’t react at all…. She was right to despise me,” he wrote.