By Emiliano Gullo – @emilianogullo
(Editor's note: We have once again delved into the archives of our colleagues at NTD.la to recover a fantastic chronicle about the last days of the Chilean poet, originally published just under 7 years ago. We also accompany this article with a very interesting 2004 album, released by Sony Spain, featuring artists from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, which sets to music, with diverse local sounds, the texts of the man born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto and later known worldwide as Pablo Neruda.).
In bed in room 406 of the Santa María clinic rests a 69-year-old poet. He suffers from prostate cancer and is taking the prescribed medication. No one seems particularly concerned about his health. He even has a flight to Mexico arranged for the next day. Pablo Neruda is accompanied by his wife Matilde, his sister Laura, and Manuel Araya Osorio, his assistant. However, at approximately 10:30 p.m. on September 23, 1973, as the streets of Santiago were darkened by the newly established dictatorship, the poet died. Official death certificate: cancerous cachexia. Since then, the specter of his murder has haunted Chile. Now, a meeting of experts has just analyzed the results of the bone analysis done in Spain. There are signs of the disease, but also of a potentially deadly substance that was allegedly used by DINA, Pinochet's secret service. The ghost seems to take shape.
Following a presentation by the Chilean Communist Party, in 2011 the judge Mario Carroza -the same one that investigates the deaths of Salvador Allende and the father of Michelle Bachelet, among others- opened a case to determine why the Nobel Prize winner for Literature died. The suspicions resurfaced following an article that reproduced the recollections of Araya Osorio, the poet's former assistant, driver, and bodyguard. Araya Osorio recounted the last hours in the clinic in an interview with the Chilean newspaper El Clarín.
“Neruda was in excellent condition, taking all his medications. They were all pills, no injections. We made sure to collect everything he told us to. We were doing that when Neruda called us around four in the afternoon at the Santa Elena inn, where they gave the message to Matilde, who returned the call. Neruda told her: 'Come quickly, because while I was sleeping a doctor came in and gave me an injection.'‘.
The next day, September 24, 1973, The pro-Pinochet newspaper El Mercurio said that Neruda had been “given a sedative”. The lawyers for the Communist Party - which filed a lawsuit in 2011 alongside Neruda's family - believe that the poet was murdered with a lethal injection.
If he was in good health and had an imminent trip to Mexico arranged, why did he check himself into a clinic?
The Hunt for the Poet
On September 11, when Augusto Pinochet seized the La Moneda Palace, Pablo Neruda was at his home in Isla Negra. He had recently returned from France, where he had served as ambassador and where he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, his name and international prestige were the hardest shield to break for the military who wanted the head of this outspoken communist. They started at his homes. They raided his residence in Santiago and his one in Valparaíso. In Isla Negra, a group of marines and soldiers broke into his house, beat him, and robbed him. But the poet was still alive and free. Not for much longer, Araya Osorio thought.
“The strategy, coordinated with his family, was to take him to a clinic under the pretext of his illness. They thought that would be the safest place until they could take him to Mexico. The Mexican ambassador in Chile was already aware of the operation.”, told #NTD Marcelo Tapia Valenzuela, lawyer for the Chilean Communist Party.
A strange sanatorium
Neruda entered the private Santa María clinic on September 19, after overcoming grueling Army controls. Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, then Mexican ambassador in Santiago, visited him to confirm that he would be leaving on the 24th for Mexico City. According to those who saw him, including his wife Matilde, the poet was healthy during those days.
Another unclear point emerges from the death certificate itself. In the observations section, the document states: “"Causes cancerous cachexia. Prostate cancer metastasis"”. However, the filing of the lawsuit, which # accessedNTD It highlights the contradictions. “Cachexia is defined as a state of extreme malnutrition, muscle atrophy, fatigue, weakness, and anorexia. Pablo Neruda (at the time of his death) had good physical constitution, enjoyed a good appetite, and weighed around 100 kilos.”.
The last day
More concerned about his flight than his tumor, Neruda asked his wife and assistant to go to the house in Isla Negra to retrieve some objects for his residence in exile. He was left accompanied only by his sister, who had serious vision problems. That's when someone took the opportunity to administer the fatal injection into his stomach. The poet called them as soon as he felt the first discomfort, but it was too late. “When we arrived at the clinic, Neruda had a high fever and was flushed. He said that he had been injected in the stomach and that he didn't know what they had injected him with. Then we looked at his stomach and he had a red patch,”, Araya Osorio said.
Within hours, Araya Osorio was kidnapped and taken to the National Stadium in Santiago, which had been converted into a large clandestine detention center. He was later released and is currently a key part of the case being handled by the head of the Court of Appeals, Mario Carroza.
The cause
With these arguments, the plaintiffs obtained a court order for the exhumation of Pablo Neruda's body to be analyzed by experts. It was then sent to the laboratory at the University of Murcia, Spain. The study, revealed at the end of last May, He indicated that the poet's bones contained proteins related to the tumor process; nonspecific inflammatory proteins also compatible with the cancerous process but, in addition, the presence of bacterial proteins “"From which it is -explains the report- very difficult to establish or exclude the presence of an acute infectious process in the last hours of the poet's life.". They are called Staphylococcus aureus, and according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, they can be fatal. However, the report adds that certain measures are required. “timely doses of prudence to avoid hasty conclusions.”. The question, then, points to those bacteria. To establish the final link in the possible murder, further studies will be conducted on Neruda's bones.
Based on the results of the report, the second panel of specialists was activated a few days ago. The first one, developed in 2013, had excluded the presence of the lawsuit. The plaintiff Contreras participated in the meeting and assured #NTD that “the DINA chemist, Eugenio Berríos, publicly reiterated that an effective way to get rid of the ”undesirables’ was to inject them precisely with Staphylococcus aureus”
Although the final exams are still pending, the plaintiff stated: “"Today we can point out that there is much more evidence of third-party involvement than of natural death.". According to what # was able to find outNTD They will be held before March in Norway or the United States. That's because in that month, the experts will meet again to make a final decision.