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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Mon May 21, 2012, 12:43 PM May 2012

Was Pablo Neruda murdered?

Was Pablo Neruda murdered?

Chilean courts have decided to reexamine the death of the poet, whom some suspect was killed by the Pinochet regime.

Lucia Newman Last Modified: 21 May 2012 16:20

Isla Negra, Chile - It is said that there is no such thing as a perfect crime, and while that may or may not be true, the decision of the Chilean courts to investigate allegations that Nobel Literature Laureate Pablo Neruda was killed by the Pinochet dictatorship may be the latest example in Chile of how time is not always enough to cover up a murder.

Neruda, a member of Chile's Communist Party who won the Nobel Prize in 1971, is among the most widely read Spanish-language poets. Millions of people the world over have been wooed by "Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair". When he died just two weeks after the September 11, 1973, coup that overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende, most people assumed it was from a broken heart that had accelerated the prostate cancer with which he had been diagnosed the previous year. Neruda was a close friend of Allende, and the military had raided his famous seaside home in Isla Negra, in those days about a two-hour drive from the capital Santiago. It was at Isla Negra that he completed his memoirs, which end with a bitter damnation of the coup and of General Augusto Pinochet.

At the time, Manuel Araya was in his twenties and had been assigned by the Communist Party as Neruda's private assistant and chauffeur. He told Al Jazeera that the day after the book was finished, he accompanied Neruda and his wife Matilda to the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago.

Mexico's then-ambassador to Chile later confirmed Araya's claim that Neruda was planning to go to Mexico to raise opposition to the military regime from abroad, and that the Mexican government had sent a plane to fetch him and other high-profile soon-to-be-exiles. The problem was that the military junta would not readily give Neruda a safe conduct pass to leave the country. He was the most well known Chilean after the slain president, and was sure to make trouble if he left the country.

More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/05/201252172550321452.html

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Was Pablo Neruda murdered? (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2012 OP
! patrice May 2012 #1
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