April 7, 2013
Did famed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda die of cancer or was he poisoned?
The remains of the Nobel Prize laureate will be exhumed Monday from his Isla Negra grave on the Chilean coast as authorities probe allegations that he was murdered in the wake of the 1973 military coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power.
The cause of death was listed at the time as advanced prostate cancer. But Neruda’s chauffeur and bodyguard, Manuel Araya Osorio, came forward two years ago with a report that the 69-year-old leftist had appeared well on the morning of his death and, after suddenly becoming feverish, told of being given an injection by a doctor the previous night.
Osorio's claims in a 2011 Mexican magazine interview prompted the Chilean Justice Ministry to reopen the case and order the exhumation. Forensic scientists have warned, however, that the results of the investigation may be inconclusive because of the state of the remains after nearly four decades.
Neruda was a communist and close ally of President Salvador Allende, who took his own life Sept. 11, 1973, as mutinous troops surrounded the presidential palace.