This Monday, Judge Paola Plaza closed the summary of the investigation into the circumstances of the death of the Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Pablo Neruda, and is preparing to hand down a sentence to determine the causes of his death on September 23, 1973. at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago: whether it was due to the metastatic prostate cancer he suffered or whether he was poisoned, as reported by his former driver, Manuel Araya, in 2011.
The resolution of the magistrate, who also investigates a hundred causes of human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), means that judicially she considers exhausted the investigation that was opened 13 years ago and that has also involved , to three scientific panels that have reached different conclusions about the cause of Neruda’s death. The last of them issued a report last February and it will be fundamental evidence for when the sentence is issued. However, there are still several pending steps, since after the closing of the summary, Plaza has granted 15 days so that the parties – the poet’s nephew, Rodolfo Reyes and the Communist Party – can request new proceedings.
“From a procedural point of view, the parties have a period of 15 calendar days to request the reopening of the investigation if they consider that there are pending and necessary proceedings to clarify the facts and that they have been rejected or omitted by the court,” indicates a statement issued late by the Judiciary.
Neruda died at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago 12 days after the coup d’état of September 11, 1973, of which Chile has just commemorated the 50th anniversary. The writer was a member of the Communist Party (PC) and a supporter of the government of the overthrown socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and it was his driver, Manuel Araya – who died on June 21 – who in 2011 stated in an interview with the Mexican magazine Proceso that the poet had been murdered.
Araya was the only witness who supported the version of the homicide. And it was based on that statement that the Communist Party filed a complaint in 2011. The case was investigated for nine years by Judge Mario Carroza, who left the process after taking office in the Supreme Court, and then it was left in the hands of Paola Plaza.
The driver was the one who took Neruda – whose name was Neftalí Reyes – along with his wife Matilde Urrutia, from their home in Isla Negra, a coastal town about 100 kilometers from Santiago, to the Santa María Clinic. According to his statements, there he was inoculated with a chemical substance through an injection.
After that testimony, in 2013 Carroza ordered the exhumation of Neruda’s body. That same year, a panel of Chilean scientists confirmed that the cause of death was cancer. In 2017, a second group of scientists was convened, from different countries, who carried out new examinations and found the presence of Clostridium botolinium in a molar of the poet.
It was this last expert opinion that opened new questions. For this reason, in February 2023 a third scientific panel, with specialists from Canada, Denmark and Chile, carried out the analysis again. Basically, I had to determine whether Clostridium botolinium was of endogenous or exogenous origin. Clearing up that question is key, as it will establish whether the bacteria was in the poet’s body at the time of his death in 1973 or if he entered it later. This information will be fundamental in the ruling that Judge Poala Plaza will issue soon, which she could dictate within 15 days if the parties do not request new proceedings or the reopening of the case.
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