Last week, a Chilean judge ordered an investigation into the 1973 death of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda. He died 12 days after a right-wing military coup by Pinochet, and while his death was long considered to be due to illness, Chile’s Communist Party (of which he was a member) have asked for this investigation. A human rights lawyer noted that there were discrepancies between the local reports of his death and the official death certificate and that exiling the famed poet would have proved “very difficult for the dictatorship.” His former driver, Manuel Araya, believes that Neruda was poisoned to prevent him from moving to Mexico to continue to voice opposition to Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
This investigation comes one month after the opening of an investigation into the death of Salvador Allende, the deposed leader whose 1973 death was ruled a suicide. His body was exhumed as forensic teams try to determine if he was assassinated.
Read more at Newser and the Los Angeles Times.
Photo: Pablo Neruda talking to reporters after winning the Nobel Prize in 1971. Credit: Laurent Rebours/AP File Photo
