By Por Fausto Triana
SANTIAGO – The truth about the cause of death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda seems to be imminent, after international scientific tests were made, an idea that seduces the family of the Nobel Literature Prize winner.
In an exclusive interview with Prensa Latina, Rodolfo Reyes Muñoz, Neruda’s nephew, said that an International Scientific Panel is scheduled for October in Chile.
However, so far, the government has not confirmed whether it will create the conditions to finance the experts’ stay and a place to hold the meeting, so Reyes Muñoz, who is a lawyer, is concerned about it.
Reyes Muñoz and the attorney Elisabeth Flores are part of an investigation into Neruda’s death in 1973, shortly after the bloody coup d’état staged by Augusto Pinochet.
“We expect that conditions can be guaranteed for the meeting with the experts, because it will be an honorable way to complete a lengthy process to clarify my uncle’s cause of death,” Reyes Muñoz noted.
Due to strictly-confidential reasons, the two lawyers declined to elaborate about the findings by scientific teams from Canada and Denmark, which should present their conclusions independently.
“After what happened with the belt (belonging to a fat person and not to a cancer patient as it was said at the time) and other true assumptions, I have no doubts that Neruda was murdered,” they told Prensa Latina.
Particularly, Dr. Reyes Muñoz, visibly moved after a recent visit to Italy, where he witnessed people’s extraordinary devotion for the prominent poet, said that too many coincidences raise terrible suspicions.
Regarding the funding of the scientific panel, he explained that those in charge of the expensive investigations revealed that the Chilean Government had promised to pay 10,000 dollars to each team.
“They have already spent 45,000 dollars in Denmark and Canada and the only thing they expect is to receive what they were promised. Because they also feel great admiration for Neruda and they are determined to complete the investigation,” he noted.
In late 2016, Chile’s Ministry of the Interior, based on partial results by the experts, admitted that Neruda’s death could have been assisted by a third party.
Since then, the most talked-about theory is that Neruda was injected with golden staphylococcus, a very resistant bacterium, after he was admitted at the Santa Maria Clinic due to an alleged complication from the prostate cancer he was suffering.
Testimonies from his chauffeur and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, extreme coincidences and revelations that emerged during the process being carried out by the main lawyer of the case, Eduardo Contreras, lead to the idea that Neruda was in fact murdered.
