Neruda Case: The Government did not authorize funds for a study that seeks to clarify the death of the poet

It will not be until 2024 that the Government will be able to have resources to finance the studies that seek to clarify the death of Pablo Neruda, according to official documents from the Ministry of the Interior cited by Chilevisión.

The Government did not authorize the funds to finance a series of studies with the aim of clarifying the causes of the poet’s death Pablo Neruda.

This was reported by Chilevisión Newsciting official letters from the Ministry of the Interior according to which there would be no resources available for these studies until at least 2024.

According to the media, it would be the last panel of international experts investigating whether the Nobel Prize for Literature died from a homicide by poisoning, as those close to him suspect.

Neruda died at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago on September 23, 1973, 12 days after Augusto Pinochet’s coup.

According to the official version, the communist writer and politician died from the aggravation of the prostate cancer he was suffering from when everything was ready to facilitate his exile in Mexico.

No resources until 2024

According to sources consulted by CHV, all the studies would be ready, only remaining to submit the results for discussion, for which about 13 scientists must be summoned to the country.

To this end, three official letters were sent by the Judiciary to the government of Gabriel Boric since March 31, but it was not until mid-August that they received a response.

In this, it was found that the resources were not foreseen in the budget for 2022 or 2023just as they were not due to the previous administration, of Sebastián Piñera.

In this way, it would not be until 2024 that they could be contemplated.

Deterioration of evidence, the great enemy

Despite the doubts raised by his sudden death, it took four decades for the version of the murder to gain strength in 2011, with the publication of some statements by Neruda’s driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, who stated that the poet worsened after that they give him an injection in the abdomen.

The judge in the case, Mario Carroza, ordered a new exhumation of the writer’s body in April 2013, to determine whether the deadly hand of the Pinochet regime that caused more than 3,200 deaths also extinguished the writer’s life.

The challenge for scientists is to use the advances in science to find answers, but over time the task can become mission impossible.

“We must be very cautious and think that we are analyzing degraded samples with a significant age and that this will always limit the possible conclusions that are obtained,” Aurelio Luna Maldonado, an expert at the University, warned Agence France-Presse. of Murcia during the opening of the panel.

no certainties

The first tests in November 2013 concluded that due to the passing of the years, the presence of some poison could not be established, but the judge continued with the case and extended the tests that, after a new exhumation, found a “staphylococcus aureus” in the remains, a highly infectious and lethal bacterium.

This finding remains central to the investigation, but there is still no convincing evidence that this was the cause of the death of the author of “Canto general”.

Other versions of those close to the poet fed the version of the murder by stating that the Chilean opponent was well before the alleged injection he would have received at the hospital in Santiago, where he was transferred from his refuge in Isla Negra, off the Pacific coast. .

Another detail that adds shadows is that the Santa María Clinic carries another doubtful death, that of the former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, who would have been poisoned by agents of the dictatorship in 1982.

At the time of his death, Neruda -who held a seat in Congress-, was one of the leading figures of the Communist Party in Chile and it was expected that from his exile in Mexico he would be an important representative of the resistance to the dictatorship (1973-1990).