Chilean justice ordered, on Tuesday, February 20, the reopening of the investigation into the death of poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, who may have been poisoned under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in 1973. “The reopening of the investigation is ordered in order to carry out the procedures [requested by the complainants]”, which “could contribute to the clarification of the facts”, details the justice in its decision.
The reopening of the investigation was requested by relatives of the poet as well as by the Communist Party, of which Pablo Neruda was a member. It cancels the order closing the investigation taken in December 2023 by the judge in charge of the case, Paola Plaza.
Pablo Neruda died on September 23, 1973, twelve days after General Pinochet’s putsch against President Salvador Allende (Socialist Party), a great friend of the poet. International experts unanimously rejected the official version of the military regime in 2017, ensuring that he did not die from a sudden deterioration in his health due to cancer.
Neither confirm nor exclude the poisoning theory
But they could neither confirm nor exclude the possibility of voluntary and deliberate contamination by the injection of germs or bacterial toxins. According to this theory of poisoning, Pablo Neruda would have died from an injection given the day before his departure for Mexico, where he planned to go into exile to lead the opposition to the Pinochet regime (1973-1990).
Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship left some 3,200 dead, and more than 38,000 people tortured, according to official figures.