On Tuesday, a Chilean appeals court in Santiago ordered the reopening of the probe into the death of the leftist poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda in 1973.
In 2017, a group of foreign forensic experts suggested that Neruda did not die due to cancer and did not rule out "third parties" being involved in his death during the early days of Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship.
Chile Reopens Probe Over Neruda's Death
In a statement, the court said that the investigation has not been exhausted as there are detailed procedures that can be carried out to clarify the facts.
Neruda was preparing to go into exile in Mexico to lead the resistance movement against the Pinochet dictatorship when he passed away in a hospital just 12 days after the coup. The government declared that Neruda had died of prostate cancer.
The cause of Neruda's death was investigated in 2011 when Manuel Araya, his driver and personal assistant, claimed the poet had received a mysterious injection in his chest just before he passed away. Araya passed away at the age of 77 in June last year.
Neruda's remains were reburied after three years after being dug up in 2013 to be tested for traces of poison.
A scientific panel investigating Neruda's death in 2023 found that he had dangerous botulism-causing bacteria in his system, but they were unable to determine whether he had been poisoned.
Hendrik and Debi Poinar, two panelists from McMaster University in Canada, told AFP they could not explain why Neruda's body had clostridium botulinum DNA.
Researchers could only reconstruct a third of the bacterium's genome. However, Poinar was optimistic that it could recreate the remainder without digging up Neruda's remains again.
After receiving their results, Judge Paola Plaza ordered the end of the investigation in December 2023.
Furthermore, Plaza's final report was never released because Neruda's family and the Communist Party quickly appealed that ruling.
Feminists Call Out Neruda
Neruda has always been polarizing in Chile, mainly for his left-wing politics. However, he is currently being called out as a male chauvinist and sexual predator by Chile's growing feminist movement.
"He's been canceled," Lieta Vivaldi, a human rights activist and member of Chile's Feminist Lawyers Association, said.
The latest issue of Neruda, who was the second Chilean to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1971, sprang up in 2018 with the rise of the #MeToo movement in Chile against sexual abuse. Activists called attention to some unsettling incidents from the poet's past and identified several of Neruda's poems as sexist.
Furthermore, Neruda left his only child, Malva Marina, and her mother. His daughter passed away at the age of 8 after being born with hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain that can cause enlargement in the head.
Related Article : Biden Urges To Impose New Sanctions on Russia for Alexei Navalny's Death
