SANTIAGO DE CHILE — An international group of genetic experts presented the judge examining the case on Wednesday with a report drawing conclusions about what caused the death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, but the findings were withheld.
The forensic study was conducted to determine whether the Nobel Prize winner for literature died of cancer or if he was poisoned. A relative of Neruda announced Monday that the results confirm botulinum toxin poisoning, but the judge in charge of the trial, who received the report, said she would not share the details until she studied the documents and acted on them reminded that the case is in the investigation phase.
“It is impossible for me, nor is it my place, to expand on the conclusions, you know that this is an investigation that is in the summary stage,” Plaza said shortly before the press.
He added that he would have to analyze all the reports, expertise and explanations collected over the 12 years that the investigation has stretched before coming to a conclusion. The judge added that she expects a second report in March.
Rodolfo Reyes, Neruda’s nephew, told The Associated Press on Monday that he had access to the results of the tests and that they confirmed “high levels of Clostridium botulinum incompatible with human life.” He added that it was given to him “while he was alive.”
The report of the experts from Canada, Chile and Denmark was presented to Judge Paola Plaza by the group’s coordinator, Dr. Gloria Ramírez, presented in a private meeting at the courthouse.
For decades, two versions of his death have coexisted: the official one, which says he died of complications from metastatic prostate cancer, and that of the poet’s driver, Manuel Araya, who says he was poisoned at a private health clinic.
The Nobel laureate for literature died on September 23, 1973, just 12 days after the start of the bloody military dictatorship that toppled President Salvador Allende and hours after boarding a plane that would take him into exile in Mexico.
The same geneticists from Canada, Chile and Denmark said in a 2017 report that fragments of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum were found in the remains of the poet, who was exhumed in 2013, in his bone remains and in a molar tooth and expected them to be analyzed in laboratories from Canada and Denmark. The bacteria produce a botulinum toxin that causes difficulty breathing and can lead to death.
During the hearing there were moments of tension and chaos in the court.
Neruda, who died at the age of 69, was a lifelong member of the Communist Party. This movement filed a complaint to investigate the causes of death in 2011, 21 years after democracy returned to Chile.
Neruda’s driver reiterated to The Associated Press earlier this month that he had met with the communist leadership several times to speak to them about the poisoning and that they only accepted his version in 2011 when a Mexican newspaper published his statements, which one caused international uproar.
During his life Neruda collected dozens of awards, including the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, but in recent years criticism has come from feminist groups who have questioned the rape of a young woman in the 1930s, as he relates in his memoirs. They also criticize him for abandoning his only daughter, Malva Marina, who was born with hydrocephalus in the 1930s and died at the age of eight.