A chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeal unanimously decided this Tuesday to reopen the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who died on September 23, 1973 in the Santa María clinic, in the municipality of Providencia, 12 days after the coup by Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), who overthrew the socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973). The summary of the case, pending for almost 13 years to determine whether the death was due to natural causes, prostate cancer with metastasis or intoxication, was concluded on September 25, 2023 by Judge Paola Plaza, who considered all proceedings closed and decided not to press charges.
However, judges Martiza Villandangos, Elsa Barrientos and Jorge Gómez considered the investigation not yet exhausted and ordered the conduct of seven trials “that could contribute to clarifying the facts,” according to the ruling. These include a calligraphic examination of the poet's death certificate; the preparation of a meta-expertise or new opinion reviewing the conclusions of the panel of experts from McMaster and Copenhagen Universities that participated in the case; and the interrogation of doctor and retired army officer Arriagada Rehren, who was convicted in 2021 of the murder of radio host and communist sympathizer Archivaldo Morales – who was injected with a dipyridamole compound to induce a heart attack -”. In addition, it was ordered that the investigating police should prepare an age report on Arriagada to determine what he was like in 1973.
The Nobel laureate, whose real name was Neftalí Reyes, suffered from metastatic prostate cancer, which was his official cause of death for 38 years, but in 2011 he assured his former driver Manuel Araya, who died in June 2023, in an interview with the Mexican magazine Proceso, that he was killed in the clinic by a lethal injection. That year, the Communist Party (PC), in which the poet was active, filed a complaint that led to an investigation that lasted 13 years, by the same party, together with the lawyer Elisabeth Flores and her nephew Rodolfo Reyes of the author, who asked the court to reopen the case, which was granted following the allegations made on Monday.
The case involved three scientific panels that reached different conclusions: The first, made up of forensic experts from the Chilean Legal Medical Service (SML), confirmed in 2013 that Neruda's death was due to metastatic cancer. In 2017, after an expert test, international experts found a toxic substance, Clostridium botulinum, on one of the poet's molars, but it could not be clarified how it entered his body. Likewise, the specialists questioned the death certificate, which listed “cancerous cachexia” as the cause of death, suggesting that the writer must have been extremely malnourished, but an examination of his belt revealed that the mark he attached it to was one corresponds to a person weighing around 90 kilos.
In February 2023, a third panel of experts concluded that the strain of Clostridium botulinum found in Neruda's body “belonged to the Alaska E43 bacterium,” as PC lawyer Manuel Luna explained to EL PAÍS. and that it was found that “it was due to an endogenous cause, that is, it was in Neruda's body before he died.” However, he specified that they asked the court for a meta-expertise, which was accepted since this was the only one incident “does not allow us to confirm on a technical and scientific basis that he was murdered.”
Calligraphic expertise and new questioning
In the case of the poet's death certificate, in addition to the cause of death – cancer cachexia – the plaintiffs have also questioned the handwriting, which contains various handwritten letters. Although opinions had already been drawn up in this regard, before the High Court they insisted on carrying out new tests, in particular on the signature stamped in 1973 on the official document, that of Neruda's attending physician, Roberto Vargas Salazar.
The certificate says Zalazar instead of Salazar, which was questioned by the complainants. The court accepted the new report, even though the two judges, Mario Carroza and Paola Plaza, found during the examination that the doctor had signed his surname in both ways.
As for Arriagada Rehen, he is now being summoned again even though he had already testified in the case. According to lawyer Manuel Luna, his name was given by a nurse at the Santa María Clinic. As for him, the Court of Appeal ordered that he “be questioned about his intelligence work based on Clostridium botulinum and that the identical events for which he was convicted be explained in relation to the victim Archivaldo Morales Villanueva.” In addition The judges asked the human rights brigade of the investigative police to carry out an analysis of the entire file on the murder of the radio presenter “to determine whether there are similarities” between the events that gave rise to the case .Neruda.
The doctors who were at the Santa María clinic at the time of Neruda's death remain one of the great mysteries of the case. The person who expressed this suspicion was Sergio Draper, who died in 2022. He was the professional who said before Judge Carroza that he had given the appointment to another doctor whom he had not seen before and whom he identified as a certain “doctor's prize” or prize. He pointed out that he was tall, blonde and white-skinned.
Using this information from Draper, police created an oral portrait in 2013. In addition, a search was launched, but it did not produce any results, as no one with this first or last name was found either in the clinic, in the Medical School of Chile, or in the country's medical faculties.
After reopening the Neruda case, the appeals court also ordered further proceedings: the interrogation of Peter Kornbluh, director of the Chilean documentation project and an analyst specializing in Chile at the US National Security Archive based at George University Washington, analysis of years of declassified documents about the United States interference in the overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende and its support for the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
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