The Nobel Prize winner for literature died in the Santa María Clinic, 12 days after the military coup against President Salvador Allende’s government of popular unity on September 11, 1973 and on the eve of a trip to Mexico, where he wanted to go into exile to build an international front against the regime.
Exclusively for Cuarta Pared, Manuel Araya, the writer’s personal assistant and driver, talks about the final moments of his life.
“I go to Isla Negra to look for his bags and when I return to the clinic on September 23, Neruda says to me: ‘Oh Manuel, they gave me an injection in my stomach, it hurts a lot and I burn. ‘
“I checked it and it had a little red spot, like a five peso coin. I wet a towel and put it on her stomach, immediately a tall, blond doctor sent me to the pharmacy to get medicine and when I came out, dictatorship agents arrested me and took me to the National Stadium, where I was tortured,” , he recalls.
To Araya, this was a conspiracy by the doctor who sent him to buy the cure.
The diplomat and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh) died that same night and, according to the death certificate issued during the dictatorship, died of cachexia (extreme weakness) caused by prostate cancer. suffered
“Neruda was never here to die, he enjoyed good food, he had many friends and visitors came to his house every day. If we took him to the hospital it was not because he was ill but for his safety because his homes had been searched and a warship had attacked his home on Isla Negra,” Araya explained.
He complained from the start, but “I never had any coverage, the doors were always closed because they said I was lying.”
During his hospital stay, the author of Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song, Residence on Earth, and General Song, among other books, finished his memoir I Confess I’ve Lived. “If I had been so ill, I would not have been able to write,” our interviewee claimed.
THE CASE GOES BEFORE THE COURTS
In 2011, the PCCh filed a complaint following statements by Araya published in Proceso magazine and by other figures such as the former Mexican ambassador to Chile, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá, who stated that the day before his She walked for the play and even exchanged political opinions.
Since then, three investigations have been conducted by international experts, and in 2017 the second panel discovered the presence of Clostridium botulinum, a highly deadly mycoorganism, in its remains.
“This bacterium, incompatible with human life, which goes by the name of Alaska E43 and is toxic, was injected into Neruda’s body and caused his death,” assured Rodolfo Reyes, his nephew and lawyer, Cuarta Pared.
When asked about the dictatorship’s motives for eliminating him, he said: “The cause of his assassination is plain to see. After the fall of Allende and Víctor Jara, the other national icon who was still alive was Pablo Neruda”.
He recalled that he was also a presidential candidate, senator, ambassador, consul, member of the Communist Party, then a well-known politician and an award-winning writer.
President Luis Echeverría offered Neruda a plane to Mexico, but it was not convenient for the dictatorship to leave Chile alive because it would unite many people against Pinochet, he said.
For his part, Araya confirms that the poet’s intention was to travel to Mexico and there to ask for help from governments, intellectuals, writers and all friends to defeat the military coup.
“Neruda was a very powerful man. During the civil war in Spain, he saved more than two thousand people aboard the Winnipeg ship. He knew many personalities in the world,” he said, adding that his assassination was carried out on Pinochet’s orders.
“Fifty years after his death and the coup d’état, we began to investigate the underlying reasons,” PCCH Secretary General Lautaro Carmona told Cuarta Pared.
This political force has historical records showing the use of Clostridium botulinum as a biological weapon, and suppositions to ensure it was used against the bard.
“We have a duty to the family first, but also to his party to go to the end, not only because we will always fight for truth and justice, but because he was a CCP fighter, a great writer, a Nobel laureate Winner of literature, the second that the country has after Gabriela Mistral”.
(From Cuarta Pared, Orb Cultural Supplement)