SANTIAGO (AP) — An international group of genetic experts delivered a report Wednesday with findings on the causes of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s death to the investigating judge, but the results were withheld.
The forensic study was conducted to determine whether the Nobel Prize winner in literature died of cancer or was poisoned. A relative of Neruda said on Monday that the results confirmed botulinum toxin poisoning, but the judge in charge of the procedure and who received the report said she would not release details until she had not studied the documents and reminded that the case is pending. investigation phase.
“It is impossible for me to dwell on the conclusions, it is not for me to do it either, you know that it is an investigation which is at the summary stage,” Plaza briefly told the press.
He added that he must analyze all the reports, expert opinions and statements collected throughout the 12 years during which the investigation extends, before reaching a conclusion. The judge added that in March she expects to receive a second report.
Rodolfo Reyes, Neruda’s nephew, told The Associated Press on Monday that he had access to the test results and they confirmed a “large amount of Clostridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life.” He added that it was given to him “during his lifetime”.
The report of the experts from Canada, Chile and Denmark was delivered to Judge Paola Plaza by the coordinator of the group, Dr. Gloria Ramírez, during a private meeting at the courthouse.
For decades, two versions of his death have coexisted: the official one that says he died of complications from metastatic prostate cancer and that of the poet’s driver, Manuel Araya, who says he was poisoned in a private clinic. .
The Nobel Prize for Literature died on September 23, 1973, just 12 days after the start of the bloody military dictatorship that overthrew 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 indicated in a 2017 report that in the remains of the poet, exhumed in 2013, fragments of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum were found in his bone remains and in a molar, and anticipated that they would be analyzed. in laboratories in Canada and Denmark. The bacterium produces botulinum toxin which causes breathing difficulties and can lead to death.
Neruda, who died at the age of 69, was a member of the Communist Party all his life. This movement filed a complaint to investigate the causes of death in 2011, 21 years after the return of democracy to Chile.
Neruda’s driver reiterated earlier this month to The Associated Press that he had met with Communist leaders several times to tell them about the poisoning and that they only accepted his version in 2011, when a Mexican newspaper published his statements, which caused an international uproar.
During her life, Neruda racked up dozens of awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, but in recent years criticism has emerged from feminist groups who question the rape of a young woman in the 1930s, according to what he himself recounts in his memoirs. They also accuse him of having abandoned his only daughter, Malva Marina, who was born with hydrocephalus in the 1930s and died at the age of eight.