The dictatorship of Chilean general Augusto Pinochet would receive another record of his crimes, in case the thesis that the excellent poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned is reaffirmed, which would be the real cause of his death, which occurred 12 days after the military coup of 1973.
By Roberto Morejón
The dictatorship of Chilean general Augusto Pinochet would receive another record of his crimes, in case the thesis that the excellent poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned is reaffirmed, which would be the real cause of his death, which occurred 12 days after the military coup of 1973.
According to the family of the intellectual, whom the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez described as the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language, a panel of experts stated that his death was caused by the injection of a potent bacterium, clostridium botulinum, found in his remains.
Investigations into the event have been going on for a long time, but due to the year of the bard's death, 1973, his case is under the old Chilean justice system, which, unlike the one in force since 2005, must keep the investigation secret.
The 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature was an uncomfortable personality because in addition to his cultural projection he had a political one.
Communist militant, former presidential candidate, senator and ambassador, Neruda was an obstacle for the then nascent Chilean military dictatorship.
With the death of President Salvador Allende as a result of the military deployment of the coup plotters and after the massacre of singer Victor Jara, Neruda stood as a symbol capable of raising wills in a broken country.
Although some inside and outside Chile prefer to refer to Pinochet with indulgent phrases, the high-ranking officer headed one of the most atrocious dictatorships of all times.
Disappearing opponents was not immoral, since the last foreign minister of the overthrown Allende government, Orlando Letelier, was killed in Washington.
This happened at the behest of the protagonists of the Chilean uprising, as was shown by evidence published 40 years after the crime.
Pinochet was the main manager of the international collaboration plan between the dictatorships of Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, with the assistance of the United States.
The plan, known as Operation Condor, was aimed at eliminating leftist opponents in the region, who were presented as terrorists.
Chile is still trying to get rid of the Constitution implemented by the tyranny, in the midst of struggles by right-wing representatives to have Pinochet identified as a man of some harshness, responsible, they say, for economic splendor.
