Literary mystery: Was poet Pablo Neruda murdered?

Suspicions resurface 40 years after the Nobel Prize-winner's death

AP file

Pablo Neruda, shown here in the center shaking hands during a luncheon at the Mexican foreign ministry on July 8, 1943, officially died of natural causes brought on by the trauma of witnessing the 1973 military coup.

By EVA VERGARA

 1/15/2012 

ISLA NEGRA, Chile — The suspicions have lingered for decades.

Pablo Neruda, Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, would have been a powerful voice in exile against the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. But that all changed just 24 hours before Neruda was to flee the country in the chaos following the 1973 military coup.
He was 69 years old and suffering from prostate cancer when he died, exactly 12 days after the brutal coup that ended the life of his close friend, socialist President Salvador Allende.
The official version was that he died of natural causes brought on by the trauma of witnessing the coup and the lethal persecution of many of his friends. But doubts remained, even after Pinochet relinquished power in 1990 and Chile became one of Latin America's most stable democracies.
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