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Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
Tue Apr 2, 2013, 04:31 PM Apr 2013

Pablo Neruda to be Exhumed on Monday

Pablo Neruda to be Exhumed on Monday
Written by Jane Kilpatrick on April 2, 2013.

On Sunday the process begin, and by Monday the body of Chile’s most renowned poet will be taken out of his grave, as new investigations into the true cause of death get underway.


ISLA NEGRA — A team of national and international experts are to start work this weekend on a new project to determine for certain the cause of death of Pablo Neruda, in September 1973.

His death, which occurred shortly after the military coup of Augusto Pinochet, was officially explained as heart failure after being admitted to hospital for cancer. However, theories that the prominent left-wing poet, who had worked on Salvador Allende’s presidential campaign, did not die of natural causes have circulated ever since.

Led by the Legal Medical Service (SML) nearly 40 years after the poet’s death, experts now hope to find out the truth once and for all.

The team will be comprised of 5 experts from SML, 4 experts from overseas and 4 from the University of Chile. They will make a collaborative report based on scientific tests.

More:
http://www.ilovechile.cl/2013/04/02/pablo-neruda-exhumed-monday/83733

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MADem

(135,425 posts)
1. This will be interesting--not all poisons are detectable, though.
Tue Apr 2, 2013, 04:33 PM
Apr 2013

If they got him with insulin, it wouldn't show up, I don't think.


We'll see...

Peace Patriot

(24,010 posts)
2. Michelle Batchelet's father died of a heart attack while being horribly tortured...
Tue Apr 2, 2013, 06:53 PM
Apr 2013

...by the U.S.-backed dictatorship in Chile. You're right that, considering the many ways to induce heart failure, it's a difficult task they've set for themselves, especially so many years later. Perhaps they have some clue already and know what they're looking for.

I doubt if it is a coincidence that one of the most powerful voices for democracy at the time--Pablo Neruda--suddenly died just after that horror, Pinochet, came to power. It was much too convenient for those shits and their U.S. mentors. Think if Neruda had lived! With his fame in the western world, he might have been able to expose that regime (and the U.S. government collusion with it). It might not have taken so long to overcome it. Many lives might have been saved. And also the template--the precedent--might not have multiplied so easily, and so horrifically, throughout the region. Perhaps horrors like Reagan's war on Nicaragua and on Guatemala (TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MAYAN VILLAGERS SLAUGHTERED by Reagan-backed fascists) might not have happened, or might not have happened so easily, or maybe the level of horror would have been reduced. The template is still with us--look at Honduras! Neruda alive might have changed this dreadful history for the better.

At the least, he would have been a powerful dissident voice and they could not control the international nature of his fame.

Ah, me! I can certainly see why people suspect foul play. I don't know any details, though, that may underpin the suspicions. But I think that there must be more than mere suspicions and rumors for such a consortium of experts to get involved and to exhume his body. That gives me hope that they will find out the truth.

MADem

(135,425 posts)
3. If I had to place a bet, I'd say "they got him." The trick is proving it, and it's only Miss
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 01:08 AM
Apr 2013

Marple or Sherlock Holmes who can smell the arsenic at thirty paces...

They may have wanted to get rid of him before he had a chance to take any last, terminally ill, courageous stances to motivate large swathes of people, and before he became the political equivalent of a saint (which he did anyway, but the scale could have been even more overwhelming had he had more time).

It's not all that odd to have suspicion. The guy was trouble for them, he was a rallying point for dissent, and he made life difficult for the regime.

 

ocpagu

(1,954 posts)
4. It is quite weird...
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 04:00 AM
Apr 2013

...how subtle and appropriate for the regime his death was. We all know also, of course, we should expect everything from Pinochet.

Really hope they find out the truth.

Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
5. Just remembered a strange death of a Chilean President we heard about for the 1st time
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 04:20 AM
Apr 2013

several years ago from a wonderful poster who graced us with his comments, who lived in Chile and Argentina during their fascist dictatorships.

The subject came up when Frei's son ran for the Chilean Presidency some time ago.

Here's an article briefly discussing it:


Tuesday, December 8th 2009 - 23:30 UTC
Six charged with the death in 1982 of former Chilean president

A Chilean judge has charged six people over the death in 1982 of the country's ex-President, Eduardo Frei Montalva. The judge said there was now evidence that Mr Frei, a vocal critic of military leader Augusto Pinochet, had been poisoned in hospital


The arrests come less than a week before Chile's presidential election, in which Mr Frei's son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, is a leading candidate.

The former president's family has long argued he was murdered.

Mr Frei Montalva died after undergoing routine surgery.

The six people charged in connection with the alleged killing include four doctors - two who were involved in the operation and two in the subsequent post mortem.

At the time, the authorities said the former leader had died of a bacterial infection.

“The death of the former president came about as a result of the gradual introduction into his system of unusual, toxic substances... which broke down his immune system,” Judge Alejandro Madrid said as he announced the charges.

More:
http://en.mercopress.com/2009/12/08/six-charged-with-the-death-in-1982-of-former-chilean-president

 

ocpagu

(1,954 posts)
7. I'm really glad you remembered it.
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 04:39 AM
Apr 2013

First time I get to read about this! And yet, sounds incredibly familiar and so typical of the military fascists in the continent. Also reminded me somewhat of death of Tancredo Neves, first Brazilian civil president after the dictatorship, who died from a subtle infection the day before his inauguration. His family still wants a new investigation.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/24/world/brazilians-debate-doctors-role-in-death-of-neves.html

There's so much obscured information about all this period everywhere in the Americas.

Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
8. There IS a familiar pattern easy to see in this earlier situation, the civilian President-elect,
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 05:34 AM
Apr 2013

and the timing is only far too strange, too wildly improbable to seem a mere coincidence. Who could blame his son, the rest of his family for feeling there was far more to this story than what they were told?

You probably haven't heard, no reason you should, but there has been a pattern in the U.S. of U.S. Democrats also running for office, approaching the election suddenly being killed through any numbers of ways which got them out of the way of the Republicans. US Democrats seem to be the ones who absorb all the damage.

Back to Tancredo Neves, it sounds far too familiar by now. I am glad to learn about him, will certainly remember him in the future. The circumstances surrounding his care were far too unprotected to be professional, considering the importance of the man, and where his life was going, the great responsibility he would be stepping into. The first civilian President in 21 years. Horrendous.

 

ocpagu

(1,954 posts)
9. Not only the timing is strange...
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 06:21 AM
Apr 2013

...but also the consequences of his death.

Tancredo Neves was the Minister of Justice of Getúlio Vargas, until Vargas' suicide in 1954. Later, he was appointed as Prime Minister by João Goulart, until Goulart was deposed. He then joined the Brazilian Democratic Movement that opposed the dictatorship.

With the death of Tancredo, José Sarney, the former president of the ARENA (party of the military dictatorship), assumed the government. It is known that Sarney helped cover evidences of the crimes committed by the junta.

The same magazine quoted by the NYT article, Istoé, has published a relatively more recent story about this, with intriguing details.

"The old suspicions of the Neves family were revived since 20 days ago, after the intriguing revelation made by general Newton Cruz, to the program "Roda Viva" of TV Cultura, that he was approached, in October 1984, while he was the military commander of the Planalto, by the then candidate of PDS party to indirect election to Presidency, deputy Paulo Maluf. According to Cruz, Maluf proposed a military coup against Tancredo, assuring that his adversary was terminally ill. "We thought quite weird this early diagnosis", Tancredo's grandson said.

(...)

The Neves family is also intrigued with cases like that of the waiter João Rosa, chosen to be the the butler of the elect president. He also had a strange death, one day after the passing of Tancredo. Rosa was 52 years old and he died, officially, in consequence of diverticulitis, the first diagnosis for the death of the president. The waiter, employee of the Planalto Palace, worked for a few days in the Granja do Riacho Fundo, temporary residency of the new president and where Tancred used to have his meals while he was choosing his cabinet. Thursday 13, this account gained new evidences. The butler's widow, Neusa Rosa, a retired public employee, said she believes her husband was poisoned. On the Easter Sunday of 1985, while Tancredo Neves fought against two powerful bacterias in the Instituto do Coração in São Paulo, João Rosa was being hospitalized in Brasília, with a violent intestinal hemorrhage. He stayed in the hospital for 16 days and, like Tancred, went through seven surgeries."


http://www.istoe.com.br/reportagens/34410_MORTE+SUSPEITA

Judi Lynn

(160,219 posts)
6. "Was Pablo Neruda murdered?" (Older article)
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 04:26 AM
Apr 2013
This article was posted at D.U. on May 21, 2012.

Was Pablo Neruda murdered?

Chilean courts have decided to reexamine the death of the poet, whom some suspect was killed by the Pinochet regime.

Lucia Newman Last Modified: 21 May 2012 16:20

Isla Negra, Chile - It is said that there is no such thing as a perfect crime, and while that may or may not be true, the decision of the Chilean courts to investigate allegations that Nobel Literature Laureate Pablo Neruda was killed by the Pinochet dictatorship may be the latest example in Chile of how time is not always enough to cover up a murder.

Neruda, a member of Chile's Communist Party who won the Nobel Prize in 1971, is among the most widely read Spanish-language poets. Millions of people the world over have been wooed by "Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair". When he died just two weeks after the September 11, 1973, coup that overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende, most people assumed it was from a broken heart that had accelerated the prostate cancer with which he had been diagnosed the previous year. Neruda was a close friend of Allende, and the military had raided his famous seaside home in Isla Negra, in those days about a two-hour drive from the capital Santiago. It was at Isla Negra that he completed his memoirs, which end with a bitter damnation of the coup and of General Augusto Pinochet.

At the time, Manuel Araya was in his twenties and had been assigned by the Communist Party as Neruda's private assistant and chauffeur. He told Al Jazeera that the day after the book was finished, he accompanied Neruda and his wife Matilda to the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago.

Mexico's then-ambassador to Chile later confirmed Araya's claim that Neruda was planning to go to Mexico to raise opposition to the military regime from abroad, and that the Mexican government had sent a plane to fetch him and other high-profile soon-to-be-exiles. The problem was that the military junta would not readily give Neruda a safe conduct pass to leave the country. He was the most well known Chilean after the slain president, and was sure to make trouble if he left the country.

More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/05/201252172550321452.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11082929
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