After Rigorous Forensic Testing, Pablo Neruda's Body Returns Home

After two years of forensic tests conducted in three countries, Pablo Neruda's remains will return to Chile and be reburied at the side of his third wife, Mathilde Urritia. Although rumored to have been poisoned just prior to his death, while he was being treated for cancer in a hospital: the tests have so far come back without evidence of foul play. A Chilean judge has insisted that his remains return for reburial. From The Guardian:

For nearly two years, Neruda’s remains have been lying in forensic laboratories in three countries – and from early this year in a fourth – in an attempt to determine whether his death may have been accelerated by poisoning.

Neruda, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1971, was being treated for cancer. He had been intending to present eight new books to the world to mark his 70th birthday in 1974, but he died on 23 September 1973, 12 days after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup. All eight books were published posthumously.

In 2011, the poet’s former driver, Manuel Araya, told the Mexican magazine Proceso that Neruda, a longtime member of Chile’s Communist party, had been murdered by an injection to his stomach by political enemies as he lay in his hospital bed in the Chilean capital, Santiago. In 2013, a judge ordered the exhumation of Neruda’s body to investigate Araya’s claims.

His bones were examined by forensic scientists in Santiago, North Carolina in the US and Murcia, Spain. In November 2013, forensic experts announced that they had found no evidence of poisoning, although the investigation was not formally ended.

On 21 January 2015, the Chilean government announced that it was reopening the case. New tests were ordered which, instead of looking for traces of poison, have been examining whether inorganic or heavy metals could have indirectly caused the poet’s death. Further tests were also initiated at a laboratory in Switzerland.

Now Mario Carroza, the Chilean judge in charge of the case, has issued new instructions for Neruda’s body to be returned in April to his grave in front of his beloved coastal home at Isla Negra. One of Neruda’s nephews, Rodolfo Reyes, denounced the decision. [...]

Read on at The Guardian.