Investigation Into Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda's Death Finds No Evidence of Murder
Going against popular conspiracy theories regarding the 1973 death of the left-leaning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Spanish scientists say they have found no conclusive evidence the Nobel Prize winner was poisoned.
Back in January the Chilean government had gone ahead and reopened an investigation into the poet’s cause of death using new new tests on his remains in an attempt to search for protein traces, which would have been caused by poisoning.
As reported by the BBC, the investigators explained that they had found proteins, which could be linked to natural causes including advanced prostate cancer. Earlier tests performed back in 2013 similarly revealed no new information.
Investigators maintained that although the source of a third protein was not immediately clear, it was likely caused by an infection or the posthumous manipulation of Neruda’s remains.
This is not the end of the investigation, as a final round of DNA testing is expected to take place.
Pablo Neruda, who died at the age of 69, 12 days after Augusto Pinochet's military coup, is presumed to have succumbed to cancer.
Neruda’s driver, Manuel Araya, has made claims that agents of Gen. Augusto Pinochet injected poison in his stomach while he was in the hospital.
Neruda's family and worldwide fans are actually divided on whether or not researchers should continue the tests. Some feel his remains should be returned to his grave near his coastal home of Isla Negra.
One of Neruda’s nephews, Bernardo Reyes, does not believe that his famous uncle was murdered at all. As reported in the Guardian, he said, "All the speculation merely discredits its authors. It sprang from the mind of a man [Araya] guilty of thousands of contradictions, and he has been aided and abetted by journalists prone to sensationalism rather than any desire for objectivity."
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