The court orders a new investigation into the death of Chilean artist Pablo Neruda shortly after the 1973 coup

SANTIAGO, Chile Pablo Neruda, the poet who won the Nobel Prize, died days after the military takeover of Chile in 1973. An appeals court decided on Tuesday that more investigations were necessary to determine the cause of Neruda’s death.

A court denied Neruda’s nephew’s plea to reopen the case in December of last year in order to investigate reasons other than cancer, which was noted on his death certificate. According to Rodolfo Reyes, Neruda’s nephew, forensic specialists from Chile, Denmark, and Canada have discovered evidence suggesting that Neruda was poisoned.

According to Reyes, forensic examinations conducted in laboratories in Canada and Denmark revealed that Neruda’s corpse had “a great quantity of Cloristridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life.” The poison might result in death and paralysis of the neurological system.

One of the major discussions in Chile after the coup took a new direction with the judgment. The official line for many years has been that Neruda’s death was caused by complications from prostate cancer; nevertheless, his driver maintained for many years that Neruda had been poisoned.

A court decided in December that the forensic tests were either “late” or had already been completed and were ineffective.

Other worldwide forensics specialists had previously ruled out cachexia, or the weakening and wasting of the body as a result of a chronic disease (in this instance, cancer), as the official cause of death some years before. However, they said at the time that they were still unsure of what killed Neruda.

The judge’s decision was unanimously overturned by the Santiago appeals court on Tuesday, and the nephew’s required procedures were carried out. These actions include subpoenaing statements from Chile’s documentation project and a Clostridium botulinum specialist, as well as doing a calligraphic examination of the death certificate and a meta-analysis of the test findings conducted by international organizations.

Neruda won several honors, including the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, and was most recognized for his love poetry.

In addition, he was a close friend of Salvador Allende, the president of Chile, who lost his administration in the coup that installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Allende was a member of the Communist Party. Allende chose to commit suicide rather than give up.

The military coup, as well as the persecution and murder of Neruda’s companions, devastated him. His intention was to go into exile in Mexico, where he would have been a powerful opponent of the regime.

However, he was transported by ambulance to a Santiago facility a day before to his scheduled departure, where he passed away on September 23, 1973.

Long after Chile returned to democracy in 1990, suspicions persisted that the dictatorship had a role in his demise.

When Neruda’s remains was excavated in 2013 to find out how he died, testing on his bones revealed no toxins or harmful substances. His driver and family had insisted on more research.

The government of Chile declared in 2015 that there was “high probability that a third party” was to blame for Neruda’s demise. Authorities said in 2017 that they had found pieces of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium in teeth and skeletal remains.

Neruda was laid to rest again at his beloved house with a view of the Pacific.