International experts will reveal on Wednesday that the bacteria found in the remains of Chilean Nobel Prize winner
Pablo Neruda
"was in his body at the time of death," which may show that
he was "poisoned" twelve days after the 1973 military coup
, his family to the
EFE
news agency exclusively.
"We now know that 'clostridium botulinum' should not have been in Neruda's skeleton. What does this mean? That
Neruda was assassinated,
there was intervention in 1973 by state agents," said
Rodolfo Reyes,
nephew of the poet.
The bacterium, responsible for
botulism
, was found in 2017 in a Neruda tooth by another panel of experts, who
dismissed the version of the dictatorship and rejected that the cause of death was advanced prostate
cancer that had afflicted him since 1969.
Clostridium botulinum is a bacillus usually found in soil, but experts from McMaster University (Canada) and the University of Copenhagen concluded in a report to be presented this week that "it did not leak into the
corpse of Neruda from inside or around his coffin"
, but that he already had it before he died.
The unknown remains
how and who introduced the botulinum toxin into the body
of the author of "Twenty love poems and a song of despair."
Rodolfo Reyes (i), lawyer and nephew of Pablo Neruda, together with Elizabeth Flores (r), lawyer in the Neruda case.
Photo EFE/ Ailen Diaz
"Neruda's fatal bullet was found, and he had it in his body. Who fired it? That will be seen soon, but there is no doubt that Neruda was killed. Intervention directly from third parties," Reyes emphasized
.
A large part of Neruda's family supports the version of Manuel Araya, his former driver and who maintains that
he was poisoned by an injection in the abdomen
by a secret agent of the regime who posed as a doctor at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago. .
"Neruda was not seriously ill, he just had cancer. He walked with difficulty, he was in pain, but he was not ready to die,"
Elizabeth Flores, the family's lawyer, who is acting as a plaintiff in the case that began in 2011 with the Communist Party,
told
EFE
. , in which Neruda was a member.
For his part, Reyes recalled that the writer, whose remains were exhumed in 2013 from his garden in Isla Negra, on the central Chilean coast, had planned to travel to Mexico a few days before he died, at the age of 69, and that in exile he would have become the "great opponent" of the dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
Pablo Neruda died in 1973 days after Augusto Pinochet's military coup.
AFP file photo.
The conclusions of this new expert report were to be known on February 3, but the hearing was canceled twice -first due to technical failures and then due to alleged disagreements between the experts- and rescheduled for this Wednesday.
"The lawyers are going to request other types of proceedings that may or may not be scientific," added Flores.
EFE
look too
The report that determines if Pablo Neruda was poisoned was postponed due to lack of internet
A forensic report would confirm that Neruda was poisoned by Pinochet