Judge Paola Plaza speaks to reporters after the press conference on the 'Neruda case', this Wednesday. Esteban Felix (AP)
Finally, after two suspensions, the report of the panel of international experts that met in the last week of January to analyze the origin of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium, found in 2017 in the remains of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, was delivered.
It was the Chilean doctor Gloria Ramírez, coordinator of the group of specialists, who took the documents to judge Paola Plaza, who must decide whether the death of the Nobel Prize for Literature, on September 23, 1973, was due to natural causes or poisoning.
The case has been open for 12 years and is still in summary secrecy, which is why neither the magistrate nor Ramírez referred to the result of the report.
Plaza appeared before the media but declined to give details, claiming that she had not yet read the document.
The only thing that is known so far is the version of the poet's nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, who as of February 13 has assured that the panel determined that Neruda, whose name was Neftalí Reyes, was injected with this bacterium "as a biological weapon ” when he was admitted to the Santa María de Santiago clinic.
Neruda's death occurred 12 days after the military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. For 40 years, the cause of his death was metastatic prostate cancer.
But in 2011 the Communist Party, in which the poet was a member, filed a complaint based on the testimony of Manuel Araya, the writer's former driver, who pointed out that he had been poisoned during his hospitalization at the clinic.
The meeting between Plaza and Ramírez was the only face-to-face one, since the specialists of the international panel presented the conclusions they reached electronically.
Although a preliminary report was scheduled to be delivered on February 15 and the final text in March, Judge Plaza reported that, finally, the document she received will be the only version.
This is the third panel that meets around the Neruda case, whose body was exhumed in 2013 by Mario Carroza, the judge who investigated the case for nine years.
The first group of experts concluded that his death was caused by cancer.
The second questioned the death certificate in 2017, ruled out that the death was a direct consequence of the disease and found Clostridium botulinum in a molar of the poet.
The last panel was in charge of analyzing the toxicity of the substance.
And, according to Rodolfo Reyes, his result “is what we were waiting for, because the 2017 panel had already found Clostridium botulinum.
But it was not known if it was endogenous or exogenous.
That is, if it was internal or external.
And now it was proven that it was endogenous and that it was injected or placed”.
judicial scenarios
It is expected that the decision regarding the Neruda case that the magistrate must take will take several months.
In the form, because she has not yet read the document and because it requires an official translation since, in addition to not being written in Spanish, a scientific language is used.
Basically, because the report, although it is a key part that is added to the case file, is not binding on the court ruling.
To resolve, Judge Plaza must have in view not only this latest report, but also all the background information attached to the investigation during the 12-year investigation.
Among them, the conclusions of the other two panels and the testimonies of dozens of people that Carroza questioned, between 2011 and 2020, to reconstruct Neruda's last days and try to determine how serious he was to die shortly after entering the hospital. clinic.
One of those statements, the first attached to the file in 2011, is that of Neruda's former driver, who in 1973 moved him from his home in Isla Negra, a coastal town located 100 kilometers from Santiago, to the Santa María clinic.
Araya is, so far, the only testimony that refers to poisoning.
In the following months, and once she ponders the facts, the magistrate has, mainly, two scenarios.
If she considers that there is not enough evidence to prove that the poet was poisoned, she could dismiss the Neruda case.
On the other hand, if she finds indications of a possible homicide, her investigation will change the course she has had until now, that she has concentrated on investigating the circumstances of the death, but not the murder.
Judge Plaza is committed to investigating more than 100 cases of human rights violations that occurred during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which lasted for 17 years, between 1973 and 1990.
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