Chile court orders, exhume remains of poet Neruda
9 February AFP
A Chilean judge has ordered the remains of poet and Nobel laureate
Pablo Neruda exhumed in a probe into whether he died of cancer as
commonly believed or was killed by agents serving Augusto Pinochet.
The exhumation was announced by the foundation that manages his
literary legacy.
The leftist poet, who died 12 days after the 1973 military coup that
ousted socialist president Salvador Allende and brought General Augusto
Pinochet to power, was long believed to have died of prostate cancer.
But officials in 2011 started looking into the possibility he was
poisoned by agents of the Pinochet regime, as claimed by Neruda's driver
and aide.
Neruda is best known for his love poems as well as his "Canto
General" -- an epic poem about South America's history and its people.
A senior member of Chile's Communist Party, his writings were banned
during Pinochet's military dictatorship, which ended in 1990.
An exhumation date will be decided in March. Neruda is buried next to
his wife Matilde Urrutia in Isla Negra, 120 kilometers (75 miles) west
of the capital Santiago. He won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. The
Pablo Neruda Foundation said it learned a few days ago from Judge Mario
Carroza of his decision to have the remains of the poet exhumed.
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