[A-List] Fwd: [R-G] [UCE] Was Pablo Neruda murdered?

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

This time is the twenty first century Time of the Medicis.  The Israeli
chemists and scientists are perfecting the poisonous tools to be
undetectable, as they are the cyber war-fare capabilities.   They made up
 Stuznet at Clinton's demand.  Revenge gives them indescribable pleasure.
 All that stuff about revenge tasting best eaten cold is just a bunch of
hogwash. Just ask Bibi.  Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, May 30, 2012 at 11:03 PM
Subject: [R-G] [UCE] Was Pablo Neruda murdered?
To: Suzanne de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>


http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/05/201252172550321452.html
*
Aljazeera
                          24 May 2012
*
  *
*  * Was Pablo Neruda murdered? *   *
*
*Chilean courts have decided to reexamine the death of the poet, who some
suspect was killed by the Pinochet regime.*
 *
Lucia Newman <http://www.aljazeera.com/profile/lucia-newman.html>** *


*Isla Negra, Chile -* It is said that there is no such thing as a perfect
crime, and while that may or may not be true, the decision of the Chilean
courts to investigate allegations that Nobel Literature Laureate Pablo
Neruda was killed by the Pinochet dictatorship may be the latest example in
Chile of how time is not always enough to cover up a murder.

Neruda, a member of Chile's Communist Party who won the Nobel Prize in
1971, is among the most widely read Spanish-language poets. Millions of
people the world over have been wooed by "Twenty Love Songs and a Song of
Despair". When he died just two weeks after the September 11, 1973, coup
that overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende, most people assumed it
was from a broken heart that had accelerated the prostate cancer with which
he had been diagnosed the previous year. Neruda was a close friend of
Allende, and the military had raided his famous seaside home in Isla Negra,
in those days about a two-hour drive from the capital Santiago. It was at
Isla Negra that he completed his memoirs, which end with a bitter damnation
of the coup and of General Augusto Pinochet.

 At the time, Manuel Araya was in his twenties and had been assigned by
the Communist Party as Neruda's private assistant and chauffeur. He told Al
Jazeera that the day after the book was finished, he accompanied Neruda and
his wife Matilda to the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago.

Mexico's then-ambassador to Chile later confirmed Araya's claim that Neruda
was planning to go to Mexico to raise opposition to the military regime
from abroad, and that the Mexican government had sent a plane to fetch him
and other high-profile soon-to-be-exiles. The problem was that the military
junta would not readily give Neruda a safe conduct pass to leave the
country. He was the most well known Chilean after the slain president, and
was sure to make trouble if he left the country.

That's why - according to Araya - a plan was devised to take Neruda to the
hospital, so it could be argued that his health warranted a humanitarian
safe conduct pass. The plan worked and the pass was issued. But Neruda was
never to leave the clinic alive.

Almost 40 years have passed since his death. Yet when Manuel Araya tells
the story, it is as though he were reliving it. He says he and Mrs Neruda
had returned to Isla Negra to fetch the poet's suitcase, when he received a
phone call from Neruda. "He sounded very upset and told me that something
had happened, that a doctor had come into his room while he was napping and
injected him in the stomach with something that immediately made him feel
ill. He suddenly felt hot, red and feverish, and asked us to rush back to
the clinic."

When Araya went, the secret police were waiting to arrest him. He was taken
to Santiago's National Stadium, where thousands of suspected supporters of
the overthrown government were being held and tortured. While there, he
heard the news that Neruda had died, just a few hours after the injection.

Araya said he was always convinced that Neruda had been murdered, but did
not dare to say anything until 1990, when Chile returned to democracy. At
that time no-one seemed to believe him. Mrs Neruda had died by then, and
while her memoirs indicate that "Pablo was not ready to die yet", there is
nothing conclusive.

But when other equally "unbelievable" stories of high-profile murders by
Chile's already-infamous military regime turned out to be true, lawyer
Eduardo Contreras began to take the story about Neruda more seriously.
After all, at first, few believed Carmen Frei, the daughter of former
President Eduardo Frei Sr, when she alleged that in 1982 her father had
been poisoned to death in the same clinic where Neruda died. The former
Christian Democrat president was very influential at home and abroad, and
although he had initially approved of the military coup, in the days
leading up to his death he had begun to openly call for organised
resistance to the dictatorship.

Two years ago, six people were arrested and charged with murdering the
former president, after his body was exhumed and traces of poison found.
The investigation also uncovered a secret network of chemical weapons
developed by the Pinochet regime which were both widely used to eliminate
"enemies" and sold to other dictatorships.

In the case of Neruda it may not be so easy to prove. According to Eduardo
Contreras, after nearly 40 years it may be very difficult to find traces of
chemicals that may have killed him, since his remains - buried facing the
ocean at Isla Negra - are presumably very deteriorated by humidity. But
Contreras told Al Jazeera that there were other indications of foul play,
including missing documents and inconsistencies in the autopsy report.

"Neruda's cancer was still at a very preliminary stage," he said. "The
hospital said he had died in a catatonic state, but he had in fact walked
out of his house a few days earlier and had received numerous social visits
while planning his trip to Mexico."

Contreras also says people who worked at the Santa Maria Clinic knew that
Neruda was murdered. When asked how he knew that, Contreras replied:
"Because they told me. But they are still too afraid to come forward. I
hope they can lose their fear while some of the culprits are still alive."

Manuel Araya has written a book about Neruda's last days, which is to be
published shortly. The special prosecutor in the case may soon issue an
exhumation order, despite fierce opposition from the Neruda Foundation,
which runs museums in the poet's three former homes, including at Isla
Negra.

Although one should be very wary of conspiracy theories, regardless of the
investigation's outcome, it seems as though the Pinochet regime had at
least the means and the motive to precipitate the death of one of the
world's most famous poets.

*Follow Lucia Newman on Twitter:
@lucianewman<https://twitter.com/#%21/lucianewman>
*
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