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Pablo Neruda’s Body Exhumed

Elegy

Was the poet poisoned on Pinochet’s orders?

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Michel Lipchitz/AP

The body of Chilean poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda was exhumed on Monday in an investigation into whether he was poisoned after the 1973 military coup that installed Augusto Pinochet. Neruda died, officially, from prostate cancer 12 days after his friend Salvador Allende was overthrown as president. But Neruda’s driver at the time, Manuel Araya, has long believed that the poet was poisoned, and in February a judge ordered the body, buried in the poet's coastal home of Isla Negra, be exhumed. His remains will be brought to Santiago for analysis. Results are expected in coming months.

Read it at Reuters