The date is September 23, 1973. In Santiago, Chile, the man who some call “the greatest poet of the 20th century,” Pablo Neruda, is dead in the hospital. According to the logs and reports from doctors, he died after a long-fought battle with prostate cancer. On that hospital bed was a man who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 and had published some of the greatest works of poetry ever written in the Western Hemisphere. The collection “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” is still read in classrooms across America (I know because I have read them). However, he wasn’t just a poet. Specifically, Neruda was also a far-left sympathizer and often expressed support for leaders by the likes of Josef Stalin, Fidel Castro, and Fulgencio Batista. His outspoken support of the Communist Party was well known and was almost equal to his strength as a writer and poet. According to the government of Chile, the claim that prostate cancer killed the famous poet may, in fact, not be true at all. According to a recent statement by the government, the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet may have had a hand in his death.
This theory has been circulating for quite some time, leading the government of Chile to actually exhume the body and test for any chemicals, such as poisons and toxins. Neruda was just days away from leaving the country as a result of the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet into power. The deposed President, Salvador Allende, was a close friend of Neruda’s and had committed suicide rather than turn himself over to Pinochet’s forces. Neruda, in pain over the loss of this close friend (as well as many others) had decided to go into a selfimposed exile and leave the influence of the military regime. This is where things start to get questionable. According to Neruda’s chauffeur, the poet was hospitalized just days before he was scheduled to leave the country. He was suffering from prostate cancer, and this emergency hospital visit was related to a problem that resulted from the cancer. As the chauffeur tells it, on the way to the airport, Neruda became violently ill, and the poet said that it was a result of an injection that was given to him at the hospital. He died later that day. According to a doctor at Neruda’s bedside, he wasn’t the only one there. A doctor going by the name of “Price” was also there. He was a tall, blond-haired, and blue-eyed man.
This description fits a man known for working in the Pinochet regime: CIA agent Michael Townley, also known as a double agent that was taken into witness protection after he admitted to killing prominent Pinochet critics in both Buenos Aires and Washington, DC. In fact, this testimony is taken so seriously, and is believed so strongly, that a judge ordered a sketch made of him and is attempting to find Townley. While it isn’t hard to believe that a dictatorial military regime is responsible for the murder of a possible critic and constituent, it does bring up an important point: governments keep secrets. The fact that this one is coming to light a little more than forty years later is beside the point. I’m thinking about the NSA’s covert spying program that tracked American data. It’s all too easy for me to believe that we, as a public, aren’t told everything. I hope the truth about Neruda’s death is brought to light. He was an excellent poet. May he rest in peace