Venezuela remembers Neruda as a “giant of letters” on his birthday

Caracas.- The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, remembered the Chilean poet and Nobel Prize in Literature 1971, Pablo Neruda, as a “giant of letters” and “militant of just causes”, today, July 12, when 121 years of his birth are celebrated. For his part, the Venezuelan chancellor, Yván Gil, considered that Neruda was “one of the most outstanding and beloved poets of Hispanic literature, whose work covers themes of love, nature, social justice and political commitment”. “Today, we celebrate his birth by paying tribute to his career as a senator, activist, communist, and a true master of letters and Nobel Prize in Literature, whose thought helped build a more just and humane world“, indicated the chancellor on his Telegram account. In his opinion, the Chilean’s poetry “delved into Latin American sensibility and was a fervent defender of the values of freedom and dignity, becoming a symbol of hopes and social struggles.”

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Neruda died on September 23, 1973, at the Santa Maria Clinic in Santiago, one day before going into exile in Mexico.

His death has been under investigation since 2011, when Neruda’s driver and secretary, Manuel Araya, who died in June 2023 at the age of 77, publicly stated in an interview that the poet was poisoned by an injection in the abdomen by a secret agent of the Pinochet regime who posed as a doctor. This testimony was the basis of the complaint filed by the Chilean Communist Party and supported by part of the writer’s family. In September 2023, the investigation closed and the judge in charge, Paola Plaza, refused to reopen it, but both Neruda’s family and the Communist Party – in which the poet was a member from a young age – appealed the decision. In February 2024, the First Chamber of the Santiago Court of Appeals resolved to reopen the investigation to clarify whether the Nobel Prize winner died of the advanced prostate cancer that afflicted him or if he was poisoned by a secret agent of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.