Neruda Case Awaits Response from Chilean Government

Highly revered in Madrid and Barcelona, Pablo Neruda is a prominent figure in the world of letters, but in his homeland, Chile, he still waiting for a more preponderant place in society.

There are many awards on his name, but there is no street named after him, or a memorial to remember his career, including a Nobel Prize for Literature. There are justified doubts about the true causes of his death.

On the 45th anniversary of his death on September 23, 1973, there were just few tributes in Chile to remember Neruda. However, he was highly honored in other countries.

A few days ago, the Sweden-based Pablo Neruda Committee sent a letter to Chilean President Sebastian Piñera to express 'deep concern' about the government's failure to pay the international laboratories that are investigating the writer's death. Prestigious experts from Canada, France, the United States, Spain, Denmark and Chile are investigating the cause of death of Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, his real name.

In the letter, the Committee noted that it had learned that the Chilean State had informed Special Judge Mario Carroza that it lacks the funds to pay for the services from the laboratories.

The debt, which amounts to some 38,000 dollars, prevents Canada's Mac Master Laboratories and Dr. Niels Morling, from Denmark, to continue the investigation, and the reports were already handed over to the panel that met here in 2017.

'We consider that this abnormal situation should be resolved soon by the State of Chile in order to continue the progress of the investigation, whose expecting advance we observe from Europe,' the letter said.

Even more due to the deep and close relationship between the cultural people of Sweden and the poet Pablo Neruda, the president and vice president of the committee, Torbjorn Bjorlund and Jeannette Escanilla, respectively, stressed in the letter to Piñera.