Manuel Araya, Pablo Neruda’s former driver, whose testimony was crucial to supporting the theory that the Nobel Literature Prize winner was murdered in 1973, died Tuesday at the age of 77 in the Chilean city of San Antonio.
The Communist Party of Chile expressed that “Manuel Araya was key with his testimony, his management, and his courage for the existence of the elements that gave rise to the lawsuit for the death of the poet that the Party presented together with his family.”
Considered a trusted friend of Neruda, Araya was one of the first voices to question the official version that the Chilean poet died on September 23, 1973, due to prostate cancer.
The theory put forward by Araya in 2011, backed by a nephew of Neruda and by the Communist Party, of which the poet was a member, holds that the author of “Canto General” was poisoned a few days after the coup d’état of September 11, 1973, by agents of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.
“Neruda was a danger to Pinochet. Remember the Spanish War and the refugees he took to Winnipeg? Pinochet was not interested in (Neruda) leaving the country for any reason,” Araya said last February to reaffirm the version of the assassination.
However, so far, the justice system has not validated that theory. A panel of experts has already delivered its conclusions to the judge in charge of the case of Neruda’s death, Paola Plaza, who must analyze them.
For the moment, there is no conclusive scientific evidence to support the assassination theory.
The bacterium Clostridium botulinum “was there (in Neruda’s body) at the time of his death, but we still don’t know why. We just know it shouldn’t be there,” said Hendrik and Debi Poinar of McMaster University (Canada) and members of the scientific panel at the time.