Araya was interviewed by this agency as a result of the delivery to the visiting minister of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Paola Plaza, reports of international experts who investigated the origin of the Clostridium Botulinum bacteria found in the remains and in a molar of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda enjoyed good food, he had many friends and every day there were visitors at his house, said his assistant, and declared that the poet was admitted to a medical center in Santiago for his safety .

The author of Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song died at the Santa María clinic 12 days after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup against the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende and the eve of a scheduled trip to Mexico.

“On September 23, when I arrived at the Clinic, Neruda told me: they gave me an injection in my stomach and I’m burning.”

“I checked it and he had a little red spot, like a five-peso coin. I wet a towel and put it on his stomach and they immediately sent me to look for medicine at a pharmacy and when I came out I was arrested”, recalls Araya.

The dictatorship attributed his death to prostate cancer he suffered from, but expert panels determined that his death was not due to that disease.

Relatives of the Chilean poet assured this agency that they had access to some of the expert reports and these revealed an amount of Clostridium Botulinum in his remains incompatible with life, which shows that he was killed with a biological weapon.

“Neruda was a very powerful man. During the civil war in Spain he saved more than two thousand people on board the ship Winnipeg,” he said.

According to the assistant, his intentions were to travel to Mexico and from there ask for help from governments, intellectuals, writers and all friends to defeat Pinochet.

“I am proud because we are already reaching the end. If I have to leave, I’ll go calmly because my truth has already come to light”, said the poet’s friend.

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