Araya had suffered a stroke on Monday due to an aneurysm.

His funeral will take place in the coastal city of San Antonio, in the Valparaiso region, where a mass will be held on Wednesday in the parish of the same name.

In an interview granted to Prensa Latina last February, Araya assured that the Nobel Literature Prize winner was murdered by orders of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

He recalled that the poet was a very powerful man and during the civil war in Spain he saved more than 2,000 people aboard the ship Winnipeg.

According to Neruda’s assistant and driver, his intentions were to travel to Mexico, where he would ask for help from governments, intellectuals, writers and all friends to defeat Pinochet.

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