Santiago, Chile (EFE) ».
The magistrate in the case, Paola Plaza, explained to the media that one of the experts, Romilio Espejo, was unable to connect because he is in a city in southern Chile, currently afflicted by a serious fire.
Plaza assured that possibly “next week” the report can finally be presented.
Connection issues
Rodolfo Reyes, the writer’s nephew, previously told the media that some of the international experts who participated in the preparation of the report and were outside Chile also had connection problems.
“It’s embarrassing and it hurts a lot, but we have to keep waiting. There was a lot of expectation (…) Everyone wants to know the truth about the death of Pablo Neruda, “added Reyes at the Palacio de Tribunales, in Santiago.
The panel of experts, made up of scientists from Canada, Denmark and the United States, were going to elucidate the origin of the bacterium “clostridium botulinum” found in a molar of the poet in 2017.
Clostridium botulinum, responsible for botulism, is a bacillus that is generally found in the ground and the key is to determine if the sample found was altered in a laboratory and later inoculated, which would demonstrate the intervention of third parties.
“An amount incompatible with life was found,” said Reyes.
Previous reports on the death of Pablo Neruda
Another group of international forensics concluded in 2017 that Neruda did not die of cancer, as his death certificate stated, and reported the discovery of the bacteria in the molar of the poet, whose teeth were exhumed from his garden in Isla Negra, on the central coast. Chilean.
“If today we are facing a technical failure, it is because the State of Chile did not provide or provide for years the necessary resources for international experts to work in the country,” lamented the president of the Chilean Writers Society -of the that Neruda was part of-, David Hevia.
The investigation began in 2011 after the Communist Party (PC), where the writer and senator was a member, filed a complaint questioning the version of the dictatorship, which pointed to metastatic cancer and cachexia as the cause of death.
The party was based on the testimony of Manuel Araya, the poet’s former driver and who maintains that he was poisoned with chemicals by the regime when he went to the Santa María Clinic in Santiago due to a worsening state of health.