“It’s clearly possible and highly probable..”

November 7, 2015 9:55 AM

Chile admits Pablo Neruda might have been murdered by Pinochet regime. [The Guardian]

The interior ministry released a statement on Thursday amid press reports that Neruda might not have died of cancer as previously believed. The statement acknowledged a ministry document dated March of this year, which was published by the newspaper El Pais in Spain. “It’s clearly possible and highly probable that a third party” was responsible for Neruda’s death, the document said.

Previously. Previously.

Related:

Pablo Neruda's importance was as much political as poetic. [The Guardian] [April 10, 2003]

Neruda and the other individuals behind the Chilean revolution of the early 1970s made mistakes and were at least partially responsible for the consequences. But the real story behind their defeat and deaths hasn't been told yet. This is one of the reasons why people are looking to unearth new truths, hoping to shed some light on the origins of our problems today. Through histories, testimonies, and documents declassified in the US or revealed as recently as last year by Wikileaks, we now know that the fate of Neruda and others like him had been decided long before they had any hand in mismanaging the economy or dividing political opinion. Persecution of the left had begun in Chile as early as 1948, at the behest of a US government awash with anti-communist paranoia.

posted by Fizz (22 comments total)

What "mistakes" did Neruda, Victor Jara and the countless other abused and/or murdered victims of the Pinochet regime make that cause them to be "responsible" for the "consequences"? I'll grant you that Allende should have armed his followers as they begged him to do - that was a mistake, if you like. What a breathtakingly fucked up thing for the Guardian to say.
posted by Frowner at 10:03 AM on November 7, 2015 [40 favorites]

I'm glad that history has sort of corrected itself and the truth has finally been exposed/admitted. Better late than never.
posted by Fizz at 10:04 AM on November 7, 2015

If anyone reads Spanish and wants to look at the quoted document, it's a PDF linked here, where it says "DESCARGABLE Documento del Gobierno de Chile sobre la muerte de Neruda"
posted by sukeban at 10:07 AM on November 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Better late than never.

Not so much for Neruda, but OK.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:10 AM on November 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

whoa
posted by supermedusa at 10:11 AM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not so much for Neruda, but OK.

Apologies if that was maybe too glib. I was speaking more to the truth coming out....can't do much about his death. But his poetry lives on...
posted by Fizz at 10:18 AM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

suppose an Allende-like person was elected president of the US, would the outcome would be different?

it's a good thing Bernie Sanders doesn't actually want to be president.
posted by ennui.bz at 10:52 AM on November 7, 2015

suppose an Allende-like person was elected president of the US, would the outcome would be different?


Um, yeah it would. There's cynical and there's conspiracy-fodder. We're a messed up country in a lot of ways but we don't do military coups against our own elected government. To assume that we would runs contrary to literally all of US history.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:11 AM on November 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

We're a messed up country in a lot of ways but we don't do military coups on our own government. To assume that we would runs contrary to literally all of US history.


Yeah? Check out the life of Smedley Butler:

Smedley Darlington Butler[1] (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
...
In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to other Fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot and the media ridiculed the allegations. A final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony. ...

posted by jamjam at 11:20 AM on November 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

There's cynical and there's conspiracy-fodder

And then there's Metafilter.
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:45 AM on November 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

suppose an Allende-like person was elected president of the US, would the outcome would be different?

I might be wrong but I think the last time an American poet got mainstream outrage coverage in the U.S. was when Ginsberg was at the Chicago 7 trial in 1969.

There might not be anybody you could go after. All the leftist poets I know are working day jobs and have no following. They are as much of a threat to the Be Powers as a shoplifter.
posted by bukvich at 11:48 AM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Bush family was involved in that domestic coup project too.

In foreign policy terms, a left-leaning democratically elected leader in a country like Iran made the Operation Ajax coup all but inevitable, even though the US didn't specifically have an interest in Iran. British Petroleum did, and we ran that shit for them via Kermit Roosevelt (after Truman couldn't be convinced, Eisenhower went along).
posted by aydeejones at 11:58 AM on November 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oops, the Guardian link more focuses on Prescott Bush aiding the Nazis, this is more along the lines of his involvement in the Business Plot. Wall Street vs. the Federal Government. The only reason things got this dire is because the government was so "hands-off" for so long that it was shocking to suddenly be dealing with a powerful entity that wants to protect the majority from the excesses and indulgences of the powerful minority running Wall Street and the oil and steel industries.
posted by aydeejones at 12:02 PM on November 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Folks, maybe let's bring this back around to Chile and Neruda?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:04 PM on November 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

Both Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, after visiting Mexico, became sympathetic to the plight of the Mapuche (the largest surviving indigenous people) in Chile. They feature in Mistral's Poema de Chile and Pablo Neruda's Canto General (I say this because I think Mefi is interested in this kind of thing, and also because I learnt of it only recently)

I guess it's in the article, but not mentioned anywhere above - this (the poisoning of Neruda) is not as unexpected as you might imagine. It's already generally accepted that the ex-president Eduardo Frei was poisoned (that link is to the spanish language Wikipedia page, because the english language one lacks details and implies things are more open than they are - the cause of death is clear, but the punishment of the individuals involved is not so clear, from what I understand).

As far as "mistakes" on the left go, I think it's fair to say that there's a significant centrist body of thought that feels that the far left should take some of the blame for the conditions that "provoked" the coup (Allende was more moderate than many of his followers). This is argued by Heraldo Muñoz in The Dictator's Shadow (Muñoz is currently Foreign Minister, and a respected, experienced socialist politician - his book is an excellent take on the compromises necessary to recover democracy, and it's an interesting and challenging read if you're both sympathetic to the the general movement, but also care about the pragmatics of actually changing the world). That doesn't mean that Pinochet was "right" in any sense, of course.
posted by andrewcooke at 1:00 PM on November 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

"Maybe the poet is drugged, but he won't stay under the rug."
Bruce Cockburn
posted by Oyéah at 1:30 PM on November 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

We're a messed up country in a lot of ways but we don't do military coups on our own government. To assume that we would runs contrary to literally all of US history.

Speaking as a Brit, from over here (and a long way away) it looks like there was a stone-cold serious attempt to overthrow the government that nearly succeeded. Even though it failed, coup participants succeeded in assassinating the president and their right-wing authoritarian followers are still numerous in the US military.

(Or is it "not a military coup" if it forms an army but only manages to seize half the frickin country and fights the legitimate government for more than four years?)
posted by cstross at 2:59 PM on November 7, 2015 [17 favorites]

Lots of weasel words in that admission.
posted by TedW at 6:38 PM on November 7, 2015

We're a messed up country in a lot of ways but we don't do military coups on our own government. To assume that we would runs contrary to literally all of US history.

I'm not sure I would even say this with the Civil War excluded. The threat of a pseudo-military coup is used all the time by American police in order to override the policies of democratic leadership.
posted by srboisvert at 5:24 AM on November 8, 2015

suppose an Allende-like person was elected president of the US, would the outcome would be different?

it's a good thing Bernie Sanders doesn't actually want to be president.
posted by ennui.bz at 1:52 PM on November 7 [+] [!]

Yes. There hasn't been a coup in the US for...ever? Also: no Cold War.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:25 AM on November 8, 2015

We're a messed up country in a lot of ways but we don't do military coups against our own elected government.

Well, other than that little argument in 1861.

And the rhetoric of a large part of the population is based *explicitly* on overthrowing the government by arms. This country was created by overthrowing the previous government by arms.

The idea that "we don't do coups" is frankly inane. We do them. We haven't done them recently because life was pretty good for a majority of people. Now? That's changing, and they're armed and angry.
posted by eriko at 7:41 AM on November 8, 2015

The idea that "we don't do coups" is frankly inane.

Over 150 year ago. Times have changed.

Also,coups are extremely rare in modern industrialized consolidated democracies. This includes the US. It did not include Chile in 1973.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:43 AM on November 8, 2015