The exhumation of Chilean Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda began on Monday to determine if he died of cancer or was poisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship he strongly opposed.
The process started with the breaking of the tomb housing his remains at one of his homes in the resort of Isla Negra under the supervision of Judge Mario Carroza, lawyers and a dozen forensic experts.
The leftist author, who died 12 days after the 1973 military coup that ousted socialist president Salvador Allende and brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, was long believed to have died of prostate cancer.
But officials in 2011 started looking into the possibility he was poisoned by agents of the Pinochet regime, as claimed by Neruda’s driver.
Police investigators and government forensic experts were on the scene on Sunday and set up a tent to shield and protect the tomb where the remains of Neruda’s third wife, Matilde Urrutia, are also interred.
Neruda won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature and is best known for his love poems and his “Canto General” – an epic poem about South America’s history and its people.