Pablo Neruda

Born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Chile, he was writing poems by thirteen and published Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair at twenty. He took diplomatic posts around the world and joined the Chilean Communist Party, serving as senator until President González Videla outlawed communism in 1948 and issued a warrant for his arrest. Friends hid him for months before he escaped through a mountain pass into Argentina in 1949, staying away more than three years. He became close advisor to socialist president Salvador Allende, served as ambassador to France, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971; when he returned to Chile, Allende had him read to 70,000 at the Estadio Nacional. In September 1973 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and after Pinochet's coup overthrew Allende's government and resulted in Allende's suicide, Neruda planned to flee to Mexico. On 23 September, the day before he was to leave, he died at the Santa María clinic - officially of cancer, but his driver later said Neruda called hours before death reporting a doctor had injected him with an unknown substance. Forensic tests in 2013 found no poison; a 2017 international pa