Neruda by Mark Eisner

Author:Mark Eisner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

He named them: “freedom of speech and expression; freedom of every person to worship God in his own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.” “That was the world that Roosevelt promised,” he said, but Truman, along with Latin American dictators and the González Videlas of the world, “want a different kind of world. There is no freedom of speech in Chile; people are not free from fear. [Those] who fight to free our country from misery are persecuted, mistreated, injured, and condemned.”

The address would later be published under the name “Yo acuso” (“I Accuse”), taken from Émile Zola’s 1898 open letter in defense of the French Jew Alfred Dreyfus, accused of selling secrets to Germany.

The threat of retaliation followed the Nerudas everywhere. Right after Neruda gave his speech, Delia went to the hairdresser Monsieur Paul; if they were sent to Pisagua, she wanted to be ready. Neruda had lost over eleven pounds and was having trouble sleeping.

On January 13, the Senate debated giving the president more emergency powers in certain parts of the country, which would be put under the control of the armed forces. The president would be given a free hand to suppress any form of “antipatriotic propaganda” and to restrict the right to meet and assemble. Neruda continued his outspoken criticism, and after debate on the emergency powers had ended, he began to read the names of political prisoners at Pisagua, giving homage to each one. He read more than 450 names until he was cut off by the close of the Senate session. He continued with the remaining fifty-six names the next day.

The Senate granted González Videla the extraordinary powers he had asked for in a vote at the end of that session, twenty-eight votes in favor, only eight against. Six days later, the country’s appellate court sent the case against Neruda to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a cable to its diplomatic corps in Brussels, telling them to “give every class of help to allow the legitimate wife of Señor Neruda to travel to Chile.” Charges of bigamy against Neruda were coming out in the press, accusing him of still being married to Maruca. The government wanted to bring her to Chile to prove that he had two wives.

On January 21, 1948, Alessandri, still president of the Senate, granted Neruda constitutional permission to leave the country for thirty days. But while Neruda had permission to be absent from the Senate, he did not have permission from the president, who controlled the borders. Neruda asked the Mexican ambassador Pedro de Alba to help him leave Chile. De Alba had the Mexican military attaché accompany Neruda and Delia to the Argentine border in a car with diplomatic plates. But Chilean border police turned them around, claiming the documents to cross the border didn’t correspond to the plates and make of their car. The Mexican attaché tried to negotiate, but the police refused. Neruda called the Mexican ambassador, who told him to return to the Mexican embassy in Santiago.

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