Pablo Neruda to be exhumed over claims poet poisoned by Pinochet Forty years after the death of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, his body is set to be exhumed [in April] to investigate rumours he was assassinated by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Officially, Neruda died of prostate cancer on September 23, 1973 just 12 days after the military coup that brought Pinochet to power. He had been a passionate and vocal supporter of the deposed Socialist government. Manuel Araya, the poet's chaffeur and personal secretary at the time of his death, has long insisted Neruda was killed with a lethal injection on the regime's orders. A natural sound AFPTV report.