So, with this background in mind, I did a quick search about Neruda's homes, since I knew we would be close to one, possibly two of them (one is in Santiago, one is in Valparaiso, and the other is a few hours away on the coast), and it would be a great place to go when there's some free time in our itinerary. However, some other headlines also caught my eye: forensic scientists have been studying his remains to see if they can detect any signs of foul play. His remains were already exhumed and studied in 2013 for this purpose, but apparently, that was a more limited investigation than what has happened over the last year or so.
Neruda died in a hospital in Santiago in 1973 shortly after the coup. He was a communist and supported the Marxist president, and while his friends were persecuted, tortured, and killed in the coup, Neruda was planning to leave Chile and bring international attention to Pinochet's dictatorship from elsewhere abroad. However, he was not a young man by this point, and also had cancer. Just before he was supposed to skip town, he had to go to the hospital due to his cancer complications, and died there, under what some consider to be very suspicious circumstances.
People are clearly still interested in what may have actually happened to him, hence the investigations. Some friends and family members, including Neruda's driver, believe he was actually poisoned by the new regime while at the hospital. A government document circulated in a newspaper earlier last year wrote that a painkiller he was given while at the hospital lead to a cardiac arrest and his subsequent death. Investigations are ongoing.