Chile finally honoring Neruda

One of the biggest poets in the world (and one of my favorites), Pablo Neruda, finally gets honored by his home country. Famous for his love of the sea, Nobel-winning poet Neruda (poems) wrote in his landmark book "Canto General" that he wanted to rest for eternity next to his stone and wood cottages in this hamlet on the Pacific.
"Comrades, bury me in Isla Negra
before the sea that I knew, to
each rough space
of rocks and waves that my
lost eyes
will never see again."
Instead, Neruda was hastily interred in Chile's capital, Santiago, when he succumbed to cancer two weeks after his friend Salvador Allende was deposed as president in a bloody 1973 coup. Soldiers ransacked one of Neruda's homes, then surrounded the mourners at his funeral procession. The speeches at his graveside were the last act of public protest allowed by Chile's new dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.
Nearly two decades later, Chile's new, democratically elected president asked his "special events" director, Javier Egaña, to supervise Neruda's exhumation and reburial in Isla Negra. Thousands lined the roads and tossed flowers on the poet's flag-draped casket as it passed. Now Egaña is working around the clock on a new task: officially incorporating Neruda, whose communist beliefs didn't endear him to the conservative establishment that has dominated the country since Pinochet's coup, into the pantheon of Chile's national heroes. Neruda died September 23, 1973 at the age of 69. His three houses in Chile, La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaiso and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra are open today as museums.