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Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973) was the penname and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and communist politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Having his works translated into dozens of languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. Neruda was accomplished in a wide variety of styles, ranging from erotically charged love poems (such as "White Hills"), surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. Some of Neruda's most beloved poems are his "Odes to Broken Things," collected in several volumes. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez has called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language". In 1971, Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. On July 15, 1945 at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people at a reading in honor of Communist revolutionary Luis Carlos Prestes. Upon returning to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited Neruda to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people. During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a basement of a home in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Neruda then escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to Socialist President Salvador Allende. Hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet , Neruda died of heart failure twelve days later. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death became charged with an intense symbolism that reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event, but thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew, flooding the streets in tribute. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; it later became his legal name.
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