She is dead and I'm once again reminded of the saying that while the good that people do dies with them the evil they've done lives on. (Or something like that.) Together with her ideological soul mate, Ronald Reagan, Thatcher was largely responsible for leading the global shift toward neoliberalism during the 1980s. True to her legacy, Thatcher is to receive a state funeral at public expense even as austerity measures in Britain have scaled back student aid and public assistance for the poor.
While official Britain prepares to bury Thatcher and right-wingers mourn the world over, in Chile a judge has ordered the exhumation and autopsy of diplomat, statesman, and poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda died in 1973 of what was believed to be complications from prostate cancer several weeks after the Chilean military overthrew the elected administration of socialist President Salvador Allende.
Opponents of the military regime in Chile, which was presided over by Augusto Pinochet, a man much admired by Margaret Thatcher, have charged that Neruda's death was caused or hastened by the military due to Neruda's left-wing politics and support for Allende. If this was the case, Neruda's demise would be simply one more murder among the thousands committed by the Chilean military in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup.
It's hard to say what will be accomplished by reexamining Neruda's death, save to quiet the historical record. That Neruda's life and career ended as Thatcher's career was on the rise is a bitter juxtaposition. Neruda was a man of humane letters, with all the connotations that that adjective carries, as well as a leader who sought peace and justice for those whom it was in short supply. Thatcher, on the other hand, represented the backlash from a lower middle class opposed to social change, petty, grasping, resentful people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The Iron Lady was in fact no lady, but rather a crass bounder who believed that the public good demanded enriching oneself at the expense of others.
The world will be a better place when it produces more Nerudas and fewer Thatchers. But while Neruda’s memory lives on in the hearts of progressives, it is Thatcher’s which will cast an ominous shadow over the world for a long time to come. For that we are all the poorer.
