Chilean lawmakers vote down ‘Pablo Neruda Airport’; poet’s Communist past shadows debate

Chile nixes renaming int’l airport for poet Neruda

SANTIAGO, Chile — Congress rejected a proposal to rename the country’s main airport after Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, famous worldwide for his poetry and a hero of the Chilean left for his political leanings.

Center-left lawmakers had sought the change, arguing that Neruda’s internationally renowned name would boost tourism to the South American nation.

But members of President Sebastian Pinera’s ruling conservative coalition, which controls the lower house of congress, banded together to vote down the measure 44-38 late Thursday.

They said the Santiago airport’s current moniker honoring aviation pioneer and air force founder Arturo Merino Benitez is more appropriate.

Neruda was a senator and presidential candidate for Chile’s Communist Party and had close ties to socialist President Salvador Allende, who was toppled in a September 1973 coup.

When Neruda died of natural causes shortly afterward, his funeral was a catalyst for the first major protests against dictator Augusto Pinochet.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971 in recognition of works such as “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” and the epic “Canto General.”