Human Rights Activists, Citing Pablo Neruda’s Rape Of A Maid, Protest The Naming Of An Airport After The Poet

Neruda, in his memoir, described raping a maid when he was in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in 1929: “After the woman ignored his advances, Neruda says he took ‘a strong grip on her wrist’ and led her to his bedroom. ‘The encounter was like that of a man and a statue. She kept her eyes wide open all the while, completely unresponsive,’ he recalled. ‘She was right to despise me.'”