Pablo Neruda was born in 1904. He entered the world as Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile, and later became one of Latin America's best-known poets.
His mother, Rosa Basoalto, died shortly after his birth, and Neruda grew up mainly in Temuco. His father worked for the railway and initially disapproved of his son's literary ambitions. The young poet adopted the name Pablo Neruda in the early 1920s, partly to avoid his father's objections and partly to establish a literary identity.
Neruda's career extended beyond poetry: he served as a diplomat, represented Chile politically, and became an important Communist intellectual. His books include Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and Canto General. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971.
A common mix-up is confusing his birth name with his pen name, or associating him only with romantic poetry. Neruda also wrote political, historical, and nature poetry, and his life intersected with major events in twentieth-century Chilean history.