Published in 1962, the novel is an autobiography of Alfredo Gómez Morel, who recounts his life as a delinquent, from Mapocho to the origin of the international thug. Brutal portrait of the bottom of the capital of the last century.

Usual space of marginality and de facto landfill. Also expressions of urban art and, in the recent past, a tragic witness of the first deaths of the dictatorship. In recent years, we have also deployed ornamental efforts – "Mapocho Pedaleable" – and large-scale utopias – "Mapocho Navegable". Mapocho is the geographical identity of the capital but, unlike the big cities, it is generally badociated with what Santiago does not want to see, which Santiago would like to hide.

This was well understood by the writer Alfredo Gómez Morel, who, almost 60 years ago, created the underground world that houses the capital's cbad. Its title does not admit double readings: The River . His main grace is that the author, far from submitting to a fictitious exercise or to be a bridge of third-party testimony, was one of its transcendental inhabitants. In the first half of the twentieth century, Gómez embarked on a fascinating criminal career that had its origins in Mapocho, in El río .

The biographical tragedy of Gómez Morel was ideal. Illegitimate son of Agustín Gómez and prostitute Ana Morel, Alfredo had already been abandoned at the age of three months in a building in San Felipe, from where he had been collected by the widow Catalina Oliva "widow of Osorio" who, after providing shelter and upkeep, he gives it to an orphanage of Carmelites. From there, the boy escapes and returns to the home of the protective widow but, at the age of eleven, his mother appears during his lifetime that takes him to Santiago.

Then, aboard a night train, he arrives at the central station. Already in Santiago, it is the first time that the small sees the Mapocho. He will lead a life marked by the abuses of his mother – and the constant parents who accompany him – and a long evolution of the educational institutions that chase him for his bad behavior and irrepressible kleptomania.

In his short life, Gómez Morel has already shown the first signs of a dysfunctional mentality. The proof is his constant travels on the Mapocho River to share with his down and try to enter his hermetic and violent world. Little by little, he succeeds. Begin to sharpen the crime arts. Internationalizes his business and travels through Central America as a mercenary, bully and trafficker. A detail of his life full of fables; Gómez Morel said in life that he was the bodyguard of General Juan Domingo Perón.

The text, by the autobiographical way – linked to the first and the third person – is related to what the Academy catalog "novel of formation", that is to say that the character tells about his transition to adulthood for the purpose of progress and adaptability. Although The river collects elements of this current, the book contains one of his innovations: the character is going nowhere. As in his own life, Gómez Morel never manages to adapt completely. Even, "choro" life is something that calls it from its entrails.

"My doubts, the lack of solidity of my designs, my love for the easy life, the laziness in which I have lived for more than thirty years, my desire to drink, the desperate erotic fever that eats me up , contempt that I have long felt all the values, my desire to flee the truth – or take advantage of it for hidden purposes – and the violent ruler that I carry in my soul since that. it was finally accepted by the criminal group, is my daily struggle … ", wrote in 1962, in a letter to the director of the Criminological Investigation Center of the University of Chile, Loreley Friedman, to try to explain the reason that had taken her to write.

"I have tried to show the story of a river; how does it fit in with the history of any river in the world? J & # I have tried to show a hint of my human condition: to what extent does this coincide with the behavior of all men? ", He added in the letter.

Legend, loneliness, indigence

The publication of this novel has aroused the interest of literary circles and specialized critics. The harshness of his language, which undeniably tells of an incestuous pbadage with his mother, abuse of power at the Catholic orphanage and in the underworld, the use of the slang of the criminal world – and the explicit geographical differentiation between "The River" – space of freedom and choreza – and "The city" – the world of norms, constraint and "giles" – have made this book an editorial novelty which, nevertheless, already added an underground current The work of writers such as Luis Rivano ( This is not paradise ), Armando Méndez Carrasco ( Chicago Chico ) and Luis Cornejo ( by Barrio Bravo ), among others

However, the biographical context makes Gómez Morel a legend. The fact that he wrote the novel while he was in prison in Valparaiso, with the help of a young psychiatrist named Claudio Naranjo, was published in 1974 by the prestigious editorial Gallimard – with a prologue by Pablo Neruda , who described the book as "clbadic of misery" – makes the writer an atypical figure in the literary world of the sixties. He published two other biographical works that were neither the scope nor the recognition of his work premium: The City and The World .

His last years, on the other hand, only reinforced his mythological aura. At the end of the seventies, he asked for a pension of thanks for the diet of Augusto Pinochet which was refused him.

In the 90s, The River experienced an awakening after the writer Alberto Fuget, inspiring this novel – and other "clbadics of misery" – to then plunge into the popular world with his novel Red Ink . The river in addition, had other reissues like the one that in 2012 made Tajamar Editores. There is even an "artisbad" version of the Isi Cartonera publishing house.

Alfredo Gómez Morel died in loneliness and destitution in 1984 in a guesthouse in La Pintana. His body remained nine days in the morgue without being claimed.

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