[3][4] De Rokha was born in the small town of Licantén in the Maule Region, Chile, the son of Ignacio Díaz Alvarado and Laura Loyola Muñoz.

[6] His family was middle class farmers from a rural area and de Rokha's father did various jobs to earn a living, such as a farm manager and a chief customs officer in the Andes border crossings.

The following year he joined the San Pelayo de Talca Seminary, from which he was expelled in 1911 for reading 'forbidden' authors like Rabelais and Voltaire and showing them to his classmates.

Around that time he made friends with other intellectuals like Pedro Sienna, Ángel Cruchaga Santa María and Vicente Huidobro, the latter of whom would become the father of the creationism movement.

There, he read the collection of poems "Lo que me dijo el silencio" (What the silence told me) by Juana Inés de la Cruz, the first pseudonym of Luisa Anabalón Sanderson.

The colonel Anabalón teaching manners to my heroism, like an elephant pulling his beard at the world, and, on top of that, the mother in law hairy and metaphoric as the gallows."

That year (1916) the poet published a collection of poems, "Versos de infancia" (Verses from childhood), in the anthology "Selva lírica" (Lyric Jungle).

In 1944, de Rokha was named Cultural Ambassador of Chile in the Americas by President Juan Antonio Ríos and began a long trip through the 19 countries of the continent.

In 1962, his son Carlos de Rokha (part of the literary generation of 1938 and one of the youngest members of La Mandragora group) died at the age of 42 from a drug overdose.

In Chile, important critics of the time such as Hernán Díaz Arrieta ("Alone") and Raul Silva Castro despised de Rokha's work.

In this period he ran the magazine "Numen",[10] published his work "El folletín del Diablo" (The Devil's Pamphlet) in the magazine "Claridad" (Clarity), self-published his books "Los gemidos"[11] (The Groans, 1922), "U" (1926), "Satanás, Suramérica" (Satan, South America, 1927), "Heroísmo sin alegría" (Heroism without joy, 1927), and "Escritura de Raimundo Contreras"[12] (Works of Reimundo Contreras, 1929).

The 1930 to 1950 period was marked by political activism, exemplified by "Canto de trinchera" (Trench song, 1929–1933), "Imprecación a la bestia fascista" (Curse the fascist beast, 1937), "Cinco cantos rojos" (Five red songs, 1938), "Morfología del espanto" (Morphology of terror, 1942), "Arenga sobre el arte" (Rant about art, 1949) and "Carta magna de América" (Magna Carta of America, 1948).

[14] The controversy continued with his book "Genio del pueblo" (Genius of the people, 1960), an imagined conversation between 111 characters from high and popular culture including Neruda, who appears under the name Casiano Basualto.