Roberto Merino studied at the National Institute and, after completing secondary education, he continued with Literature at the University of Chile, where he graduated with a thesis on the work of poet Juan Luis Martínez.

[1] He compiled the Antología del humor literario chileno (2002, Sudamericana), and edited the complete columns and chronicles of Joaquín Edwards Bello.

Since 2014 he has been part of the rock band Ya Se Fueron, in which he is the oldest member and his son Clemente the youngest.

[5] In 1981, Rodrigo Lira [es] came up with the idea of forming Chamico, and one of its members was Merino, who defined it as "a literary shock group, quite Patagonian and inorganic," "a parody of Surrealist Mandragora."

Merino explains that "the chamico is a toxic weed which makes the cows sick, and also it was likened to marijuana of bad quality."

Floating members of the group were Antonio de la Fuente, Perico Cordovez, Alejandro Perez, Juan Pedro Broussein, Lira, and Merino.

"[6] Ten years later his second book of poems, Melancolía artificial, came out, but between these, from the beginning of the 1990s, he was reborn as a chronicler, a genre he practiced for the first time at age 13, in 1974.

That year, for the South American Athletics, he joined the cyclists who followed the marathoners, and when he returned home, "he took a notebook and wrote what he had lived.