On the morning of September 29, 1920, a young poet died in Santiago's asylum, where he had recently been moved after nearly two months in police custody. Why and how did Jose Domingo Gómez Rojas end up in a prison, an asylum, and a cemetery? This work is an effort to answer that question. It is not a biography of José Domingo Gómez Rojas, although he figures prominently in its pages. It is, rather, a text about the context within which his arrest, imprisonment, and death unfolded and about the experiences of a number of the men he counted as friends and comrades.