To understand the text, one must first understand the author. Pedro Lemebel (1952–2015) was a master of the crónica (chronicle), a genre that blurs the lines between journalism, essay, and autobiography. Unlike the detached observer of traditional journalism, Lemebel wrote from the trenches. He was a "locas" (a term he reclaimed for queer, effeminate men) writing about other locas , trans women, sex workers, and the homeless population of Santiago.
Lemebel’s work is deeply political, but rarely didactic. The "Zanjón" text critiques the Chilean military dictatorship and the subsequent right-wing governments not by naming laws or politicians, but by describing the geography of inequality. The canal physically separates the wealthy neighborhoods from the slums. By focusing on the sewage, Lemebel indicts the cleanliness of the dictatorship’s image. He shows that the "order" of the regime was built upon the disorder and rot of the Zanjón
In the text, the canal is often paralleled with the bodies of the marginalized men and trans women who inhabit its banks. Just as the city dumps its waste into the Zanjón, society dumps its moral panic and rejection onto queer bodies. Lemebel writes about the physicality of these bodies—their sweat, their makeup running in the humidity, their vulnerability to violence—with a tenderness that is heartbreaking. zanjon de la aguada pedro lemebel pdf
: Lemebel was born in these settlements, and the book serves as a "cartography" of his childhood amidst extreme poverty, where water was often scarce and contaminated.
The title refers to the Zanjón de la Aguada , a natural watercourse in Santiago that historically became a site for precarious "callampa" settlements (shantytowns). To understand the text, one must first understand the author
If you cannot find a free PDF, consider purchasing Loco afán through a global bookseller like Buscalibre or Amazon’s international section. Supporting LOM Ediciones ensures that future generations of locas , scholars, and sewer divers can read Lemebel without having to dig through the malware-infested mud of the open internet.
The chronicle ends with a subtle comparison between the diver surfacing for air and the AIDS patient struggling to breathe. The polluted water is the dictatorship; the diver is the queer body refusing to drown. He was a "locas" (a term he reclaimed
Unlike mainstream journalism, Lemebel’s chronicles blend reportage, poetry, and fiction. To download "Zanjón de la Aguada" is to download a piece of political resistance—specifically against the Pinochet dictatorship’s legacy, which commodified Chilean society and erased dissident bodies.
In the sprawling, complex literary map of Latin America, few voices cut as deeply or as queerly as that of the Chilean writer and visual artist (1952–2015). Chronicling the cracks in the neoliberal facade of Santiago de Chile, Lemebel’s prose is a weapon of the marginalized. Among his most visceral, visceral texts is the chronicle "Zanjón de la Aguada" (The Ditch of the Water Spring).
Lemebel lo sabía. El Zanjón era su pasarela de los excluidos. Por ahí caminaban las locas sin peineta, los pobres con el corazón más perforado que las latas de conserva, los niños que nunca aprendieron a soñar porque el hambre es un perro que no suelta el hueso. El agua, si se le puede llamar así, no corre: se arrastra. Como la dignidad de los que lavan ropa ajena mientras la suya huele a humedad y a olvido.