1942 Born in Valparaiso on July the 7th 1942 in a family with three daughters, son of Luis Martinez Villablanca and Isabel Holger Dabadie

1954 His sister Maria Gloria Martinez, dies at the age of 12 producing in the poet a radical and painful change in his life as she was his ideal companion during their childhood.

1954-1965 He spends his adolescence rebelling against society. He has several motorcycle accidents, one of them which changes his life living him in bed for a month having developed a pleurisy, this leads him to spend his hours reading, driven by his intellectual mother he discovers a taste for literature especially after meeting Vicente Huidobro when he was 17 years old. .

1969 He begins a friendship with Raul Zurita. With whom he enjoys long conversations about poetry, Juan Luis generates a great influence on the beginnings of Zurita’s works. Zurita marries his youngest sister, Miriam Martinez, they have three children, Ivan, Sileba and Sebastian

1971 He marries Eliana Rodriguez who will accompany him for the rest of his short life

1972 His first daughter is born, naming her “Alita” in honour to a tale written by Paul Eluard

1973 He goes against the military regime, as this stops his visionary character and personality, but was detained only once for a few hours..

1977 His father Luis Martinez Villablanca dies of a heart attack. Also he publishes his first and greatest book “The New Novel” being refused years before by University Editions unaware it would become one of the fundamental books of Chilean contemporary poetry.

1978 The birth of his second daughter Maria Luisa who has an uncanny resemblance to the poet, the same year he publishes “Chilean Peotry” by Archive Editions. This work is a book-object, containing death certificates copies of the “four greatest of Chilean poetry”: Mistral, Huidobro, De Rocka and Neruda.

1982 he becomes seriously ill after having a dispute with the military for defending a woman in Vina del Mar. he keeps working on a new book. His health deteriorates until his early death at 49 years of age.

1986 His mother Isabel Holger dies

1990 He receives the Andes Foundation Grant

1992 He is invited by the French government in a programme called “Le Beaux Extrangeres” with another ten important Chilean writers such as Nicanor Parra, Gonzalo Rojas, Armando Uribe, Jose Donoso, amongst others

1993 He dies of a heart attack at 49 years old in the arms of his wife and two daughters