Beginnings as a poet and writer In 1926 he wrote his first poems that were published in the magazine
Don Fausto, a local newspaper, under the pseudonym "Raúl Gris", in tribute to his younger brother. In 1929, he published his first poem under his real name titled
Poema a su ausencia appeared in some local newspapers. In 1934 his brother Javier died. On October 25, 1934, and after the dissolution of the Rancagua Journalists Circle due to several differences among their members after the end of
Socialist Republic in Chile, Oscar Castro, some of his friends and a group of important intellectuals including
Nicomedes Guzmán and
Agustín Zumaeta Basalto, created the literary group "
Los Inútiles ". At the same time, he began a relationship with Estela Sepúlveda with whom he would maintain for several years a long sentimental and epistolary relationship that would have remained until his death. In 1935 he joined the newspaper
La Tribuna as editor. At the end of the decade of 1930, he initiated a long-time relationship with actress and writer
Ernestina Zúñiga, well known by her pseudonym
Isolda Pradel. They would marry later. There are different versions about the circumstances of how they met for the first time and how this relationship was developed, related in some biographies and anthologies about the writer written by Pradel herself and other authors. According to Gonzalo Drago in an interview in 1979, it was he who had presented Pradel, who by 1935 was known as a
storyteller and
performer and participated in literary activities. Some versions indicate that due to his relationship with Pradel, he was disapproved by his mother, who would have expelled him from the home, facts that were never confirmed by Pradel In that public school he also worked as a journalist and teacher of Spanish language. That same year he created a public school for workers, the Escuela Nocturna de Rancagua along with other professors. In 1942, he was included along with
Nicanor Parra and
Victoriano Vicario in the anthology
Tres Poetas Chilenos edited by Tomás Lago. In 1945 his daughter Leticia Esmeralda suddenly died due to unknown causes. Months later, he was diagnosed with severe
tuberculosis, and was hospitalized for two months. In 1946 he accepted a position at the Liceo Juan Antonio Rios in Santiago, where he began his work on March 8, 1947, and traveled continuously to Rancagua. However, despite the support of his fellow writers, his health was severely impaired and he entered the Hospital del Salvador on September 12, dying in Santiago on November 1, 1947. Most of his works were not published before his death. At the time of his death, Castro has been constantly mocked and criticized by his critics – especially
Hernán Díaz Arrieta and most mainstream columnists of the time – due to his
political activism and his rare,
"provinciano" and "
cheesy" literature. Nevertheless, his unpublished works became known at a time of
hard censorship in Chile when in the 1950s, Editorial Zig-Zag and Editorial Nascimiento published all his unpublished works, and, especially, when
Ariel Arancibia composed the songs from the LP
Homenaje a Óscar Castro (1970), originally recorded by
Héctor Duvauchelle and
Los Cuatro de Chile, and later by
Humberto Duvauchelle (Hector Duvauchelle's brother). == Style ==