This article proposes that the literary works Mapocho by Nona Fernández and “Bajo el agua negra” by Mariana Enríquez use the representation of rivers as spaces of collective memory and spectrality, influenced by the environmental crisis and the notion of Anthropocene, to question and resist forgetting traumatic historical and political events. These works explore the relationship between the natural and the social, managing to trace through their narrative a link between the past and the present, highlighting the persistence of memory in the urban landscape of Chile and Argentina.