In 1990, Zurita lectured as visiting professor at the Universidad de Chile and in the same year he was made his country's cultural attaché to Rome by Chile's democratic government under President Patricio Aylwin. At that time he lived with Amparo Mardones for 16 years. During the Expo '92 in Sevilla his works were chosen to represent Chilean poetry. In 1996, he bulldozed the verse, no pain no fear among five kilometres of the Atacama Desert, which can only be seen from the sky. In 2000 he received Chile's national prize for literature.