Writers of Chile
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga is born in the small town of Vicuña, Northern Chile in 1889. When she was 3 years old, her father walked away, strangely enough she never held grudges and it was one of his poems ( he was a school teacher) that compelled her to writing. She wan a regional award for her series “Death Sonnets”, written after the suicide of a platonic love. She moved to Santiago where she applies for the Pedagogy school, due to lack of resources, she is allowed to validate her knowledge and years as rural teacher to take the exam and finally gets her teaching degree. This will cause the rejection of her colleagues though out her carrier, regardless of her impeccable pedagogical record.
Gabriela Mistral
When her poetry became more renown she takes the writing name of Gabriela Mistral a composite of her favorite writers, Italian Gabrielle D´Annunzio and French Frèdèric Mistral. After moving from Punta Arenas to Temuco to direct a school, she meets a young Neftali Reyes, who will become Pablo Neruda.
During the 30s and 40s, she will work in the League of Nations and through out Latin America designing educational plans for different governments and will write besides poetry, harsh essays vindicating the cause of the original peoples and the rural communities. She was even received by the revolutionary leader Sandino due to this.
In 1945, she will became the first writer in Latin America in being awarded the Nobel for literature, interestingly enough she is awarded the Chilean National prize in 1951. The new 5000 peso bill bears her face, maybe the largest tribute she got from her own country. She died in New York in 1957.
Gabriela Mistral´s poetry ranges from dark and bitter to children songs. Here is a short but well known poem of hers:
TINY FEET
A child´s tiny feet
Blue, blue with cold
How can they see and not protect you?
Tiny wounded feet
Bruised all over by pebbles
Abused by snow and soil
Man, being blind ignores,
That where you step, you leave
A blossom of bright light
That where you have placed
Your bleeding little soles
A redolent tuberose grows
Since, however, you walk
Through the streets so straight
You are courageous, without fault
Child´s tiny feet
Two suffering little gems
How can the people pass, unseeing.
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