In October 2019, more than a million Chileans took to the streets in the country’s largest-ever protest. A few things united them: Some demanded better education, others demanded greater indigenous rights. They have no leader or symbol.
But as the dust settles, an image slowly emerges as a prominent symbol. A mural in downtown Santiago depicts an elderly woman in black boots, faded jeans and a t-shirt featuring the lyrics of a punk rock band. Her neck was wrapped in a green handkerchief, signed by Latin American abortion rights activists. In her left hand, she holds a blacked out national flag; To her right, an open book.
That woman was Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet, educator, and first Latin American diplomat. won the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1945. Long depicted in gaudy clothes and best known for his poems about children, Mistral is being seen by a new generation of feminist and LGBT activists as an icon. anti-establishment — and sparking a debate about how we appropriate literary characters from the past.
“My instincts told me that Gabriela was a good character to go with this whole career,” he said. Fab Ciraolo, The artist painted the mural. “For women, gay rights, poor people’s rights – she covers all of those issues.”
The past few years have seen a surge in interest in Mistral, who died on Long Island in 1957. In 2020 The Chilean Ministry of Culture has released an 8-volume digital anthology of her poetry, letters and essays, one of the most important anthologies of her work to date. Last year, a collection of letters from Mistral to Doris Dana, her longtime companion and public servant, was published. published to praise.
This spring, the Spanish version of “A Queer Mother for the Nation: The State and Gabriela Mistral,” by Licia Fiol-Matta, a professor of Latin American literature at New York University, is expected to be released. published by a Chilean publisher, two decades after it controversial published in English.
The country’s new president, Gabriel Boric, a 36-year-old millennial, has mentioned Mistral was one of his favorite poets, and regularly quote her. And though Mistral is everywhere in Chile – her name adorns the streets and her face appears on the 5,000-peso note (US$5.6) – her legacy goes back long. has become the subject of controversy.
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga was born in 1889, Mistral grew up in the remote Elqui Valley in northern Chile. Her father left the family when she was young and she was raised by her mother, a seamstress; her older sister, a teacher; and her grandmother. According to Elizabeth Horan, an associate professor of English at Arizona State University, although they live in a two-room tent and Mistral hasn’t finished elementary school, she has one big advantage: All the women in the Mistral household all literate. when less than a third population can read and write. Miss Horan’s Spanish biography of Mistral, which has been in the works for 25 years, will be published by Random House later this year.
Mistral works as an assistant to a rural teacher and sends poems and essays to local newspapers in his spare time. In an article published when she was 17, she boldly called on the state to educate women, arguing that “there is nothing about her that makes her rank lower than men.”
Although she has worked as a teacher throughout Chile, Mistral’s poor background and lack of formal qualifications have hindered her career advancement. In 1922, she accepted an invitation from the Mexican government to reform the public education system and never returned to Chile.
For the rest of her life, she worked as a consul and visiting professor in Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil, Italy and the United States, where she taught at Columbia University.
Despite its popularity abroad, Mistral’s works are often overlooked at home. Of the four volumes of poetry released during her lifetime, three were published outside of Chile. Her poems about children are included in the school curriculum, but her political essays, often with cosmopolitan and pacifist views, argue on behalf of disenfranchised indigenous peoples and women, have long since been eliminated.
When the military took power in 1973, Chile’s most famous poet was Pablo Neruda, a Nobel laureate and atheist communist. In contrast, Mistral seems to be a pleasant cultural icon. Alejandra Araya, director of an archive that hosts some of Mistral’s works, said the regime “manipulated her work to the point that her poems appear innocent and cute, when in reality they are. are powerful social critiques.
The leadership went so far as to put Mistral on the currency and promote her image as the nation’s exemplary teacher. Maria Elena Wood, a filmmaker who made the 2011 documentary about Mistral, said most Chileans know her as the “dark, ugly, boring old woman” who always scowls at them from the banknotes. paper.
After the dictatorship ended in 1990, some scholars began to question her portrayal of a holy unmarried aunt. But their statements about her personal life have been met with opposition.
“Mistral is a very protected symbol,” said Fiol-Matta, whose book was rejected by local publishers in part because it suggested the poet was a reclusive lesbian. “I was told that I was bringing something alien into Chile, that I wanted to see lesbianism everywhere.”
In 2007, the cracks began to widen. That year, the letters between Mistral and Dana were made public. In it, Mistral oscillates between a loving mother – she often calls Dana, 31 years her junior, “my little daughter” – and a jealous lover, berating her for meeting other men and women.
Mistral wrote in 1950: “I live with you like an obsessive man except when I read or write. The way I touch you, are there things that I can’t say or show? I love you with my whole being.”
Mistral categorically denies being a lesbian. However, some scholars argue that Mistral’s letters and unusual lifestyle suggest that she was at least odd. She lived for a long time with secretaries, who became confidants. And she adopted her grandson with another woman, Palma Guillén, a Mexican diplomat.
Now, decades after the dictatorship first usurped Mistral’s image, activists in Chile are celebrating her as a feminist and LGBT icon – even though Mistral has never been identified. determined to be one of two.
“There is a debate here: Can we say that Gabriela Mistral is a lesbian if she never says so? I would say she disagrees with the anomaly norm,” said June Garcia, an author who runs a research organization. feminist book club.
Ms. Garcia added that while Mistral doesn’t call herself a feminist, she is “a person who values the values of equality and justice – and these are the values that ultimately drive us today.” .”
Chile experienced a #MeToo moment in 2018, when thousands of women on the university campus call out sexual harassment and begin to reassess their curricula. One of the beneficiaries of the movement was Mistral – and one of its victims was Neruda, who became increasingly cancel.
Feminists claim that Neruda abandoned his disabled wife and daughter, and point to a passage in his memoirs, published in 1974, in which he describes raping a helper. working as a diplomat in present-day Sri Lanka.
“I decided to go to the end. I grabbed her wrist,” he wrote. “The encounter is of a man with a statue.”
The passage has recently caused outrage and in 2018, Congress reduction proposed renaming Santiago’s airport after Neruda.
Pro-feminist protests have gone hand in hand with the growing LGBT movement in the country. Government survey published in November found that the percentage of Chileans aged 15-29 who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender or non-binary has quadrupled over the past decade, to 12%.
Claudia Cabello Hutt, a self-identified lesbian Chilean and associate professor of Spanish, said: “We’re looking back at our pedigree of mean lesbians and weird characters. , looking back to find ourselves again and to see that we have been here all this time. at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Cabello Hutt said: “At a time when feminist movements are strong, at a time when we call for violence against women, this is not the time for Neruda. This is the time for Mistral.”
