Portal 2. Personal Information

Gabriela Mistral

Her real name is Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, she born on  Chile, Vicuña, 7 de abril de 1889 and dead on Nueva York, 10 de enero de 1957.

She waseed poetisa, diplomática y pedagoga chilena.  A principal figure of the poesía and literature chilena and latinoamericana, she was the firts woman iberoamericana awarded with the Nobel of literature in 1945.

House-School of Montegrande

In 1904, she began working as an assistant professor at the Escuela de la Compañía Baja (in La Serena) and began to send collaborations to the serene newspaper in El Coquimbo. The next year she continues writing in La Voz de Elqui, of Vicuña.

Since 1908 she was a teacher in the town of La Cantera and then in Los Cerrillos, on the way to Ovalle. She did not study for a teacher because she not have money for it. He wanted to enter a normal school from which she was excluded for her beliefs religious. In 1910, she validated his knowledge in the Normal School № 1 of Santiago and obtained the official title of "State Teacher", which allowed him to exercise teaching at the secondary level. This fact cost him the rivalry of his colleagues, since she received this title for the approbation of her knowledge and experience, without having attended the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile. Later, her professional value was demonstrated when she was hired by the Government of Mexico for the foundations of its new education system, a model that currently remains in force in its essence, because only reforms have been made to update.

On December 12, 1914 she won the first prize in the literature contest of the "Floral Games" organized by the FECh in Santiago, for his Sonnets of death.

Since then he used the literary pseudonym "Gabriela Mistral" in almost all his writings, in homage to two of his favorite poets, the Italian Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Occitan Frédéric Mistral. In 1917, Julio Molina Núñez and Juan Agustín Araya published one of the most important poetic anthologies of Chile, Lyric Jungle, where Lucila Godoy already appears as one of the great Chilean poets. This publication is one of the last in which she uses his real name.

She held the position of inspector at the Liceo de Señoritas de La Serena. In addition, as a prominent educator, she visited Mexico, the United States and Europe studying the schools and educational methods of these countries. She was a visiting professor at the universities of Barnard, Middlebury and Puerto Rico.