Imagine for a moment you're standing in a bustling
market in Santiago, Chile. The air smells like,
you know, roasted nuts and city dust. Right.
You reach into your pocket to pay for something,
a souvenir maybe, and you pull out a 5 ,000 peso
banknote. Okay. Now, most of us, when we handle
money, we don't really look at it. It's just
a tool. But if you stop and you actually stare
at the face on that bill, you see a woman. It's
a very specific image, isn't it? She looks incredibly
calm, maybe a bit stern, even. Totally. She has
this high collar. Her hair is pulled back, severe
and tight. It is the perfect image of the mother
of the nation. Exactly. The quintessential, you
know, saintly school teacher. That's the word.
When you look at her, you think, strict but loving?
You imagine her teaching the alphabet to a room
full of six -year -olds? Or maybe knitting a
sweater in a rocking chair by the fire, dispensing
some kind of gentle, non -threatening wisdom.
Yes, it just evokes this sense of order, of,
I don't know, submission to tradition. And that
is the official version. That is absolutely the
curated image that has been sold to the public
for decades. It suggests this woman was safe.
She was domestic. She was harmless. Harmless.
That's the key. But here's the thing. And this
is exactly why we're doing this deep dive today.
That image. It's a mask. It's a massive, almost
intentional fabrication or at least a criminal.
oversimplification of who this woman actually
was. Oh, completely. Because this gentle school
teacher, Gabriela Mistral, wasn't just some local
educator who wrote a few sweet rhymes. She was
an absolute powerhouse. Powerhouse is almost
an understatement. I mean, just to put this in
perspective right out of the gate so we all understand
the stakes here. Go for it. Cabriolet Mistral
was the first Latin American author to win the
Nobel Prize in literature. And I want to be really
clear for everyone listening. Right. We are not
just talking about the first woman. No, no. The
first person. Period. She won the Nobel in 1945.
Think about that timeline for a second. It's
way earlier than you'd think. It's years before
Pablo Neruda, before Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
before Mario Vargas Llosa, before all the giants
of the Latin American boom that people usually
associate with that region's literature. She
beat the guys to the bunch. And she did it by
a pretty significant margin. That is a massive
moment. I mean, she's the foundational figure,
the matriarch of this whole literary movement.
She is. But despite that, history and specifically
later political regimes in Chile sort of flattened
her out. They took this complex, jagged, brilliant
woman and just turned her into a saintly statue.
Which is so ironic because when you actually
dig into the source material, you know, the biographies,
the literary analysis, the private letters that
have surfaced. Oh, the letters. We'll get to
those. You find someone who was completely self
-taught, who was. fiercely radical in her politics,
and who lived a private life that was, well,
let's just say it was far more debated and controversial
than the history books admitted for a very long
time. So that is our mission today. We are going
to peel Gabriella Mistral right off that banknote.
We're going to look at the poverty -stricken
childhood that shaped her, the meteoric rise
she managed without a university degree, and
the tragedies, both romantic and familial, that
fueled her poetry. And we have a lot of ground
to cover. We're looking at biographical data,
deep dives into her works like Desolation and
Tala. And we really have to put this all against
the backdrop of Chilean history. Right. From
the rigid class systems of the late 19th century
all the way up to the Cold War. And the central
theme we're going to keep coming back to is this
tension, right? The public symbol of order versus
the private reality of a radical thinker. A woman
who wrote about mad women who championed indigenous
roots when it really wasn't cool to do so and
who processed this just earth shattering grief
in her work. So let's unpack this. Let's start
at the very beginning. Who was she before she
became Gabriela Mistra? OK, so she was born Lucila
Godoy Alcayaga in 1889. And if you are picturing
a privileged upbringing that leads to a Nobel
Prize, you know, a nice library, tutors, a comfortable
estate. Erase that image. Erase it immediately.
She was born in Vicuña, Chile, but she grew up
in a tiny village called Monte Grande. Paint
a picture of Monte Grande for us. Yeah. Because
geography often shapes destiny, right? For sure.
Monte Grande is in the Elky Valley. It's an Andean
village, so it's rural, it's rugged, and back
at the turn of the century, it was seriously
isolated. What's it like there? It's a place
of intense sun, sharp mountains, and very dry
earth. It's beautiful. in a harsh kind of way,
but it is a hard place to live if you don't have
resources. And her family situation, did she
have those resources? Absolutely not. Her family
situation was defined by instability. Her father,
Juan Geronimo Godoy Villanueva, was actually
a schoolteacher himself. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, but he was known to be a bit of a wanderer,
maybe a bit of a poet at heart, but he just wasn't
a reliable presence. I see where this is going.
The reality for Lucila was that he deserted the
family when she was only three years old. Three,
wow. That is a pivotal trauma right there. Abandonment
at age three. That has to leave a mark. A huge
one. He essentially vanished from her daily life.
He eventually died, alone and estranged, years
later in 1911. So for her childhood, his absence
meant what? It meant immediate grinding poverty.
Her mother, Petranila, was a seamstress. They
were constantly moving, just scraping by, trying
to make ends meet. Poverty wasn't just a circumstance
for her. It was the atmosphere she breathed.
And this poverty directly affected her education,
right? Which is so ironic given she's known to
the world as this great educator. It completely
derailed her formal schooling. Because they moved
so much and because they always needed money,
she couldn't attend school regularly. Her formal
education technically ended around the year 1900.
Wait, hold on. Let me do the math here. Born
in 1889. So her formal schooling ended when she
was 11 or 12 years old. That's correct. She barely
finished primary school. That is just mind -blowing.
Yeah. So the woman who would become the educator
of the Americas, who would lecture at universities
around the world, technically had an elementary
school education. Yep. How does she bridge that
gap? How is that even possible? Well, she had
a secret weapon, her older sister, Emilina Molina.
OK. Emilino was a teacher and she was really
Lucila's first instructor. She gave her the basics.
But beyond that, Lucila had this voracious, just
undeniable intellectual drive. She read everything
she could get her hands on. She was an autodidact.
A pure autodidact. By the age of 15, she wasn't
just studying. She was working. She became a
teacher's aide in a little seaside town called
Campania Baja to support her mother. So at 15,
she's basically the breadwinner working in a
classroom trying to keep food on the table. But
she wants to be a real teacher, right? She wants
the credential. She does. She wants to be legitimate
in the eyes of the state. And this is where we
hit the first major roadblock in her life. It's
a moment that really exposes the class dynamics
and the religious rigidity of Chile at the time.
What happens? In 1907, she applies to the Normal
School. The Normal School, that's the teacher
training college. Exactly. It's a gatekeeper
institution. You go there, you get your degree.
You're set for life as a professional. She applies,
and she is rejected. On what grounds? Was she
not smart enough? Did she fail an exam or something?
Oh, she was brilliant. That was not the issue.
The rejection was widely attributed to the school
chaplain, a man named Father Ignacio Munizaga.
He essentially vetoed her admission. A chaplain
is blocking an academic admission. What did he
have against a teenage girl? It wasn't her grades.
It was her voice. Even as a teenager, Lucila
had started publishing articles in local newspapers,
papers like El Coquimbo and La Voz de Elqui.
And she wasn't writing about, what, flowers and
sunsets? No, she was writing about educational
reform. She was advocating for better access
to schools for the poor, for different social
classes. She was questioning the status quo.
So she was an activist from the jump. She really
was. And the chaplain saw these writings. He
labeled them pagan or socially disruptive. Essentially,
she was walking the boat. He thought her ideas
were dangerous for a young woman to have and
certainly dangerous for a future teacher to hold.
That is fascinating. So in 1907, Chile, being
a teenage girl advocating for social equality
gets you blacklisted from higher education. Bring
them up. She was effectively canceled by the
church before her career even started? In a manner
of speaking, yes. She was pushing for change
in a very rigid, class -stratified society. The
gatekeepers just slammed the door in her face.
But here's the irony. And it speaks to her sheer
force of will, her resilience. She didn't stop.
She did not stop. Most people would have given
up. They would have said, OK, the system says
no. I guess I'll just be a seamstress like my
mom. Right. But she realized there was a loophole.
Chile is a long, geographically difficult country.
There was a massive shortage of teachers, especially
in the rural areas, the hard places. So if you
were willing to go where the fancy university
trained teachers wouldn't go. You could get a
job. Exactly. It's the classic I'll do the dirty
work strategy. So she entered the school of hard
knocks. She taught in La Serena, in Barrancas,
in Treguen, in Antofagasta. She moved all over
the map of Chile, often to these very difficult,
isolated environments. She's in the trenches.
She is. Learning how to teach by actually doing
it, often with very few resources. And she eventually
proved herself so undeniably competent, so brilliant
in the classroom, that the system just had to
accept her. She forced their hand. And how did
she do that? In 1918, she was appointed director
of the Sarah Braun Lyceum in Punta Arenas. Punta
Arenas. That's the end of the world. That's as
south as you can go before you hit Antarctica.
It is deeply isolated, but she ran it. And then
the ultimate vindication. In 1921, she beat out
university -trained candidates, people with the
pedigree she was denied, to become the director
of Liceo No. 6 in Santiago. The capital. The
capital. And not just any school. It was the
country's newest, most prestigious girls' school.
That is a massive flex. She goes from being rejected
by the training college to running the most prestigious
school in the system. I imagine that ruffled
some feathers. Ruffled is putting it mildly.
It created intense resentment. The political
establishment, the academic elites, the teachers
unions. They saw this self -taught woman from
the villages with no degree taking the top spot.
They hated it. Oh, they hated it. They felt she
hadn't earned it in the traditional way. It challenges
their whole worldview. It says, you don't need
our institution to be great. And institutions
hate that. Precisely. But while she is fighting
all these battles in the education system, justifying
her existence every single day, she is quietly
building this other identity. Okay. And this
brings us to the birth of Gabrielle Amistral,
because up until now, she's still Lucila Godoy.
Right. So when does the name change happen and
why? Was she just trying to be mysterious or
was it a branding thing? It was much more practical
and, frankly, protective. Remember the chaplain.
Remember the rejection. One who blocked her because
of her writing. she never forgot that lesson
she knew that if she published her poetry which
was becoming increasingly raw emotional and dark
she risked losing her teaching job teachers were
expected to be these conservative morally upright
almost sexless figures her poetry was Well, it
was human. It was full of passion and doubt.
So she needed a mask. A firewall between the
director and the poet. Exactly. So she started
publishing under Gabriella Mistral. Where did
that name come from? It sounds very strong, very
elemental. There are two main theories, and both
of them tell us something about her. The first
is that it's a literary tribute. She loved the
Italian poet Gabriele di Nunzio. and the French
poet Frédéric Mistral. Who was a Nobel winner
himself, by the way. He was. So she's aligning
herself with the greats from the start. She's
naming herself after greatness, manifesting it.
I like that. What's the other theory? The other
one, which I find quite poetic and maybe more
fitting, is that it's a combination of the archangel
Gabriel, the messenger of God, and the Mistral,
which is this fierce, dry, strong wind that blows
through Provence in France. The angel and the
wind. I like that. It captures that dual nature,
spiritual but powerful, maybe a little destructive.
It fits her perfectly. She actually described
herself as having a wind, nature strong, sometimes
harsh, cleaning out the old to make way for the
new. So let's talk about the poetry itself. You
mentioned it was emotionally outspoken. What
was she writing about that felt so risky for
a schoolteacher? To understand the poetry, we
have to look at the tragedy. Her life was just
punctuated by profound loss. In 1906, when she
was quite young, she met a railway worker named
Romilio Irita. A railway worker. Again, she's
not mingling with the elites. She's dating a
guy with dirt under his fingernails. No, she's
with the working class. They had a relationship.
The details are sometimes debated, how serious
it was, how long it lasted, but the ending is
not. In 1909, Irita committed suicide. That's
just devastating. It was a shock. And to make
matters worse, she had a second love shortly
after. who ended up marrying someone else. So,
double heartbreak. And these heartbreaks were
the catalyst. They fueled her first major literary
breakthrough. Sonetos de la muerte, sonnets on
death. Sonnets on death. That is definitely not
the light, fluffy verse people might expect from
a gentle schoolteacher. Not at all. These poems
won the Juegos Florales, which was a national
literary contest in Santiago in 1914. That victory
is what launched her fame. But the content, I
mean, it was about death, despair, and a very,
very... complicated relationship with God. I
want to deep dive on that relationship with God.
She's often associated with Catholicism, right?
She is, yeah. Later in life, she was a member
of the secular Franciscan order. But her poetry
is not standard pious Catholicism. It's not God
is great, everything happens for a reason. It's
more... wrestling with God. It's wrestling, it's
resentment, it's shouting at the heavens. In
her 1922 book, Desolation, which was actually
published in New York because of her international
reach, she explores this raw, almost angry grief.
She questions why God would allow such suffering.
She writes about the desire to die, to be reunited
with the loved one, but also the fear of judgment.
That is risky. Questioning God in a conservative
Catholic country in the 1920s, that's a bold
move. Very risky, but that's why the critics
loved it. She was expanding what Latin American
poetry could be. At the time, the dominant style
was modernism, which was often very focused on
aesthetics, beauty, form. Like painting with
words. Yeah, almost decorative. She brought in
this brutal, beautiful reality. She made poetry
bleed. So Desolation covers themes of motherhood,
religion, nature. But it's all anchored in this
deep sorrow. Yes. And it solidified her international
reputation. Suddenly, Lucilla, the school director,
was Gabriella, the literary sensation. And ironically,
as her fame grew abroad, Chile was starting to
feel a little too small and a little too hostile
for her. Because of the resentment from the other
teachers, the establishment. That was a huge
part of it. The atmosphere in Santiago was toxic
for her. She felt unappreciated and attacked
by the elite. And in 1922, just as desolation
is hitting the shelves, she gets an escape hatch,
an offer she can't refuse. What was the offer?
Jose Vasconcelos, who is the minister of education
in Mexico, invites her to come and help build
their national education system. Wait, wait.
Another country asked her. the woman rejected
by her own country's teacher training college,
to come build their entire school system. Yes,
you can't make this up. Mexico had just gone
through its revolution. It was a time of massive
social reconstruction. They wanted to build schools
for the people, libraries for the poor, education
for the indigenous population. And they wanted
her specific expertise in rural education. They
saw her value when Chile didn't. They wanted
the woman from the trenches. That is a huge deal.
It's a complete validation of her School of Hard
Knocks approach. She basically gets headhunted
by a nation. It is. She goes to Mexico and plays
a pivotal role. She travels all over the country.
She helps reform libraries. She found schools.
And she publishes this famous anthology called
Lecturas para Mujeres, Readings for Women. And
what was that about? It was all about celebrating
and uplifting girls' education, giving them role
models, giving them serious literature to read.
So she goes from being the rejected student to
the architect of education in Mexico. It really
is the moment she becomes known as the educator
of the Americas. And it's also where we see another
paradox in her life emerge. We need to talk about
the poet of motherhood label. Right. This is
the part of the myth that is most persistent,
the mother of the nation. But she never had biological
children, did she? She did not. Yet in 1924,
she published a collection called Ternoda, or
Tenderness, and it's full of lullabies, rounds,
songs for children. It's much softer than Desolation.
Lullaby is written by a childless woman. That's
an interesting contradiction right there. Exactly.
And this really solidified her image as the universal
mother figure, but her view on children was fierce,
not just sweet. There's a famous quote of hers,
Su nombre es hoy. His name is today. I've heard
this. It's about urgency, isn't it? It is, she
wrote. We are guilty of many errors and many
faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the
children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many
of the things we need can wait. The child cannot.
Wow. Right now is the time his bones are being
formed, his blood is being made, and his senses
are being developed. To him, we cannot answer
tomorrow. His name is today. That hits hard.
His name is today. It's not a sentimental, oh,
children are the future kind of statement. It's
a... Children are dying of hunger right now statement.
Precisely. It shows that her maternal focus wasn't
biological. It was social. It was political.
She felt this profound duty to the impoverished
children of Latin America, the barefoot children
she used to teach in the mountains. She was mothering
a continent. So she finishes her time in Mexico.
She has this massive international reputation
now. Does she go back to Chile and settle down,
take a victory lap? No. In fact, from 1926 onwards,
she effectively lived in exile. She became a
citizen of the world. She never really lived
in Chile again for any extended period. Why not?
Was she still resentful? Yeah. We're just too
big for the room at that point. I think she felt
she could do more work and perhaps live more
freely abroad. She worked for the League of Nations,
which was a precursor to the UN. Right. And their
Institute for Intellectual Cooperation. Exactly.
And she started serving as a Chilean consul.
A diplomat. A poet diplomat. It was a tradition
in Latin America to give consular posts to famous
writers to provide them with a steady income
so they could write. But Ms. Strahl, she took
the job seriously. She wasn't just collecting
a check. She served in Naples, Madrid. Lisbon,
Los Angeles, New York. I mean, she was everywhere.
And speaking of poet diplomats, we have to talk
about the connection with Pablo Neruda. You mentioned
earlier she won the Nobel before him. Did they
know each other? Oh, they did. And the story
of how they met is almost too perfect for fiction.
They met when Naruto was just a teenager. Mistral
was the school director in his hometown, Tomoko.
No way. So the future Nobel Prize winner is a
teenager in a small town, and the principal of
the local school is the other future Nobel Prize
winner from his country. Exactly. Can you imagine?
And she recognized his talent immediately. She
was a mentor to him. She introduced him to Russian
literature, gave him books, recommended readings.
That's incredible. They had a lifelong friendship,
though they were very different people. Later,
they were actually fellow consuls in Madrid at
the same time. What a coincidence of history.
Two of the greatest literary minds of the 20th
century just crossing paths in the rain in southern
Chile. It really speaks to her eye for talent.
But while she was traveling the world, rubbing
shoulders with intellectuals, She never forgot
her roots. In 1938, she published her second
major volume of poetry, Tala. Tala. What does
that mean? It translates roughly to harvesting
or maybe ravage, like cutting down trees. It's
a very significant book. She actually published
it in Buenos Aires with the help of her friend,
Victoria Ocampo. And she dedicated all the proceeds
to children orphaned by the Spanish Civil War.
Again, that focus on the vulnerable, on children.
Always. But Tala is also where she really, really
digs into her identity. She refers to herself
as una mestiza de Vasco. A mestiza of Basque
descent. Why is that significant? Because in
the 1930s and 40s, the elite class in Chile and
Latin America generally usually emphasized their
European heritage. They wanted to be seen as
white, as European, as sophisticated. Right.
Mistral was openly acknowledging and celebrating
her mixed heritage, her European Basque side
and her indigenous Amundian side. She was reclaiming
the indigenous side of her identity. She was.
She wrote about the customs, the folklore, the
land itself. She was grounding herself in the
American continent. Even while living in Europe,
she was saying, I am of this earth. It was a
rejection of the elitism that had rejected her
as a young girl. Okay, we have to move to a darker
chapter now. We talked about the tragedy in her
early life with her boyfriend's suicide. But
there was a second tragedy much later that really
broke her, wasn't there? Yes. This is perhaps
the most painful part of her biography. We mentioned
she didn't have biological children, but she
had a nephew, Juan Miguel Godoy. And she raised
him. She raised him as her own son. She called
him Yin Yin. He was her world. He traveled with
her, lived with her. He was the child she never
had. So this was her son in every way that matters.
Yes. But in 1943, when they were living in Petropolis,
Brazil, tragedy struck. Yin Yin was just 17 years
old and he committed suicide. Oh, my God. History
repeating itself. First the lover, then the son.
That is just unbearable. It shattered her. Absolutely
shattered her. And you have to remember the context.
This is 1943. World War II is raging. The world
feels like it's on fire. And now her personal
world has completely collapsed. She must have
felt so alone. Isolated, grieving, and watching
the world destroy itself. How did she survive
that? She poured it into her work. This grief
profoundly influenced her final volume of poetry
published during her lifetime, Lagar. Lagar.
Which means? Wine press. It appeared in 1954.
A wine press. Yes. And the metaphor is crystal
clear. She is the grape. Life is the press. She's
being crushed to produce the poetry. It's an
incredibly painful image. That is a visceral
image. It's not just sadness. It's destruction.
It's being crushed. It is poetry of suffering,
of being pressed by life. It's much more complex,
much more modern than her earlier work. It's
jagged. It's the work of a survivor. Now, this
brings us to the aspect of her private life that
has caused the most debate in recent years. For
a long time, the story was she lost her railway
worker love. She remained celibate and faithful
to his memory. And she was this suffering, saintly
figure. The tragic spinster narrative. Exactly.
But new evidence suggests that might not be the
whole truth at all. This is where we get into
what is often called the revisionist view. For
decades, biographers just accepted that narrative.
It fit the mother of the nation myth perfectly.
But scholars like Leisha Field Matta have challenged
that traditional heteronormative story. The suggestion,
backed by significant evidence, is that Gabriela
Mistral was a lesbian. And this isn't just modern
speculation, right? There's an actual archive.
Yes, this is the game changer. In 2007, after
the death of a woman named Doris Dana, a massive
archive was discovered. Who was Doris Dana? Doris
Dana was an American writer and she was Mistral's
executor. She was also her companion for the
last years of her life. She was 31 years younger
than Mistral. They met in New York and were inseparable
until Mistral's death. And what was in the archive?
Letters. Thousands of documents. There were letters
exchanged between Mistral and various occasional
female lovers throughout her life. But most importantly,
letters between her and Dana. Thousands of them.
Yes. And they were published in a book called
Nina Arante Wandering Girl in 2007. And the content
of these letters. To modern eyes, it reads clearly
as a romantic correspondence. There is deep intimacy,
nicknames, expressions of love and jealousy.
Mistral writes to Dana with this incredible passion.
It suggests a long -lasting romantic relationship.
So the saintly schoolteacher had a passionate
life with women. It certainly seems so. However,
and this is important for historical accuracy
and nuance, we have to mention the conflict here.
Okay. Doris Dana herself, while she was alive,
explicitly denied it she denied it even with
the letters in her final interview dana described
their relationship as being like a stepmother
and stepdaughter She denied being a lesbian herself
and expressed skepticism about Mistral's sexual
orientation being framed that way. That complicates
things. You have the written evidence that looks
one way and the testimony of the surviving partner
saying, no, it wasn't that. It raises a fascinating
discussion about how we interpret history and
private lives. Was Dana protecting Mistral's
legacy? Remember, for a Latin American icon to
be outed as queer even in 2007 was controversial.
In the 1950s, it would have been career suicide.
Or maybe our modern labels just don't fit. That's
the other possibility. Was Dana defining their
relationship in terms that simply don't fit our
modern labels of gay or straight? It's the roommate
phenomenon we see throughout history. Just our
friends. Exactly. But regardless of the label,
what the archive proves is that the lonely spinster
narrative is false. She wasn't alone. She had
profound, intense, loving relationships with
women. The saintly schoolteacher image doesn't
account for that complexity. It tries to erase
her desire. It adds so much depth to her. She
wasn't just a statue. She was a human being with
complex desire. Precisely. And all of this, the
grief over Yin -Yin, the travel, the secret loves,
the political activism, it all culminates in
1945. The big one. The Nobel Prize. The Nobel.
1945. She travels to Sweden. King Gustav presents
her with the award. What do the citations say?
Why did they choose her? It's beautiful. It says
she received the prize for her lyric poetry,
which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made
her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations
of the entire Latin American world. The entire
Latin American world. That is a heavy crown to
wear. It is. She was the voice of the continent.
And remember the timing, 1945. The world is just
stepping out of the ashes of World War II. Right.
The Holocaust, the atomic bombs. Humanity is
traumatized. Her voice, which spoke of sorrow,
but also of human dignity and the rights of children,
it resonated so deeply in that post -war moment.
She offered a kind of moral clarity. So she wins
the Nobel, she's on top of the world, but she
doesn't go back to Chile. No. She stayed abroad.
She moved to the United States eventually. Her
health started to decline. She had diabetes and
heart problems. She settled in New York. Specifically
in Roslyn and then Hempstead on Long Island.
A long way from the Elkwee Valley. A very long
way. And that is where she passed away on January
10th, 1957. She died of pancreatic cancer at
the age of 67. And Doris Dana was with her. Doris
Dana was by her side. Her remains were returned
to Chile, though. They were. The Chilean government
declared three days of national mourning. Hundreds
of thousands of people came out to pay their
respects. She was a hero. But this is where the
story takes another twist. After she died, her
image kind of got kidnapped. That is a fair way
to put it. We have to look at what happened in
Chile in the 1970s and 80s. The Pinochet dictatorship.
Exactly. General Augusto Pinochet's military
regime took power in 1973. Now, authoritarian
regimes, they love symbols of patriotism, but
they hate radicals. They hate complexity. They
need simple stories to control the narrative.
So what did they do with Mistral? I mean, she
was a socialist sympathizer, an advocate for
the poor, possibly queer. That does not sound
like a Pinochet icon. So they stripped all of
that away. They appropriated her image, they
put her on the money, they built statues, but
they portrayed her strictly as the mother of
the nation. They emphasized the lullabies. They
emphasized the lullabies and the submission.
They used her image to promote the idea of social
order and traditional sacrifice. They ignored
the fiery essays on social reform. They ignored
the indigenous advocacy. They definitely ignored
the private life. They made her into a kind of
strict grandmother figure who tells you to behave.
That's a perfect way to put it. They turned her
into the harmless old lady on the banknote. They
sanitized her to make her safe for the regime.
And it is only been in recent decades, with the
return of democracy and the work of scholars
finding those archives, that the real Gabriela
Mistral is being reclaimed. The woman who was
fierce, independent, and dangerous to the status
quo. Yes. And she even had one last surprise
for the world after she died, didn't she? A posthumous
book. Yes. Palma de Chile, Poem of Chile, published
in 1967. It's a very spiritual journey. In the
poem, her ghost returns to Chile. Her ghost.
Her ghost. She is accompanied by an indigenous
boy from the Atacama Desert and an Andean deer,
a Humul. That is so mystical. A ghost, a boy,
and a deer walking through Chile. It is. It depicts
her revisioning her homeland, walking through
the flowers, the rocks, the geography one last
time. It really foreshadowed a lot of the epic
traditions that later poets would explore. It
was her final love letter to the land she left,
but never truly forgot. It brings it all full
circle. She started in that rugged landscape,
she conquered the world, and in her final work,
she goes back home in spirit. It's a beautiful
ending to her story. So let's bring this all
back together. We started with a face on a bill.
A simple school teacher. And we found a woman
who overcame fatherlessness and crushing poverty
in a rural village. Who taught herself when the
institutions rejected her. Who built education
systems in other countries when her own country
pushed her away. A woman who won the Nobel Prize
before any of the famous men of her continent.
And who navigated these profound tragedies. The
suicide of a lover. The suicide of a son. And
lived a private life that defied the conservative
norms of her time, all while serving as a diplomat
and as a voice for the voiceless. She was so
much more than the lullaby lady. She was a fighter.
She was a fierce autodidact, a force of nature.
As she said herself, she was the mistral wind.
Exactly. It really makes you think. We walk around
with these symbols in our pockets, on our coins,
on stamps. We see statues, and we think we know
them. But history, especially for women, has
a way of smoothing out all the rough edges. It
favors the simple narrative of the saint over
the complex reality of the human. Because saints
are safe. Humans are messy. So here's a thought
to leave you with today. If Gabriella Mistral,
the Nobel Prize winner, a national hero featured
on Money, could have her true identity, her sexuality,
and her radical politics obscured for decades
to fit a narrative of social order, who else
are we totally misremembering right now? What
other saints of history were actually rebels
in disguise? That is the question. The archives
are always there waiting to be opened. A pleasure
as always. Thanks for diving deep with us today.