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Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler

Edited by Marjorie Agosín

Copyright 2003 by Center for International Studies, Ohio University, USA

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio

 

Kara Horowitz

 

            In this compilation of essays on Gabriela Mistral, the Noble poet from Chile, we learn everything about her, from her time as rural schoolteacher to her national fame even after her death.

 

            In "A World Full of X's and K's: Parables of Human Rights in the Prose of Gabriel Mistral," we learn from the author, Joseph R. Slaughter, the importance of libraries in Mistral's life.  Slaughter states: "For Mistral, the library is particularly praiseworthy for its capacity to house contrasting and contradictory ideas."(pg. 40). Mistral loved libraries because of the way they showcased cooperation. Books of different ideologies where housed in the same structure and the books "side by side sit 'the strong and the meek, the wise and the delirious, the serious and the playful, the conformists and the rebels (63)'" (pg. 40). In libraries, Mistral believed all sides of a conflict or issue could be, and had to be, presented. "A library, despite its silences, is like a small guerrilla camp: ideas fight here at their please: We…insinuate ourselves into the fray without blood (Mistral, 63) (pg. 41)."

¿Qué es una biblioteca? Repertorio americano (san Jose), 10 May 1950. Rpt. in Paginas en prose, 63-67.

 

            In Chapter 3, "Gabriela Mistral as Teacher: Revisiting Lucila Godoy Alcayaga's Pedagogical Assumptions," Veronica Darer shows the reader how Gabriela Mistral continues to be regarded as a symbol of public education in Chile. Educational projects in Chile are fashioned after her ideals, including El Proyecto Montegrande, a government education program for educational equity at the middle school level. Darer shows how Mistral fought continuously for equity in the school system. "Gabriela knew and loved the poor and defenseless and could never abandon them…She once said, 'I want to dedicate myself fully to the education of the masses (Gazarian-Gautier,49)'" Darer states that Mistral's most important and lasting gift is "the incorporation of democracy and equality as intrinsic components of the world of schools and the concept of schooling as the seed for the creation of a just and participatory society" (pg. 53).* Mistral also emphasized the role of the teacher. For Mistral, teaching was also being a surrogate mother: "Le me be more mother than the actual mothers, to be able to love and defend like them what is not flesh of my flesh" (Scarpa, Mistral, 35). Teachers, Darer says, in Latin America teach schoolwork, but also concepts of affection, tenderness and discipline.

*Mistral: "Place in my democratic school the splendor that hovers over your chorus of barefoot children" (Scarpa, Mistral, 55) (pg. 53)

 

            The mourning of Mistral's death left her as a national symbol of Chile, according to Elizabeth Horan in Chapter 13 "Mirror to the Nation, Posthumous Portraits of Gabriela Mistral." She has become a symbol for monuments, money, plaques, busts, postage stamps and city murals. "Appealing to her memory stamps a sense of historical legitimacy onto a variety of local projects," Horan states (pg. 229). Horan also points out other historical writer-educators who have been canonized, whose "biography of the saint matters less for the individual than for the community." (pg. 245). Mistral's image continues to dominate Chilean culture because of her international fame and the fact that she can be "a message variously emptied or filled with meaning depending on who receives the message from whom" (pg. 245).

 

 

Possible Perspectives

Libraries: Provincial and/or public libraries and how the public uses them. Are they regarded widely as Mistral described them? Or are they becoming obsolete in the Internet era?

 

Chilean Teachers: Are they still vehicles for life lessons, and not just the lessons of school. Particularly rural schoolteachers- how are they embodying Mistral, how has education evolved since Mistral's time?

 

Mistral as Art: A mural installed in downtown Santiago in 1971. Visual, public art and how much of it has been created.

Green in Chile

TO VIEW THIS ARTICLE, COPY AND PASTE THIS LINK: http://diario.elmercurio.com/2009/01/29/vida_y_salud/sociedad/noticias/A213BF5D-B5F7-483D-9F9E-E3AD6B138FB7.htm?id={A213BF5D-B5F7-483D-9F9E-E3AD6B138FB7}

Fuente: El Mercurio, una periódico de Santiago, Chile Fecha: 29 de Febrero, 2009

Resumen (mínimo 75 palabras):

“La opción verde se multiplica entre las familias del país”
El Mercurio

Este articlo de El Mercurio, un periodico diaria de Chile, describió las cosas verdes que los chilenos estan haciendo ahora en su país. Por ejemplo, unas personas ahora comen comida organica y tienen un compostador y una huerta en su casa. Por eso, reducen sus basura 50% por semana. Tambien, hay una programa para recilcar en Santiago. Puede tomar su basura reciclaje a un lugar en Santiago. En 2006, 92 vehículos ingresaron a esta lugar, se llama Punto Limpio. En 2008, casí 5.300 vehiculos ingresaron. Hacer “verde” as muy popular y muy común estas días en Chile.

Vocabulario nuevo (5 palabras definidas en español):
Huerta- una jardin en su casa con vegetables
Desechos- basura
Aportar- contruibuir
Gerente- un jefe
Tasa- impuesto

My Invented Country
Isabel Allende

January 25, 2009

Isabel Allende, in her memoir My Invented Country, takes the reader on a journey through her past, in Chile, after Chile, and in the present, where she resides in California. Allende, who was raised in Chile yet lived most of her life outside it, considers herself ultimately a Chilean with a penchant for travel and emigration.

Allende is my favorite writer and a big part of the reason I chose Chile for my thesis concentration. Allende shows us the Chileans, a modest group of hard working citizens who have a tradition in democracy that was uprooted by several years of a severe dictatorship. Allende states she can spot a Chilean anywhere: “it’s difficult for me to define us in writing, but from fifty yards I can pick out a compatriot with one glance” (p33).

A few things I noticed from the book that may come out as perspectives I can photograph for my thesis:
• The Mapuches are a small native Indian tribe that has taken up a fight against those who wish to build a dam on the Bio Bio River, because it threatens the land they live on.
• Chile’s undying Patriarchal Society is an issue Allende brings up to reveal what Chilean society is like. Allende shows that men have power or influence over most every sector of society (political, economic, literature). Women have made enormous strides in this country where “there is so much testosterone in the air that it’s a miracle women don’t grow beards.” (p52). I would to look specifically at how Chilean mothers are bringing up their daughters- are they really, as Allende states “abettors of machismo”, bring up their daughters to wait on future husbands, yet at the same time fighting tirelessly for women’s’ rights?
• Allende states that “anyone who wants to know a Chilean’s true character must use public transportation in Santiago and travel across the country by bus” (p 118). I think this would be a very interesting contemporary face of Chile- those who ride public transportation (as it is different in every country).
• Those in were in exile who returned to live in Chile. What is their life like now? What is their children’s life? How have they moved on and how have they not been able to let go of the past? (Exiles by Pablo Neruda in Cantos Ceremoniales p 165). Allende describes how she made up a country called Chile, a country she belongs to, where some memories were exaggerated and others left out, so she has a perfect place she can call home, her invented country, which is not Chile, but is only in her mind. Is that where many of these exiles live? Or have they returned to reality?
• Chilean distribution of income is one of the worst in the world, close to African countries such as Kenya and Zimbabwe (p 168). Where are these people and where do they live? Are they readily visible? Chileans have a history of covering up poverty and during the dictatorship, social programs were basically eliminated from the government budget. Are the poor doing better these days? Allende asserts that the average Chilean laborer earns 15 times less than his equivalent in the US (p. 168).