Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, a Chilean poetdiplomat, educator and humanist. She was the first Latin American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she did in 1945 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. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mothers love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. Her portrait also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note.

Mistral was born in Vicua, Chile, but was raised in the small Andean village of Montegrande, where she attended a primary school taught by her older sister, Emelina Molina. She respected her sister greatly, despite the many financial problems that Emelina brought her in later years. Her father, Juan Gernimo Godoy Villanueva, was also a schoolteacher. He abandoned the family before she was three years old, and died, long since estranged from the family, in 1911. Throughout her early years she was never far from poverty. By age fifteen, she was supporting herself and her mother, Petronila Alcayaga, a seamstress, by working as a teachers aide in the seaside town of Compaia Baja, near La Serena, Chile.

Source: Wikipedia