Dearest Gabriela

by Nobi

Dearest Gabriela:

I’m addressing you from the year 2025 and it’s been eighty years since you won the Nobel Prize, can you believe it? Although it’s even more unbelievable that, eighty years later, you’re still the only Latin American woman to have ever won a Nobel.

I know that you really liked correspondence and—maybe to your grief and anger—I’ve been able to read many of your letters, especially the ones that were donated by the nephew of your partner and executor Doris Dana to the National Library in 2007. I’m not sure if you ever expected those letters to be of public domain, considering you destroyed all the letters Doris sent you, maybe to prevent them from being read by a third party.

Yes, it might be a little embarrassing for people to read your private missives, but as someone part of the LGBTQIA+ community (I don’t think you know what this means, but it’s the community that gathers all the diverse sexual orientations and identities), it has touched my soul to know that a person so brilliant and ahead of her time was also one of us, part of the sexual diversities, although for years academics have been wanting to claim you as a heterosexual and religious icon, saying many things, as if they don’t want your work to be overshadowed by your private life.

And I ask myself, how is it possible that Gabriela Mistral’s extensive work be eclipsed by something like that? Don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous? People are multifaceted beings. You more than anyone. You were a teacher, a poetess, a diplomat, a journalist, a defender of human rights, and also just another human. Knowing you had a female partner is not at all reason for censorship; on the contrary, it’s reason to celebrate the rich diversity that composed your character, so misunderstood in its time in our country.

Things are a little bit better in that sense, in fact, this year marks the fourth year that same sex couples can get married in the country, but unfortunately in recent times there have been several setbacks. What I’m going to say may sound familiar, but we lived through a pandemic, and we are currently in times of economic inequality and inflation, of unbridled capitalism, unyielding individualism which only becomes fertile ground for fascism, for the restriction of liberties, and for populism, things that you lived through in your time.

You talked in your speeches about how we abruptly obtained Democracy; it fell into our hands before we knew what to do with it and the process was even more hindered by the dictatorship that followed, which mutilated by force the social, educational, ideological and political causes including the agrarian reform that you yearned for and supported as a rural woman from the fourth region who never forgot her roots. In your time it was landowners; now they have different names but it’s only more of the same. They’re neoliberals who profit from people’s needs and destroy the flora and fauna you described fervently in your poems.

The rich take power! Again, how surprising!

There are many other things I would like to tell you. You’d die again when listening to how new technologies are being used to disconnect humans from learning and knowledge, but also how education has advanced compared to your time. Women have equality of access to schools and colleges and not only just in girls' schools; co-educational schools are the norm now!

I know this letter is a bit dark, so I want to close with a little hopefulness, so you don’t drown in bitterness.

We keep fighting. We listen and learn from your torrent, and we keep making noise in all aspects. There are awake and revolutionary people in this world, even though sometimes their voices are drowned out by the homogenous and monotone majority. So, even if things look like they are taking a turn for the worse thanks to globalization (you and Doris would’ve loved text messages and video calls) we can get in contact and find kindred spirits no matter how far away they are; sharing ideas and supporting each other in the path of resistance.

I really hope you are doing well and I’m sure you found your beloved Doris and your dear Yin-Yin in the afterlife, so send my greetings. Thank you for all your work as a Chilean scholar; we will follow your steps, and we are proud of you.

Nobi.