/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-CHILE: Rediscovering Gabriela Mistral, Despite Pinochet

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Sánchez

SANTIAGO, Feb 25 2003 (IPS) - The annulment in Chile of a decree from the era of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship could lead to the release of previously unpublished texts by Chilean poet and Nobel Literature laureate Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), and the revelation of aspects of her life that were never before made public.

In her last will and testament the poet named Doris Dana, her U.S.-born secretary and friend, the executor and general heir of her estate, but the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990) refused those rights in 1979 to Dana because she would not authorise the publication in Chile of Mistral’s works.

President Ricardo Lagos overturned Pinochet’s decree a month ago.

Mistral won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, a distinction that no other Latin American woman writer has received since.

The director of the Gabriela Mistral Museum, Rodrigo Iribarren, told IPS that he is confident Dana’s rights as heir will be recognised, and that Chileans will gain access to objects and documents related to the poet that remain in the U.S. citizen’s hands.

The museum is set in Mistral’s childhood home in the town of Vicuña, 500 km north of Santiago.

"The annulment of the decree would imply a certain commitment by Doris Dana to facilitate the rights concerning publication of Mistral’s writings in South America, or at least in Chile, a situation that government authorities undoubtedly took into account in taking a decision of this nature," said Iribarren.

The Lagos administration’s decision will also benefit the poor children of Monte Grande, the town where the poet worked as a teacher and where she is buried.

Mistral bequeathed the children of Monte Grande the money earned from the publication of her literary works in South America, and she entrusted the local Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic Church to administer and distribute those funds.

"It became very complicated for the Franciscan order to comply with the wishes of Gabriela Mistral, and the contributions to the children were insufficient. but we must understand the difficulties surrounding contracts, transferring funds, determine which children were poor and ensure that the resources reached them," explained Iribarren.

The Franciscans gave up the complicated task and in 1998 passed the responsibility on to the municipality of Paihuano, in which Monte Grande is located.

The religious order at that time handed the municipality a check for around 7,000 dollars, the profits from the publication of Mistral’s books.

"There are very few publishing houses that have paid the royalties for the works of Gabriela Mistral," lawmaker Juan Pablo Letelier told Congress as he defended the move to overturn the Pinochet decree.

"There is a great silence among many people who know about this matter in Chile and who have looked aside, not to mention the author’s rights in the rest of South America," he said.

Museum director Iribarren believes "if the annulment of the decree facilitates the dissemination of the writing and ideas of Gabriela, undoubtedly we are seeing something positive."

"But this should be accompanied by a change in attitude among the major publishers, which generally operate according to the laws of the market," he says.

And there are legal questions about the copyrights to Mistral’s writings. Some attorneys say the validity of such rights has expired in accordance with Chilean law because the poet had no descendants. But others maintain that it is possible to extend the validity of the copyrights.

Until recently, relations between Chile and Dana were nearly non-existent, but Iribarren says the "recognition of her rights marks a rapprochement and she has undergone a change of attitude."

The relationship of Mistral herself with her native Chile was also conflictive.

"About Chile, better not to say. They have even pegged me with that silly lesbianism, and it hurts me so deeply that I don’t know what to say," wrote the poet in her personal diary, published under the title "Bendita mi lengua sea" (Blessed Be My Tongue).

"Have you ever seen such falseness?. I am no model, nor am I anything extraordinary. I am a woman like any other Chilean woman," she wrote.

Doubts about Mistral’s sexual orientation led Chilean and Mexican filmmakers to plan a work, titled "La pasajera" about her alleged lesbianism, denied by her biographers in Chile.

Mistral received Chile’s National Literature Award in 1954, 10 years after winning the Nobel. She was reportedly disappointed by her own country’s late recognition of her work, and lived in Mexico, France, Italy and the United States. But she decided that her remains would rest in Monte Grande.

Dana has indicated that the intends to comply with Mistral’s wishes and she has accepted an invitation from President Lagos to visit Chile, where she is to take charge of clearing up the flow of funds to the children of Monte Grande.

The town of Vicuña, meanwhile, prepares to receive a visit from Dana in the coming months, "and I think the people will welcome her like they did when she accompanied Gabriela in 1954," says Iribarren.

Already slated for publication this year are 34 love letters – previously unedited – that Mistral wrote to Chilean author Manuel Magallanes Moure between 1914 and 1923.

The letters were held by Notre Dame University in the United States and by one of Magallanes Moure’s granddaughters, until they were compiled through a project of the Catholic University of Chile’s literature department.