Gabriela Mistral

Lucila Godoy Alcayaga was born in Chile on 7 April 1889 and adopted the pen name Gabriela Mistral. She worked as an educator and journalist, reading widely in theosophy and joining the Secular Franciscan Order in 1925, though she rarely attended mass. Her lyric poetry drew on betrayal, sorrow, recovery, nature, and a mother's love, while her prose - some 800 articles on geography, education, politics, and profiles of fellow writers - circulated throughout the Spanish-speaking world. The Nobel committee in 1945 cited her poetry as "inspired by powerful emotions" and called her name "a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world." She also served as a poet-diplomat and died on 10 January 1957; her image now appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso banknote.