The life of Gabriela Mistral, born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was a miraculous journey filled with “a trembling of the soul in a trembling of the flesh.” It took her from a hidden valley in the Chilean Andes, where she was born in 1889, to a regal hall in Stockholm, where she received the Nobel Prize for literature from the hands of King Gustavus V in 1945.
Gabriela related the beginning and the ending of her journey in a few Unes of poetry:
Todas íbamos a ser reinas,
de cuatro reinos sobre el mar:
En el Valle de Elqui, ceñido
de cien montañas o de más,
Y Lucila, que hablaba a río,
en las lunas de la locura