There are various facets for which Gabriela Mistral is universally known and is in constant rediscovery by Chilean society. At the beginning of the 2024 school year, Ediciones Libros del Cardo highlights one of her main roles: her teaching role, which she developed in various regions.
Within her route as a teacher, Gabriela Mistral was in the southern Magallanes, where she lived between August 1918 and April 1920. Along with being sent by the then Minister of Justice and Public Instruction of the Government of Juan Luis Sanfuentes, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, to direct the Girls’ High School of said city, his mission was framed in the Chileanization of said isolated and distant territory.
To this work she added some more dimensions: “she created a popular library and founded the first night school in the provinces, emphasizing the development of working women,” as stated in the text “Gabriela Mistral in the country of forgotten Chileans,” by Oscar Barrientos Bradasic.
Along with this, it was proposed to problematize and contribute to the perhaps non-existent debate on the role of education in society and citizenship, as a source of development: “The Chile of industries, like the Chile of historical greatness, must come out of schools. “, noted Mistral in a text collected by Barrientos from the newspaper El Magallanes, in 1918.
It is during that period of time that in addition to writing her work “Desolación”, Gabriela Mistral was part of the editorial team of a pioneering magazine called “Mireya”. In six issues, the described “monthly of current events, sociology and art”, and under the direction of the poet Julio Munizaga, the magazine collects poems, quotes from great thinkers, editorial content and a particular design by the artist Laura Rodig, part of the delegation with which Mistral Punta Arenas arrived.
How the poet and editor Gladys González, in charge of the research, compilation and selection of the volume, Mistral editora, reviews. The Mireya Magazine in Punta Arenas, “the contribution from the editorial design is very important with its 24 x 32 cm, brackets on the spine, the typography, the illustrations by Laura Rodig, her partner in Punta Arenas, the advertising of cigarette stores, footwear, clothing for women and girls, dairies, luggage stores, tailoring, among other items, in addition to the cultural and dissemination circuits between Chile and Argentina that quickly caused the magazine’s issues to run out. In addition, the money raised from sales was used for charitable purposes within the community itself.”
Regarding the name of the publication, the editor explains, “Mireya is the name of the daughter of Magellan Moure and of a poem by Frederic Mistral, whose meaning is admirable or mirror, depending on the origin of the etymology.”
Multi-thematic and multi-format content
“Give me the ability to be a mother like mothers, so that I can raise and defend like her what is not my flesh,” says the teacher’s prayer, one of the contents of the magazine signed by Mistral, which along with poetic texts by Its authorship and texts by intellectuals such as Amado Nervo, Rubén Darío and José Martí, contextualized a perspective on the central role that education should have in society and in public debate: “I have always thought that there should be a section of chronicles of the schools. How do they learn, what amenities do they enjoy, what patios do they have for their games?” is one of the texts referring to these questions.
The magazine also delves into the avant-garde perspectives of the school environment, and the potential of childhood; urging that “the teacher should never do what the child can do for himself.” Along with this, it addresses – among other contingent issues of the period – the application of the recent Law on Compulsory Primary Education, highlighting the problem of low salaries for teachers.
In short, the magazine – which was sold for one peso at the time – proposed, “Mireya will be light, perfume, color; It will be dew that vivifies the sacred flower of the spirit and it will be cautery that extirpates the bad germs that infect souls.” Mireya “is a construction of beauty destined to radiate in the dark soul of this mercantile town.”
As Gladys González closes, the invitation is to “analyze the world vision that Mistral observed and the one that Mistral proposed, in the context of her role in Punta Arenas, the possibilities of being a woman and student that she activated through the Night School, the homogeneity in school uniforms so that the students could have clothes to go to study, the winter vacations that he proposed and the teachings from the perspective of Freemasonry.”
“Mistral editor. “Mireya Magazine in Punta Arenas” by Ediciones Libros del Cardo is now available for sale in bookstores and on the internet. The volume is added to the compilation “Texts on Nature”, “Mistralian Herbarium. Diaries and garden notebooks”, “Initiation, astral and precursor” and “Unpublished stories and autobiographies” that expose a little explored side: his vision of self-knowledge, nature, spirituality and living in harmony and community.