The Chilean poet, teacher, journalist, diplomat and humanist of Basque roots was called Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She was born on April 6 1889 in Vicuña (Elqui Valley).

When she was 14 she started working as a school teacher's assistant and soon published her first articles in local newspapers. The grief caused by the suicide of his youthful love inspired his famous Sonnets of Death.

In 1914 she won the first prize of the Floral Games of Santiago and stopped using her name and adopted the pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, uniting her admiration for the poets, Gabriele D´Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral.

In 1922 the Instituto de Las Españas in New York published her first book Desolation, that initiated her recognition in Latin American literature: Poetry is in me, simply a lap, a sediment of my submerged childhood.

She carried out an important task in the educational reform of Mexico and, in 1926, she was elected Secretary of the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, where she met Maria Sklodowska-Curie. In 1932 she started her diplomatic life; she was consul in Madridfrom 1933 to 1935. In 1938, impressed by the bombing of Gernika, she donated the rights of her work Tala to the fund for helping Basque children.

In 1945 she received the Premio Nobel de Literatura. Three years alter he wrote the well known as Appeal for Children, origin of UNICEF.

In 1951 she received the National Prize of Literature in Chile. She died on January 10, 1957, in New York, at the age of 67.