On Monday 26 May, the UNESCO Chair Global Adult Education will be commemorating the 80th anniversary of one of Latin America's greatest educators, educational planners and poets being given the Nobel prize for Literature: Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), the pseudonym adopted by Chilean, Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She was the first Latin American recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, later to be followed by her fellow Chilean and great friend, Pablo Neruda. The pseudonym was adapted by Lucila from the names of two of her favourite poets, Gabriele D' Annunzio and Frederic Mistral.
She did a lot to further the development of rural education, women's education and the education of Indigenous people, despite working in Mexico under the then Education Minister Jose' Vasconcelos Calderon who personally believed in the mestizzo fusion of Indigenous ethnicity with that of people of European ancestry, at odds with Mistral's commitment to the Indigenous cause.
One of her most beautiful works are the verses bearing the title of 'La Maestra Rural'. In this work, she underlines the qualities of the rural female educator. Mistral herself hailed from a rural area of Chile in the surroundings of Acuna, her family abandoned by her teacher father when she was only three. She served as a diplomat but refused to take up a position of Consul in Naples because of the onset of Nazi-fascism in Italy.
The link to the webfest is provided with the programme below with invited speakers from Chile, Mexico and Italy, three countries where Gabriela Mistral has a strong following. The event, like all the webfests by the UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education, is being recorded and eventually made available on the Chair UM website, which also contains all issues of Convergence. An International Adult Education Journal ever since the UNESCO Chair revived it. Previous webfests were held in honour of Paulo Freire, Raymond Williams, Julius Nyerere, Don Lorenzo Milani and Alberto Manzi (birth centenary webfests) and bell hooks (third anniversary of her passing) and also to celebrate and reflect on the 150 hours of Italy's working class and feminist education
(50th anniversary).
An entire chapter on Gabriela Mistral can be found in Peter Mayo and Paolo Vittoria's 2022 book, Critical Education in International Perspective, Bloomsbury Academic.
Join Zoom Meeting
Languages: Spanish and English
26 May 2025 16:00-19:00 CET
Programme
16:00 Welcome by Convenor, Peter Mayo, Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education, University of Malta
16:10 Carola Gabriela Sepulveda Vasquez, Chile
16:30 Sylvia Schmelkes, Mexico
16:50 Q and A
17:05 Tania Aramburo, Mexico
17:25 Paolo Vittoria, Italy
17:45 Q and A
18:00 Claudia Camicia, Italy
18:20 Q and A
18:30 General discussion
18:50 General Conclusion of Gabriela Mistral Webfest
