Quick update: I feel so encouraged! I’m in Cobquecura, a city pretty much still on the ground, I was paying to stay at a kind of hotel…however, it was expensive for me. Then I happened to meet a lady who spoke English. She lived in the States for 35 yrs. in Conneticut and New York. Her husband used to be in the Peace Corps. He’s American. I found out that there are several Americans around the area, who run exclusive type resorts on the coast.
I mentioned to her about my project and gave her the website. I guess she googled it and invited me to stay at her exclusive Bed and Breakfast on the outskirts of the town. It is an old colonial mansion that she redid after the earthquake. I stayed in the Gabriela Mistral Room, which has a huge painting of Mistral. This woman is also a quite successful artist.

Gabriela Mistral

(1889-1957)

Born as Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga in 1889, Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945.  Although Mistral is best known as a poet, she was a prominent educator, diplomat and feminist.  She served as Chilean consul in Naples, Madrid and Lisbon, and was involved in cultural committees attached to the League of Nations.  She held numerous honorary degrees and taught Spanish literature in the United States at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Vassar College and at the University of Puerto Rico.  Sonetos de la muerte, a collection of love poems in memory of the dead was published in 1914 helped make her name a standard within the literary community.  Her complete poetry was published in 1958.  She died in 1957.