Gabriela Mistral
April 7, 1889–January 10, 1957
Gabriela’s father left her family when Gabriela was very young. But before he left, he planted a garden. It was nestled between Chile’s Andes Mountains and an olive grove, and Gabriela grew up there alongside the birds and flowers. While her mother worked long hours and her sister taught school, Gabriela spent her days running around the roots of the fig trees and playing under the almond flowers. Gabriela loved this little corner of the world so much that she tried to put her love into words. Writing verses to the rhythm of the wind and the songs of the birds, she composed her first poems.
Gabriela grew up to do many wonderful things. She became a famous teacher, traveling to schools throughout Latin America and the United States. She worked as a journalist who defended equality and women’s rights. Later, she even became a consul representing Chile around the world. Everywhere she went, from Mexico to Italy, Greece, France, and the United States, she kept on writing. And no matter where she was, she loved to look out of her window at the sky and imagine herself back home. Even through some of her most difficult times, she never stopped writing about her love for that special valley of her childhood. Book by book, she left little pieces of it in the hearts of readers from all over the world.
Gabriela’s writing won her the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. She was the very first Latin American and only the fifth woman in the whole world to win it! “This award belongs to my homeland,” she said, and accepted it on Chile’s behalf. And when she died, she left all the money she had earned from her books and prizes to the children of her beloved valley.
Juana de Ibarbourou
March 8, 1892–July 15, 1979
One morning, when Juana came down for breakfast, her mami said, “Hija, go put that sheet back on your bed!”
“But, Mami, if I take off my purple cloak, how will the prince know it’s me?”
Her mami laughed and laughed. “I don’t see what’s so funny,” Juana said. But as she ate up her tostadas and drank her cafe con leche, she began to wonder: “Does Mami really not understand?”
It wasn’t until Juana’s mami looked at the swirled stain of paint on her wall and said she couldn’t see the monkeys swinging from the jungle trees, nor did she know anything about the little gnomes who came in the night to make their morning panecito rise, that Juana understood: son secretos.
Juana kept her magic bottled up like the caterpillars and ladybugs she would catch in jars outside. But when she was fourteen, she found the perfect way to set it free. In her first sonnet, about a little lamb that came to her in dreams, she started to put together words and images that she had been collecting like treasures. Day after day, she wrote. And by the time she was seventeen, she had written enough poems to fill a book!
While World War I was weighing heavily on everyone’s hearts, Juana’s book came out and gave everyone in Uruguay the perfect escape. “Let’s go to the campo,” she wrote in one poem. “Take my hand.” And her readers followed her, walking through memories of simpler times when grass and fig trees perfumed the air, magos carried cures, and church bells marked the hour. People from all over Latin America loved her and her work so much that they gave her the name Juana de América!
Pura Belpré
February 2, 1903–July 1, 1982
Ever since Pura was a little girl in Puerto Rico, she loved listening to all the old tales her abuela would tell over afternoon cafecito. It wasn’t long before she knew them by heart and all the funny voices for the characters that went along with them. At recess, under the shade of the tamarind tree, she would try them out, making her friends hug their bellies with laughter.
Years later, when she went to New York for her sister’s wedding, it just so happened that the library was looking for a bilingual librarian. It was perfect! Pura dropped her plans of becoming a teacher in Puerto Rico and jumped at the chance to share stories with the newly arrived Spanish-speaking immigrants. “It’s my destino!” she thought.
On her first day, she ran to the folktale section, looking for her favorite stories to read to the children. But there wasn’t a single folktale from Puerto Rico! “¡Dios mío! How can this be?” she said. So she decided to write the tales herself. Her first was about a beautiful cockroach named Martina who falls in love with a stylish mouse named Pérez. The other librarians loved it so much, they asked Pura to perform it before it was even published. With handmade puppets, Pura brought Martina and Pérez to life, giving a taste of Puerto Rico to children from all over the city.
It was such a success that Pura got the great idea to invite authors from all over Latin America to share their stories and poems at the library. Before long, the library became a meeting place for Spanish-speaking readers and authors alike. They even celebrated the traditional Three Kings Day there, complete with dancing and music! Thanks to Pura and the many librarians she inspired, immigrants today still feel like the New York Public Library and libraries all over the country are their second homes.
Gumercinda Páez
January 13, 1904–1991
Gumercinda grew up in a neighborhood where everyone worked long days and long nights and still couldn’t make ends meet. Even so, the upper-class Panamanians often treated the people around her with contempt for being poor. “If only they knew what it was really like…” Gumercinda thought. And at only ten years old, she came up with a way: “¡Ya sé! I can write plays about our lives!” Getting her neighbors and amigos to act out the parts, Gumercinda put on play after play.
But the only people seeing Gumercinda’s plays were her own neighbors. “How will I get these plays to the rest of Panama?” she wondered. When she grew up and became a teacher, Gumercinda came up with a plan: she could make her plays into radionovelas and ask her students to be the actors!
Before long, stories of fathers forced to leave their families for work, single mothers making incredible sacrifices, grandmothers working well into their old age, and children working when they should have been in school were seen all across Panama. The upper classes finally saw what life was really like for most people, and Gumercinda’s community finally got a chance to feel understood. In only a few years, Gumercinda wrote thirty-four radionovelas!
Gumercinda decided to run for office and not only became the first Black woman to win, she got elected as the vice president of the constitutional assembly, too! Coming into politics right after the political coup of 1941, she helped draft Panama’s new constitution, and the very issues at the center of her radionovelas became the pillars of her work. She fought for and won equal pay for women, public daycare for children, paid maternity leave, and the recognition of Afro-Latinx rights. And she didn’t stop there! Gumercinda traveled all over Latin America defending human rights. Now there is an award given every year in her name to women who carry on her incredible legacy.
Frida Kahlo
July 6, 1907–July 13, 1954
When Frida was six years old, she got polio and had to stay in bed for months with nothing to do. During those long hours, she would imagine what it would be like to jump through her window and explore the city outside. Then, one day, she drew a little door on the glass and, like magic, she created an entire world of her own! She loved her imaginary world full of wild animals and beautiful flowers so much that, even when she got better, she would find quiet moments to go back through that little door.
When Frida was eighteen, she got into a terrible bus accident coming home from school. Again, she was forced to stay in bed. Only this time, instead of keeping her world locked up in her imagination, Frida decided to paint it so others could peek inside. With a special easel made just for her bed, she painted colorful self-portraits filled with animals, flowers, magic, and ghosts. When she could walk again, she took all her paintings to the famous mural painter Diego Rivera. When she asked him if they were any good, he said, “They are even better than mine!”
Little did she know that years later she and Diego wou
ld get married! Together, they traveled the world, and everywhere they went, people were fascinated with Frida and the fantastic world of her paintings. Frida’s work was shown in San Francisco, Boston, and New York and became part of the Louvre Museum’s collection in Paris!
Frida loved traveling, but what she wanted most was to come home and show her work in Mexico. Many years passed before her dream finally came true, and by that time, Frida was very sick and was ordered by her doctor to stay in bed. But she couldn’t miss her show, so she put on her best dress and decided to go, bed and all! Swaying on the shoulders of her friends and family, she proudly looked up at her two hundred paintings hanging on the walls.
Julia de Burgos
February 17, 1914–July 6, 1943
Listening to her father rattle off lines from famous poets as the two of them trotted through the forests of Puerto Rico on horseback, Julia began to discover the rhythms and rhymes of words. Soon she was thinking and speaking like a poet. She would braid the grass and say, “I’m curling the campo’s hair!” Julia loved words so much that writing verses with her little sister Consuelo was her favorite game to play.
Julia was the oldest of thirteen brothers and sisters and, even though her family was very poor, she got a scholarship to go to university. There, she learned that words were more than beautiful; they could also open up people’s minds to ideas like independence, equality, and human rights.
Julia became a teacher and was proud to share her ideals with the children of Puerto Rico. But her poet’s heart also made itself heard. One day, while looking out on a flamboyán tree in the schoolyard, she felt so inspired that she ran out of her class. “Consuelo, can you take over for me?” she asked. As the bright morning sun came and went, she sat under the tree, writing until the very last line of her poem was done. Seeing the river of her childhood flowing in the distance, she used it as a symbol to weave her own story in with the history of her country. When Julia finally got up to show her poem, “Río Grande de Loíza,” to her sister, they both immediately knew: it was a masterpiece.
Filled with a new confidence, Julia started writing day and night. When she had filled a book with her poems, she started giving readings and speaking out as a feminist supporting Puerto Rican independence. Round after round of applause inspired her to go to Cuba and then on to New York. She was an inspiration everywhere she went! And when she died, she was so loved that her fans from all over the United States and Puerto Rico created murals, lining their streets and schools with beautiful tributes to her work and life.
Chavela Vargas
April 17, 1919–August 5, 2012
Ever since Chavela was little, people said she didn’t walk, talk, or sing like a girl. She tried to fit in, but in her small town in Costa Rica, people didn’t accept her being even a little bit different from the other girls her age. The priest wouldn’t let her come to church on Sundays, her parents wouldn’t let her come out of her room when they had visitors, and at recess, when she asked to play, the other girls would say, “¡Así no!”
It was only when Chavela would curl up by the record player to listen to Mexican rancheras that she felt like someone understood her. “One day, I’ll get out of here and sing like them!” she thought. She learned all the words to every song and sang wherever she went.
When she was sixteen, she took a bus all the way to Mexico. She put on a dress, makeup, and high heels like the women singers she had seen. But on the night of her first big performance, she fell in front of the whole audience! “¡Ya basta!” Chavela declared. She got rid of the heels and put on a poncho and pants, and, from then on, no matter what anyone said, she was done trying to be anyone but herself. It was hard at first, but little by little, Chavela started to get shows. And it was her deep, rough voice and unique style that made her stand out!
Chavela recorded eighty record albums and toured far and wide, performing at places like Carnegie Hall in New York, Luna Park in Buenos Aires, and the Olympia in Paris. She gave her very last concert at age ninety-two! Before she died, she said, “I leave with Mexico in my heart.” And at her funeral, Mexicans lined the streets and people came from all over the world to say goodbye and show that she was in their hearts, too.
Alicia Alonso
December 21, 1920–October 17, 2019
“Pay attention! Sit still!” the nuns at her Catholic school would say. But Alicia liked to be up and moving out of her seat. She was always dancing. When the famous Russian dancer Nikolai Yavorsky came to open the first ballet school in Cuba, Alicia ran to sign up. And when she got her first pair of ballet shoes, she loved them so much that she slept with them under her pillow every night.
Alicia quickly became one of Yavorsky’s best students and met her first love, Fernando, in his class. At fifteen, they ran away together to New York City to chase their dreams of becoming world-famous dancers.
But just as her career was taking off, Alicia started losing her sight. She had to have surgery, and while she lay in bed recovering for months, she asked Fernando to draw the dance steps for the upcoming show, Giselle, in the palm of her hand. Before long, she knew every step by heart. And even after finding out that the surgery didn’t restore her sight, she was determined to continue dancing. When the prima ballerina in her troupe got sick, Alicia took her chance. “I can do it!” she said. Without being able to see, she danced the part beautifully—the best Giselle anyone had ever seen! “Bravissima!” the audience yelled.
Alicia went back to Cuba and founded the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. It quickly became one of the best ballet schools in the world and she kept teaching there up until she was ninety-eight years old! When she died, her students came from all over Cuba to honor her and thank her for everything she had given them before saying goodbye.
Victoria Santa Cruz
October 27, 1922–August 30, 2014
At Victoria’s home in Lima, Peru, dinnertime was a celebration. Her mother would sing and dance to African zamacueca music while she cooked. Victoria and her siblings would tap along to the rhythm with their spoons and plates. And after dessert, it was time for reciting poetry and guessing composers of classical tunes. Victoria was proud of her family and who she was.
Then one day, a new girl with blond hair and blue eyes came to Victoria’s school from los Estados Unidos. At recess, Victoria and her friends were excited to play with her. But the new girl turned up her nose: “If that negra is going to play, I’m not.” To Victoria’s surprise, her own friends told Victoria she couldn’t play with them anymore. Victoria began to wonder if there was something bad about being negra. So for years, she straightened her hair and put powder on her skin to make it lighter.
But as she grew up and began to discover bold and beautiful black artists, dancers, and composers, she felt the same pride she had felt as a little girl. With her older brother, she opened a theater featuring black musicians, dancers, and actors. Victoria composed the music, choreographed the dances, and even sewed all the costumes. Each night, more and more people came to the theater and the rounds of applause got louder and louder. And each night, Victoria stood taller, straighter, and stronger. She let her natural hair grow out and stopped putting on that powder. To celebrate her pride, she wrote a powerful poem: “Me gritaron negra.”
Victoria traveled the world, teaching and performing Afro-Peruvian music and dances. When she got back to Peru, she became the director of the National Institute of Culture and went on to open another theater. This time, she showcased stories from all the different peoples of Peru. “Porque,” she said, “in the end, we are all one familia.”
Claribel Alegría
May 12, 1924–January 25, 2018
At night, as the soft smell of coffee flowers drifted through their window in El Salvador, Claribel’s papi would read poems from Nicaragua’s famous poet Rubén Darío. To Claribel, Darío’s words were like notes on a piano—lullabies from her papi’s country and the land of her birth. And before she could even read, Claribel played at
making her own words sound like those delicate notes, asking her mami to write down the poems she would say aloud.
Then, one night, peeking through the curtains by the side of her bed, she saw Indigenous families—women, men, and children—being pushed and shoved by military guards pointing guns to their heads. “This isn’t right!” her papi yelled at the guards as he ran out the door. “Don’t do this! Put down your guns!” But the guards didn’t listen.
That night haunted Claribel’s dreams. She kept wondering, “Who were those people? What were they like before their lives were taken away? What would they have wanted to say?”
Then one day, her papi gave her a very special gift. Wrapped neatly in a small box was an elegant pen. “You have the gift of words,” he said. “Use them like swords.” And that’s exactly what Claribel did. Day after day, she wrote and wrote, using her delicate words to tell powerful, sharp-edged truths.
When she grew up, Claribel moved from country to country meeting revolutionaries, political prisoners, and the families of desaparecidos, who had been looking for their loved ones for years. She risked her life to publish stories that were meant to have been buried or silenced with threats. She wrote until she was ninety-three, saying, “Every time I name them, my dead are resurrected.” And thanks to her bravery, the names and stories of the silenced have not been forgotten and can be heard all over the world.
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