Between subjectivity and otherness in Gabriela Mistral’s political discourse in the form of prose during the decade of 1930

Abstract

This article consists of doing a critical analysis of Gabriela Mistral’s Political Discourse in order to decolonize the myth created about her, as this will open new perspectives about the understanding we have of our First Nobel Prize in Literature in both Chile and the rest of the countries in Iberian America. For this article, two texts were selected in which it is revealed how Gabriela Mistral reflected on one of the major figures in Hispanic America, namely Simón Bolívar. Both of them were published in the newspaper El Mercurio in 1931: “Bolívar a los 40 años” and “La Ambición de Bolívar”. In general terms, they deal with a biographical profile. In addition, the focus will not be on the ideological side of Mistral, but on her chronotope, the one which allows us to have access to her subjectivity. Thus, on the one hand, the traditional manipulation of Mistral’s political biography will not weigh upon her memory. On the other hand, the consideration of her chronotope will reveal a new narrative about her, and this will prove useful as an alternative understanding of the author. Nonetheless, this will take place from this facet censored in her literary writing, i.e. the political writing published out of her homeland. However, this new narrative will be a chronotope that will see its own completion in a continuum, since this never-ending process will help to suspend this monolithic biography of an apolitical and conservative Mistral, imposed since the advent of the colonial myth of the Republic of Chile.