{"id":13132,"date":"2026-03-07T14:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elpregonerodechile.com\/?p=13132"},"modified":"2026-03-07T14:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:57:12","slug":"new-research-reveals-diaguita-and-afro-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elpregonerodechile.com\/?p=13132","title":{"rendered":"New Research Reveals Diaguita and Afro Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Original article: La ra\u00edces de Gabriela Mistral que quisieron silenciar: Estudio revela or\u00edgenes Diaguita y Afro<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Unveiling Gabriela Mistral\u2019s Hidden Roots: New Research Reveals Diaguita and Afro Heritage<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

When Gabriela Mistral wrote \u00abI know something, I hope, about myself<\/strong>\u00ab, she was not only defending her identity against those who mocked her claims of Indigenous ancestry, but also asserting a truth that academic research is only just beginning to fully uncover.<\/p>\n

According to genealogical research conducted by historian Cristi\u00e1n Cofr\u00e9 Le\u00f3n<\/strong>, the Nobel laureate \u00abwas of the land, with ancestral Indigenous blood and African roots from a Black woman who lived in the Huasco Valley<\/strong>\u00ab.<\/p>\n

In Cofr\u00e9\u2019s publication: \u201cAncestors of Gabriela Mistral<\/a>\u201d (2025), it is noted that on her paternal line, through her father Jer\u00f3nimo Godoy Villanueva, Mistral descended from Juana Godoy, \u00abmost likely mulatto\u00bb, and from Paula Guanchicai, \u00aban Indigenous woman entrusted to Don Antonio Zepeda\u00bb, whose children were classified as mestizo in colonial records.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The poet herself confessed in her private writings that her father was \u00abvery \u2018aindiado\u2019\u00bb and that \u00abmy grandfather Godoy was pure Indian\u00bb, also adding that he had \u00abthe Mongolian spot, something my mother told me\u00bb.<\/p>\n

These revelations, published in a work by Miguel de Cervantes University<\/a> by Lorena Figueroa<\/strong>, challenge decades of representations that reduced Mistral to a Europeanized figure, ignoring her deep blood connection to the Indigenous peoples of northern Chile.<\/p>\n

Far from being an anecdotal piece of information, this ancestral heritage became the core of her social thought and literary creation. Academic Lorena Figueroa states that \u00abGabriela sees the Indian as a natural part of racial mixing; it is the alpha of mestizaje, and as a component, it is worthy of rescue, appreciation, and valuing above the Spanish omega\u00bb.<\/p>\n

This belief didn\u2019t originate solely from her Mexican experiences with Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos, as is often claimed, but emerged from the intimate certainty that her ancestors had inhabited those same valleys she described with devotion in her work, Poema de Chile.<\/p>\n

Leader Alejandra Riquelme from the Diaguita Tamaya clan<\/strong> expressed it forcefully and clearly in 2014: \u201cThis Diaguita people belonged to our first Nobel Prize in Literature, Gabriela Mistral Huanchicay, who was always proud of her origins, and today we reclaim her as one of ours<\/strong>\u00ab.<\/p>\n

At the same event, during the formation of a Diaguita association in the Aconcagua Valley<\/a>, young Sim\u00f3n Alfaro<\/strong> proudly declared: \u201cThis is a historic process, as my Tata used to say; we reclaim Diaguita tradition and also honor Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, Gabriela Mistral, who was a descendant of the Diaguita clan \u00abHUANCHICAY\u00bb and never denied it; she always recognized herself as a mestiza, an Indian<\/strong>\u00ab.<\/p>\n

The surname Huanchicay, long omitted in official historiography, now emerges as evidence of a connection that the poet never denied but that cultural elites preferred to silence.<\/p>\n

ANDINIAN COSMOVISION IN MISTRAL\u2019S WORK: DIAGUITA CHILDHOOD AS A CENTRAL POINT<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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The land of the Elqui Valley was not just the geographical backdrop of Mistral\u2019s childhood; it served as the cultural matrix that nurtured her sensitivity and commitment to the marginalized in America. In her poem \u00abThe Earth,\u00bb included in a publication by Miguel de Cervantes University, the lyrical voice directly addresses the Indigenous child with a tenderness that transcends aesthetics to become a political statement: \u00abIndian child, if you are tired, \/ you lie down on the earth, \/ and the same if you are happy. \/ My child, play with her\u2026\u00bb Here, the earth is not viewed as property but as a mother, as a \u00absacred back\u00bb that bears everything: \u00abwhat walks, what sleeps, \/ what frolics and what grieves; \/ and carries the living and the dead \/ the Indian drum of the Earth\u00bb.<\/p>\n

This conception of American soil, so characteristic of Andean worldview, permeates all her literary production and reaches its pinnacle in Poema de Chile, a work where she constructs a day with a Diaguita child that allows her to traverse the country through a deeply Indigenous lens.<\/p>\n

Historian Cristi\u00e1n Cofr\u00e9<\/strong> emphasizes that in Mistral\u2019s genealogy \u00abdiverse origins intertwined, so Chilean, so northern\u00bb, merging the blood of Spanish conquistadors like Francisco de Aguirre with that of Indigenous and African individuals who inhabited the Huasco Valley<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This blend undoubtedly propelled her to develop an original thought about America, which Lorena Figueroa qualifies as \u00abboth particular and universal: particular because it produced a concrete model of thought for America, rescuing the fundamental values of our culture and leading them to a respectful proposal of origin; universal because it encompassed all areas of public and political reality\u00bb.<\/p>\n

When Mistral directly appealed to President Truman during a ceremonial meeting, urging him that a country as wealthy as his should assist the \u00ablittle Indians\u00bb of Latin America \u00abwho are so poor, who are hungry, who have no schools,\u00bb she was not motivated by abstract compassion, but by the certainty that those \u00ablittle Indians\u00bb were part of her own blood, of her own family history silenced for generations.<\/p>\n

Research conducted by Lorena Figueroa, published in Miguel de Cervantes University, concludes that \u00abher interest in the land encompassed a political and economic judgment; for the Indian, a political and social concern,\u00bb thus shaping a legacy that we only now, eighty years after her Nobel Prize, begin to understand in all its depth and relevance.<\/p>\n

Alfredo Seguel<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n