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Gabriela Mistral (April 7, 1889—January 10, 1957) was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945. She was able to get work as a teacher thanks to her older sister, Emelina, who had likewise begun as a teacher's aide, and was responsible for much of the poet's early education. In 1918 Pedro Aguirre Cerda, then Minister of Education and a future President of Chile, appointed her to direct a Liceo, or high school in Punta Arenas. In 1921, she was named director of the newest and most prestigious girls' school in Chile. By 1922, she had moved to Mexico where she helped reform libraries and schools.