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Los tres días de luto oficial después de la muerte de Gabriela Mistral presentaron un momento climático para su transformación en símbolo nacional. Por medio de las estampillas y los billetes de cinco mil pesos, las representaciones póstumas de Gabriela Mistral proponen un sentido de nacionalismo que se basa en términos dinásticos y religiosos. Ella sale de estas representaciones como santa maestra, como Reina Nobel ausente; y, en menor grado, como campesina leal. Tales representaciones efectúan para la nación, como comunidad imaginada, la impresión de un pasado mítico, noble y más allá del tiempo. El reconocimiento de las circunstancias políticas de sus retratos, que incluiría las siempre ambiguas y contradictorias identificaciones del poeta, abre camino hacia una comprensión de cómo las mujeres han sido utilizadas como símbolos de la nación.
(Mourning Gabriela Mistral's death was a climactic moment in the transformation of the poet into a national symbol.1 Posthumous representations of Gabriela Mistral in postage stamps and monetary currency evoke nationalist sentiment in dynastic and religious configurations, depicting her as santa maestra; absent, regal, Nobel Queen; and, to a lesser extent, loyal citizen-campesina. These representations create the impression of a timeless, mythic, noble past for the nation as an imagined fraternal community. Recognizing the political circumstances of her portraiture, including her own ambiguous, often contradictory identifications opens the way to understanding how women have been used as symbols of nationhood).
I. LA MISTRAL MEMORIALIZED: THE DEAD BODY
To judge from the rapt attention of the press and other national institutions, Gabriela Mistral's death, wake, funeral and eventual entombment constituted the most newsworthy aspect of the writer's long, turbulent, productive career.2 Multiple national institutions, agencies, and associations co-ordinated the handling of her corpse after Gabriela Mistral's death from pancreatic cancer in a Long Island hospital and her funeral in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. The Ministry of Foreign Relations worked with the military to fly the body to Lima, where the Chilean Air Force took over, bringing it to Santiago. A full military honor guard received it. The Ministry of Education (Mistral's employer for the first half of her life) presided over the wake, which celebrated Mistral as a beloved maestra. For the three days of official mourning the corpse lay in state...