Statue of Gabriela Mistral in Montegrande.

Image source.

In the 1990s when I was conducting research on the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, I used to travel with my grandmother Josefina to the small town of Montegrande where Gabriela spent her childhood. Before arriving at our final destination in the Elqui Valley, we would spend the night in the majestic colonial city of La Serena that awakens the senses. I always enjoyed walking around the Francisco de Aguirre Sculpture Park that is located there. Many of the statues there were replicas of classical Greek and Italian works. At night I used to think about the peace emanating from the immobility of the statues, but I also used to reflect with a feeling of apprehension that, in Chile, and in the other countries in Latin America, the majority of the statues of Chile’s heroes were, and continue to be, of men. The presence of sculptures of women was scant, almost nonexistent. 

Those statues made me ask myself where were the extraordinary women who had also contributed significantly to the creation of the nation? Throughout Chile there are statues of heroes like Arturo Prat, perhaps the most famous hero of the Chilean Navy who lived in the 19th century and died during the War of the Pacific, and General Baquedano, another hero of the same war. But where are the statues of the great women of Chile?    

The statues in the Francisco de Aguirre Park make me think about the role of women in history. Why are so few statues made of them? Why do they hardly ever appear in these kinds of parks? The answer resides in a lack of equity and civic participation with regard to making decisions about which statues populate Chile’s plazas and parks. I can tell you that the statue of Gabriela Mistral that sits before her tomb in the Montegrande cemetery commemorates what she represented for the children of that town. It also honors her goodness and altruism but it tells us very little about her poetic opus and her dedication human rights. 

Then there’s the statue of María Luisa Bombal, the great Chilean writer, which is often overlooked in a small, dark plaza in Viña del Mar where she was born. Could it be that statues of women only portray their benevolent attributes and not their great accomplishments as artists? Could it be that history once again insists on making them invisible? 

Statue of María Luisa Bombal by Francisco Javier Torres Rojas in the Plazoleta María Luisa Bombal.

Image source

There is an impressive statue of Violeta Parra located in San Carlos Ñuble. It is large, one might even say oversized, and is out of proportion in that it portrays the artist as a big woman when she was really quite petite. Perhaps the sculptor, Óscar Sánchez, wanted to portray her as he imagined her: as larger than life and victorious with a broad smile on her face and holding an enormous guitar. 

I believe that the sculpture masculinizes Violeta. It turns her into another hero of the country, but not a heroine. To me the statue returns Violeta to the same silence she had to endure during her lifetime when she was often ignored and even condemned. In the arts and crafts fairs, her work sold for very little. It is only today, only after her death, that it is finally coveted. When I speak of the silence to which she was relegated, I am referring to the meager support she received from the powerful and influential elements of society, including universities from which she was turned away when she sought support to study Chilean folklore. The lack of support surely affected her and might explain why she often had a sad smile on her face when she was singing. It was a half-smile that reflected a great sadness that consumed her. Nevertheless, her passion for music, painting and poetry were always with her serving as an inexhaustible fount of creativity.

I do not want to criticize the work of a sculptor, because I respect all artists for their creative talent, but when I see that huge statue, it seems that it does not reflect the Violeta we knew, the Violeta who sings from her soul, who has a simple and sonorous guitar from which emerge songs of extraordinary beauty that communicate a remarkable understanding of human nature. I ask myself, why wasn’t a woman invited to create a sculpture of this great woman, this great artist? Why was a man selected?

Image sources, left and right.

The sculpture by that man is made of bronze, but I believe Violeta belonged to the earth, to clay. She lived a humble life in San Carlos Ñuble in a house that most certainly had precarious dirt floors. I think of Violeta as being made of clay, of earth, of straw. I always imagine her filled with the earth on which she walked through the Chilean countryside in search of songs. 

Another statue of Violeta was built on the Plaza of Poets in Chiguayante. That sculpture seems to me to come closer to portraying the essence of Violeta with a smile that is somewhere between nostalgic and absent, with a guitar that seems to fit her body. She always had a guitar with her. What a shame that two years ago that statue was destroyed; one of Violeta’s hands and the neck of her guitar were broken off. What is more, the Violeta Parra museum in Santiago de Chile was burned twice in 2020, nobody knows by whom.

These criminal acts and acts of vandalism affect those of us who have loved and respected Violeta Parra, and it seems outrageous to me that even in death she cannot be openly portrayed, appreciated and loved. 

Violeta Parra continues to be one of the great artists of the 20th century, not only in Latin America but around the world. Her songs are always recognized and sung. It is a shame that her textile artwork—made from brightly colored strands of wool—is scattered around the world, that so little is known of her, and that her painting and poetry are not taught. There are only a few scholars around the world who focus on Violeta’s work like Lorna Dillon at Ulster University in Ireland and the musicologist Alejandro Mondaca who is now at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. 

I hope that one day these great voids in the scholarship on Violeta Parra will be filled, that she will be taught in all the schools in Chile, and that a new generation of young people will not burn down her museum or tear down statues of her. Maybe one day a woman with prodigious hands will create a beautiful sculpture of Violeta. She will be holding a small guitar. Violeta will be half smiling and half crying and perhaps in the guitar there will be birds singing. After all, it was Violeta who once said that the most precious thing she inherited from her father was a guitar filled with birds.