1945 Gabriela Mistral received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945 "for her lyric poetry, which, inspired by intense emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American community." The poet was born on March 4th, 1889 in Churubusco, Mexico. Her parents were well-off farmers who owned land all around Latin America. When she was only nine years old, her family moved to Caracas, Venezuela because her father had been appointed director of education in an eastern province. She lived there until she was 18 years old when she went back to Mexico because her mother had died. After graduating from high school, she traveled throughout Europe for several years and then came back to Venezuela where she worked as a teacher. She met with great success with her poems which were published in magazines and newspapers across Venezuela. In 1937 she went back to France where she stayed for three years because of political problems in Venezuela. When she returned home, President Marcos Pérez Jiménez gave her job as professor at the University of Puerto Rico but she never accepted it because she felt it was not worthy enough to keep her away from writing poems. In 1945 she received the Nobel Prize after having been nominated by Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay.