Gabriela Mistral left her South American royalties to the poor children of her village, and Pinochet's government let anyone publish her work in Chile from 1979

Gabriela Mistral grew up in Montegrande in the Elqui valley and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945. Her 1956 will named her American companion Doris Dana executor and general heir, and left the royalties from her books sold in South America to the poor children of Montegrande, with the Franciscan order to administer them. She died in Hempstead, New York, on 10 January 1957, and her remains were moved to Montegrande on 23 March 1960, as she had asked. In 1979 the military government issued Decree-Law 2.560, which authorised the reproduction of her work in Chile. IPS reported that the regime denied Dana the inheritance rights because she would not authorise publication there. In 1998 the Franciscans, after a dispute with a former deputy, handed the fund over with a cheque for about 7,000 dollars. Law 19.854, promulgated on 22 January 2003 under President Ricardo Lagos, repealed the decree. After Dana's death her niece Doris Atkinson gave Mistral's papers, letters and objects to the Chilean state in 2007. In January 2026 the friar who administers the Franciscan fund said the bequest is paid each year through Montegrande's public school, while the legal representative of the local children's orchestra said the money does not show in the children's lives. Her copyrights are expected to expire on 1 January 2028, and the chair of the Chamber's culture committee is drafting a bill to extend them by ten years.