Nellie Campobello

Nellie^[1] Francisca Ernestina Campobello Luna, born María Francisca Moya Luna^[2] (b. November 7, 1900 – d. July 9, 1986), was a Mexican writer. Like her half-sister Gloria, a well-known ballet dancer, she was also known as an enthusiastic dancer and choreographer.

Biography

Campobello was born in Ocampo, Durango the third of six children of Rafaela Luna, and her father was her mother's nephew Jesús Felipe Moya Luna, son of her sister Florencia. Probably this was a reason, why she concealed traces of her past. She handled also her year of birth indiscriminately as 1909 or 1913.^[3] She spent her childhood in Parral, Chihuahua and her youth in the city of Chihuahua, where she visited the Inglesa de la Colonia Rosales college. After her father was killed in the Battle of Ojinaga in 1914, her mother remarried the physician Stephen Campbell from Boston, whose last name the children assumed, and which was altered to Campobello by Nellie.^[2] In 1921, her mother died.

During the revolutionary years she came to Mexico City, where she became later director of the national school of dance (Spanish: Escuela Nacional de Danza) of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.^[4]

In 1985 she suddenly disappeared, as well as her belongings and paintings of Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. In 1998, the Commission of Human rights of the Federal District discovered that Nellie died on July 9, 1986, and that she was buried in the Progreso de Obregón Cemetery of Hidalgo. Supposedly she was kidnapped by Claudio Fuentes Figueroa or Claudio Niño Cienfuentes and his spouse Maria Cristina Belmont. Many of her choreographies of indigenous dances were rescued.^[5] Her corpse was transferred to Durango in 1999.^[6]

She was never married, but had several affairs. It is traced, that she had a son (1919–1921) with Alfredo Chávez, the later Governor of Chihuahua.^[3] Also Germán List Arzubide told that he felt in love with her.^[7]

She was one of the few women involved in the center of Mexico's intellectual groups and was also great friends with Federico Garcia Lorca and Langston Hughes who translated her poetry into English.

To this day, she is considered the only female Mexican writer to publish narrations (semi-autobiographical) during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. This is why she is often referred to "La centaura del norte". "Cartucho" is considered a classic literary work of the Mexican Revolution, showing the Villistas in a favorable light at a time when most of the literature was criminalizing them.

Literary Works

• Yo, poems, 1928
• Cartucho, 1931
• Las manos de mamá, novel, 1937
• Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Francisco Villa, 1940
• Ritmos indígenas de México, 1940
• Tres poemas, 1957
• Mis libros, 1960 (illustrated by José Clemente Orozco)
• Obra reunida, 2008 (Fondo de Cultura Economica)

References and notes

External links

• Nelly Campobello at the Internet Movie Database
• Nellie Campobello in the Ibero-American Institute (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) catalogue, Berlin
• Nellie Campobello in the German National Library catalogue