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20 Facts About Nellie Campobello

1.

Nellie Francisca Ernestina Campobello Luna was a Mexican writer, notable for having written one of the few chronicles of the Mexican Revolution from a woman's perspective: Cartucho, which chronicles her experience as a young girl in Northern Mexico at the height of the struggle between forces loyal to Pancho Villa and those who followed Venustiano Carranza.

2.

Nellie Campobello moved to Mexico City in 1923, where she spent the rest of her life and associated with many of the most famous Mexican intellectuals and artists of the epoch.

3.

Nellie Campobello was the director of the Mexican National School of Dance.

4.

Nellie Campobello was born in 1900, though she would later sometimes say that she was born in 1909,1912, or 1913.

5.

Nellie Campobello spent her childhood in Parral, Chihuahua, and her youth in the city of Chihuahua, where she attended the Inglesa de la Colonia Rosales college.

6.

Under the direction of Nellie Campobello, Gloria was considered the Prima Ballerina of Mexico.

7.

Nellie Campobello was later director of the national school of dance at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.

8.

Nellie Campobello was a classmate of the Costa sisters, Lettie Carroll, Carmen Gale, Madame Sanislava Potapovich, and Carol Adamchevsky.

9.

In 1937 Nellie Campobello was designated the director of the Escuela Nacional de Danza, a role which she occupied until 1984.

10.

In 1928, Nellie Campobello published her first book of poetry under the name Francisca.

11.

Alongside poetry Nellie Campobello wrote during her time in Havana as a ballerina, some of the poems from Yo were published in the Cuban magazine Revista de La Habana.

12.

Nellie Campobello continued to write about this fight in her work Apuntes sobre la vida militar de Francisco Villa.

13.

Nellie Campobello never married, but had a number of affairs.

14.

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

15.

Nellie Campobello is considered the first modern narrator in 20th century Mexico.

16.

In 1985 Nellie Campobello suddenly disappeared, along with her belongings, including paintings by Orozco and Diego Rivera.

17.

Nellie Campobello had apparently been kidnapped by Claudio Fuentes Figueroa or Claudio Nino Cienfuentes and his spouse Maria Cristina Belmont.

18.

Nellie Campobello was involved with some investigations into finding the lost writer but eventually he backed out of the search.

19.

In 1998, the Human Rights Commission of the Federal District ruled that Nellie Campobello had died on July 9,1986, and that she was buried in an unnamed grave in a cemetery in Progreso de Obregon, Hidalgo.

20.

Nellie Campobello's corpse was transferred to Villa Ocampo, her hometown, in 1999, and she was honored with a monument.