President Boric leads 2022 National Awards ceremony and seizes the moment to make an important announcement

President Gabriel Boric led a ceremony at La Moneda Palace to present the 2022 National Awards. Education Minister Marco Antonio Ávila, Cultures, Arts and Heritage Minister Julieta Brodsky, and Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation Minister Silvia Díaz were also in attendance. 

The event honored the winners in the categories of Natural Sciences (Sergio Lavandero), Applied and Technological Sciences (Ricardo Araya), History (Rafael Luis Sagredo), Literature (Hernán Rivera Letelier) and Musical Arts (Elisa Avendaño Curaqueo). 

President Boric praised each of the award winners and recognized their contribution to Chile’s development. 

“As one of the professors who spoke before me said, each of these disciplines has provided an opportunity to travel the world. Hernán Rivera has achieved this with his works, all you award-winning scientists with your students, Elisa with her singing, with the recovery of her culture. The work thus transcends territory, space and time,” the President stated. 

“This year, we are celebrating eight decades since the first National Literature Award was presented, the oldest of the national awards. At that time, the award went to Augusto D’Halmar, a writer who I hope we will read more of.” 

The President announced some important news, stating that he would promote an annual “National Literature Award, one year for narrative work and the next for poetry.” This would change the current format, which presents an award every two years. 

“I want you all to know, as Hernán Rivera Letelier said, this is a question of political will. In a country where literature has given us so much, it seems to me that we have to push and promote this gesture,” President Boric concluded. 

Hernán Rivera Letelier expressed his gratitude for the award in his own particular style, and highlighted the importance of his readers throughout the 54 years that he has been writing. “This is for my readers, people with clear hearts. I would like to thank the Cultures Ministry for valuing me with such an important recognition. This award crowns the 54 years that we have been writing, correcting, rewriting, without rest. And I say ‘we’ because I do not write alone; because the best paragraphs of my books, the pages that stand out, the best-finished chapters, are written by my elf, the elf who today refused to accompany me to this ceremony.” 

History of the National Award

The National Award is the highest recognition granted by the State of Chile to the work of Chileans who stand out due to their excellence, creativity, transcendent contribution to national culture and the development of their field, knowledge and the arts. 

The prizes were first awarded in 1942, when the National Literature and Art Awards were created. Since then, different legal norms have modified the awards and introduced new disciplines of art and knowledge. Law 19.169 was enacted in 1992, finally establishing bi-annual awards in eleven categories: 

Even years:

• Natural Sciences
• Applied and Technological Sciences
• History
• Musical Arts
• Literature

Odd years:

• Journalism
• Exact Sciences
• Educational Sciences
• Humanities and Social Sciences
• Fine Arts
• Performing and Audiovisual Arts

Recipients

Sergio Lavandero (Natural Sciences)

Sergio Lavandero holds a degree in Chemistry and Pharmacy and a PhD in Biochemistry from the Universidad de Chile. He has completed advanced studies in academic institutions in Holland, England, Australia and the United States. He is a professor in the Faculty of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine at the Universidad de Chile; associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, USA); and director and lead researcher at the Advanced Center for Chronic Diseases (ACCDiS), formed by the Universidad de Chile and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Sergio Lavandero was born in Santiago, Chile on September 9, 1959 (62 years old). He was also nominated for the awards in 2016 and 2020. 

Ricardo Araya Baltra (Applied and Technological Sciences)

Ricardo Araya Baltra holds a degree in Psychiatry from the Universidad de Chile. He completed his training in psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital in London. He holds a PhD from the University of London and a diploma in Health Economics from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He is an academic and researcher at universities in Chile and abroad. He is currently the director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at King’s College London, England. Ricardo Araya Baltra was born in Santiago, Chile on September 3, 1953 (68 years old). 

Rafael Sagredo Baeza (History)

Rafael Sagredo Baeza holds a PhD and Master’s in History from the Colegio de México. He is a professor of History, Geography and Civic Education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. 
 He is associate professor in the Institute of History at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where he has taught undergraduate courses since 1990 and graduate courses since 2005. Rafael Sagredo Baeza was born in Santiago, Chile on January 3, 1959 (63 years old), where he currently lives. He was also nominated for the awards in 2018 and 2020. 

Hernán Rivera Letelier (Literature)

Hernán Rivera Letelier is without doubt one of the most widely read and prolific contemporary Chilean authors. His 21 books published to date describe the pampas of northern Chile, and the nostalgia of its landscapes and inhabitants in the silence of the desert and saltpeter mines. The truth and strength of his stories are built on the experience of the author, who spent his childhood in the saltpeter mines of Algorta, María Elena and Pedro de Valdivia. He lived his adolescence in Antofagasta and traveled through Latin America in his youth. Perhaps that is why he is the narrator of a vanished world, who creates the imaginary of the pampas and the saltpeter mines in Chile and the rest of the world.  

Elisa Avendaño Curaqueo (Musical Arts)

Elisa Avedaño Curaqueo is the first representative of indigenous peoples and the fifth woman to receive the National Musical Arts Award. She is a Mapuche woman from the Manuel Chavarría community in the municipality of Lautaro in La Araucanía Region. Her life’s work has focused on her culture through the practice and teaching of the Mapuzungun language, traditional Mapuche medicine and the composition and interpretation of traditional Mapuche music. She has excelled as a researcher, author and composer of the cultural heritage of the Mapuche people. She has also dedicated herself to sharing her knowledge and wisdom with the next generations of Mapuche children and young people through workshops and music and dance classes, as well as other cultural expressions.