In 2019, the Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent a letter to the king Philip VI from Spain. In it he indicated that “during the Colony, individual and collective rights were violated that with a contemporary perspective must be assumed as attacks on the principles that govern both nations.” For this reason, he indicated that “Mexico wants the Spanish State to admit its historical responsibility for these offenses and offer the appropriate apologies or political compensation.”
The letter received no response and, as a complaint, the president Claudia SheinbaumLópez Obrador’s successor, did not invite Philip VI to his inauguration, to which the President of the Spanish Government also refused to attend, Pedro Sanchez.
Facts like the previous one update the debate on how to evaluate the Spanish presence in America for more than 300 years. This is an extraordinarily complex topic. It is not easy to address how to interpret, explain and manage this shared history, as it is an issue that goes beyond specialized debate. They also mediate political, ideological and economic interests diverse, which often conflict with academic approaches.
Now, the knowledge of those years of shared history is not the same on both sides of the Atlantic. In Latin American universities, the history and literature of peninsular Spain is studied throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. For example, at UNAM there is a subject dedicated to Quixote exclusively. However, in Spain there are few possibilities of accessing analogous knowledge of viceregal America. Even in universities with a greater orientation towards Hispanic America, the entire period is concentrated in a single subject.
The figure of Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648 or 1651-1695) is representative of this situation. The writer is recognized as one of the most relevant personalities in Mexican history. Her position is unique in the literature of the Golden Age: woman, nun, New Spain and Creole. And this singularity has made possible different readings of her work that, at times, tend towards appropriation, projecting onto Sor Juana ideas foreign to her time.
In many areas, the writer is today an LGBT icon. Sor Juana maintained a close relationship with the Countess of Paredes, vicereen of New Spain, within the coordinates of the court system, in which she knew how to find a space to develop as a writer. This link has been interpreted as a kind of cryptolesbianism. The poems dedicated to the vicereine occupy more than 15% of all her personal lyrics. In one of them, Sor Juana writes to him:
“be a woman or be absent
loving you is not an impediment,
Well you know that the souls
distance they ignore and sex.”
For some critics, Sor Juana is also an Americanist, who exercised oblique resistance against colonial power. However, reading his works in their cultural context forces us to be cautious and not fall into anachronisms.
It does seem clear that Sor Juana defended her right to access knowledge and study despite her status as a woman and as a nun. In one of his sonnets he indicates that:
“it always makes me happier
put riches in my understanding
but not my understanding in riches.”
The Athenagoric Letter, from 1690, and especially the Response to Sister Filotea, from 1691, are famous in this sense.
Now, in her last years the writer made a new novitiate, decided to get rid of her library and renounced public life. Part of the criticism maintains that Sor Juana was forced to make these decisions, but another part considers that this decision was sincere.
Beyond the enigmas that surround the author, considering her work, Sor Juana is in her own right one of the most relevant poets of the 17th century. His poetry is greatly influenced by the work of Gongorabut the writer was able to create her own style, in which we find traces of Garcilaso, Calderón, Quevedo o Gracian. She was also a notable playwright: she composed several loas (kind of prologues to plays), sacramental autos and comedies.
His work was published for the first time in Madrid, under the title Castalid flood of the only poetess, tenth muse. The fact is exceptional because Creole writers found it very difficult to spread their works in Spain. Sor Juana became one of the first literary icons on both sides of the Atlantic. Shortly before dying, some Portuguese nuns who made up the literary academy House of pleasure They requested a contribution from the nun. She sent them twenty riddles written in verse.
The tenth muse is the only woman and the only American among all the great poets of the Golden Age. But her work, except in academic redoubts, is barely known in Spain. There are some exceptions – for example, the author was the star of the Almagro Festival in 2019 – but unfortunately they remain just that, exceptions.
Let’s study and read Sor Juana. Let us celebrate their literature as part of a common shared legacy. It is possible that, by better understanding this legacy, we can build a new Hispanic identity.
