Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Holly,
Speaker 1: we have one of those episodes that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have been asking us to do for years. Indeed
Speaker 1: are only just now getting to it. We have had
Speaker 1: a lot of listener requests to talk about sor Juanna
Speaker 1: Inez de la Cruz, including from Bailey, Alyssa, Wendy Arturo, Tressa,
Speaker 1: Shannon Mario, Ella, Jessica, Gayle, Lindsay, Meghan and Chavon. At
Speaker 1: least three of those are folks who requested it when
Speaker 1: I asked for some topic suggestions on our Facebook page recently,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we have had other requests as well.
Speaker 1: At this point, we can only look back through like
Speaker 1: four years or so of email, and the rest of
Speaker 1: it is gone into oblivion. Well, and even some of
Speaker 1: those four years has gone in oblivion thanks to a
Speaker 1: number of email migrations. Those Unfortunately, they are always casualties. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: when uh when, when you are not the personal controller
Speaker 1: of your own email because you work for a company,
Speaker 1: then sometimes things happen that are beyond your control anyway.
Speaker 1: Sorwana Inez de la Cruz lived in New Spain in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, that's in what's now Mexico, and she
Speaker 1: was the Spanish Empire's most widely published poet of her time.
Speaker 1: Her work was read in both Spanish and Portuguese speaking
Speaker 1: areas in Europe and the America's and the Philippines, and
Speaker 1: her work has survived until today. But in terms of
Speaker 1: like her own personal thoughts and introspection, we don't have
Speaker 1: as much about a lot of her life. Consequently, her
Speaker 1: life has been just really subject to interpretation. It has
Speaker 1: been interpreted incredibly differently depending on who has been doing
Speaker 1: the interpreting. So I mean there's a out of variety
Speaker 1: you can you can get an almost totally different sense
Speaker 1: of who she was depending on exactly who is describing her. Also,
Speaker 1: her poetry is very complex, and she wrote in poetic
Speaker 1: forms that were common during the Spanish Golden Age that
Speaker 1: won't necessarily be familiar even to people who have studied poetry,
Speaker 1: like I have studied poetry, but I have studied poetry
Speaker 1: in English, and a lot of the poetic forms that
Speaker 1: she wrote in are totally unfamiliar to me. So if
Speaker 1: you studied Spanish language poetry, specifically in particular the New
Speaker 1: Spanish Baroque, that might have all be forms that you
Speaker 1: know about. Um not as easy to explain to English
Speaker 1: speakers who don't have the familiarity. So this episode is
Speaker 1: a lot more about sor Juana's life than it is
Speaker 1: about her work. Yeah, when I studied poetry in college,
Speaker 1: so it was not really any delving into the New
Speaker 1: Spanish Baroque. No, well, then it's it has the added
Speaker 1: layer of complexity of if if you are not a
Speaker 1: fluent speaker of Spanish, you're reading a translation into English,
Speaker 1: and translating poetry is particularly difficult because of how poetry works. Yes,
Speaker 1: I learned that primarily from Charles Baudelaire, not Spanish, but
Speaker 1: similar translation issues not nearly as beautiful or melodic to
Speaker 1: my ear in English. But well, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that one of my one of my literature professors
Speaker 1: told us when I was in college was that Baudelaire
Speaker 1: was the person who translated Poe into French. So pose
Speaker 1: poetry in French is incredibly beautiful in a way that
Speaker 1: it isn't necessarily in English. It really is like the
Speaker 1: cadence of it is really beautiful. It uh, it has
Speaker 1: its own rhythm that is not the way it reads
Speaker 1: in English. I also love Poe in English, but there
Speaker 1: is a whole It's like a whole different writer essentially,
Speaker 1: um which is kind of illustrative of what you were saying. Like,
Speaker 1: any time you're translating and then interpreting and extrapolating someone's
Speaker 1: essen from their written work in poetry that has been
Speaker 1: shifted around, you're going to get different versions of who
Speaker 1: that person was. Yep. Have you only read Poe in French,
Speaker 1: I bet you would think he was slightly different than
Speaker 1: he really was in real life. So applying this to
Speaker 1: today's topic. Sarjuana and As de la Cruz was born
Speaker 1: Juanna Ramirez as Bahi in San Miguel and the Pantla,
Speaker 1: which is southeast of Mexico City. Her mother was Isabel
Speaker 1: Ramirez de Santiana, who was a creolea woman, that is,
Speaker 1: she was of Spanish descent, but she was born in
Speaker 1: New Spain, and her father was Pedro Manuel de Esbahi,
Speaker 1: who Wanna described as Basque. He had come to the
Speaker 1: Americas from Europe, and Juana was the youngest of three
Speaker 1: daughters who were born to Isabel and Pedro Wanas. Date
Speaker 1: of birth isn't clear, as is the case with a
Speaker 1: lot of people born this long ago. Some sources noted
Speaker 1: as November twelfth, sixteen fifty one, but there's also a
Speaker 1: baptismal record from her parish that's probably hers and that
Speaker 1: was dated December second, sixteen forty eight. This record notes
Speaker 1: the baptism of a girl named Inez, whose godparents were
Speaker 1: Isabelle Ramirez, his brother and sister, so her maternal uncle
Speaker 1: and aunt. This record also describes the young in As
Speaker 1: as daughter of the Church, which meant that her parents
Speaker 1: weren't married to one another. Sometime after Juana was born,
Speaker 1: her father left the family, and we do not know
Speaker 1: why that happened or where he went. We don't even
Speaker 1: actually know exactly when it happened. It was by the
Speaker 1: time Juanna was five or six years old, but it
Speaker 1: was probably earlier than that. And As took her children
Speaker 1: to live with her father at his hacienda known as Panoya,
Speaker 1: and this was one of two haciendas that he was
Speaker 1: leasing from the church, which had a workforce of enslaved
Speaker 1: Africans and indigenous people. Enslavement of indigenous people had been
Speaker 1: outlawed in New Spain, although working conditions for indigenous people
Speaker 1: still tended to be abusive and exploitive. This family wasn't
Speaker 1: especially affluent, but they were relatively comfortable and stable, and
Speaker 1: they were able to send why as older sister, Josepha Maria,
Speaker 1: to a local school that was being run by a
Speaker 1: woman in the community for the benefit of its less
Speaker 1: wealthy children. When she was about three years old, Wanna
Speaker 1: sneaked away from home and followed her sister to school,
Speaker 1: and then told the teacher that her mother had ordered
Speaker 1: that she get lessons to In Juannah's account, this teacher
Speaker 1: did not believe her, but she found the whole thing
Speaker 1: so charming that she gave Wanna lessons anyway, and Juanna
Speaker 1: learned so quickly that by the time her mother realized
Speaker 1: what she was doing and put a stop to it,
Speaker 1: she already knew how to read. Aside from that and
Speaker 1: about twenty lessons in Latin, this was Wanta's only formal education,
Speaker 1: but once she knew how to read, Wanna started educating herself.
Speaker 1: She started with her grandfather's library. She would take the
Speaker 1: books from the shelves and then go hide in the
Speaker 1: hacienda's chapel to read them undisturbed. Juanna did not have
Speaker 1: a lot of choice in what she studied. The books
Speaker 1: that were available to her were the ones in her
Speaker 1: grandfather's library, and that was that. But dedicated herself to
Speaker 1: whatever she had at hand, and to motivate herself, she
Speaker 1: would cut a few inches off of her hair, intending
Speaker 1: to master a particular subject by the time it grew back,
Speaker 1: and if she failed, she would cut more of her
Speaker 1: hair off. She said, quote, it did not seem to
Speaker 1: me reasonable that I dressed the hair of a head
Speaker 1: naked of knowledge, which was a more appreciable adornment. When
Speaker 1: she learned that there was a university in Mexico City,
Speaker 1: but that only men were allowed to attend, she begged
Speaker 1: her mother to let her dress as a boy so
Speaker 1: that she could go. Her mother did not go for
Speaker 1: this plan. I think she was also still a small
Speaker 1: She was too young, in addition to being a girl,
Speaker 1: too young to go to university. But yeah, there was
Speaker 1: no way her family was going to allow her to
Speaker 1: do that. In January of sixteen fifty six, when she
Speaker 1: was about eight, Juana's grandfather died and in about the
Speaker 1: same time, her mother started a relationship with a man
Speaker 1: named Diego Ruiz Lozano, although they also never married. Isabel
Speaker 1: and Diego had two daughters and a son together, and
Speaker 1: sometime as all of this was happening, Wana was sent
Speaker 1: to Mexico City to live with her mother's sister. All
Speaker 1: of these changes probably played a part in her going
Speaker 1: to Mexico City, but the exact reasons for Juanna's departure
Speaker 1: aren't documented anywhere, and we also don't know whether her
Speaker 1: older sisters were also sent to live somewhere else at
Speaker 1: the same time. But we do know that Juanna's half
Speaker 1: siblings had better prospects for their futures than Juanna and
Speaker 1: her sisters did. All six of them had been born
Speaker 1: to unwed parents, although that was not as stigmatized as
Speaker 1: folks may imagine. In terms of religion. New Spain was
Speaker 1: very strictly Catholic, but at the same time people seem
Speaker 1: to recognize and accept that people who were not married
Speaker 1: to each other might have babies together. The family doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to have been looked down on or ostracized because
Speaker 1: of any of this, and several people within the family
Speaker 1: went on to marry prominent respected men, attend university or
Speaker 1: find careers in the church or the military. I think
Speaker 1: will imagine that if if you had children and you
Speaker 1: were unmarried, that your whole family might be immediately shunned
Speaker 1: from society and you had to hide forever. And that
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem to be how things were actually working
Speaker 1: when and where it Wanta was living. More important than
Speaker 1: the children's birth was the fact that Diego Ruiz Losano
Speaker 1: had some money and he was present in his children's
Speaker 1: lives so one his half sisters all had dowries and
Speaker 1: they had a father to negotiate for them in their marriages.
Speaker 1: Wanna had none of that. She did have some relatives
Speaker 1: who could offer some protection, though her mother's sister Maria,
Speaker 1: had married a wealthy man named Wanda Mata, and we
Speaker 1: know very little of her life over the next few years,
Speaker 1: except that she was extremely precocious and continued to be
Speaker 1: very eager to learn. By age thirteen, she was teaching
Speaker 1: Latin to others, and she also taught herself no waddle.
Speaker 1: She also grew into an attractive young woman, which caught
Speaker 1: the attention of New Spain's nobility. We will get to
Speaker 1: that after a quick sponsor break. In the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: New Spain was ruled by a viceroy who acted as
Speaker 1: the Crown's presence in the America's The viceroy was sent
Speaker 1: to the America's from Spain and to try to ensure
Speaker 1: that the viceroy would be loyal to the crown but
Speaker 1: also not become too powerful. Viceroys were given limited terms.
Speaker 1: The standard term was technically three years, but often the
Speaker 1: actual assignment was more like seven or eight. A lot
Speaker 1: of vice stroies were given an extension before they even
Speaker 1: left from Europe. Relocating someone all the way across the
Speaker 1: ocean every three years seems like a lot. Antonio Sebastian did.
Speaker 1: Toledo Marquis de Mancera began serving as Viceroy of New
Speaker 1: Spain in sixteen sixty four, and he arrived with his
Speaker 1: wife Donia Leonar Carretto. Juana's aunt and uncle presented her
Speaker 1: at court, and Juanna, at the age of sixteen, was
Speaker 1: selected to be a lady in waiting to the viceroy,
Speaker 1: who was in her early thirties. Wanta lived at court
Speaker 1: from the age of sixteen until she was about twenty,
Speaker 1: and she became known as a court prodigy. One of
Speaker 1: the most famous stories from these years is that the
Speaker 1: Viceroy brought in a panel of forties scholars to try
Speaker 1: to test her intellect, and, in his words, quote in
Speaker 1: the manner of a royal galleon defending itself against a
Speaker 1: few small sloops that had assailed it, did wanna and
Speaker 1: as free herself of the questions, arguments and objections that
Speaker 1: so many each in his own class propounded. It's likely
Speaker 1: that this story was exaggerated at least somewhat, but the
Speaker 1: Viceroy Shorted loved to tell it, so probably some version
Speaker 1: of it really did happen. Probably also, the collective memory
Speaker 1: of everyone involved shifted to match with the Vice Royce. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the only, you know, examination of a person
Speaker 1: by a team of scholars that we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show. That is probably a little embellished. Being at
Speaker 1: court would have given Wana lots of resources to continue
Speaker 1: educating herself. Although she studied literature and is best known
Speaker 1: for her writing, Wana was also interested in science, astronomy, medicine,
Speaker 1: and law. She also wrote extensively, although most of her
Speaker 1: poems are not dated, so we don't always know when
Speaker 1: any particular poem was written. Her poetry included love poems,
Speaker 1: including ones written to the Vicerine, and in these poems
Speaker 1: she refers to the Vicerine as Laura, which is a
Speaker 1: reference to Petrarch's sonnets. These were socially acceptable given the
Speaker 1: vast differences in the two women's positions. It was more
Speaker 1: like a troubadour writing a courtly love sonnet to a
Speaker 1: lady than a lover writing a poem to someone who
Speaker 1: was considered their equal or their partner. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of speculation about Lana's time at court. A lot of
Speaker 1: her writing suggests to people that she had some firsthand
Speaker 1: experience with love. Her poetry especially is really evocative of
Speaker 1: all the feelings that can come along with a passionate
Speaker 1: or stormy love affair, including affection and jealousy and betrayal
Speaker 1: and the joy of requited feelings. A lot of these
Speaker 1: poems are also erotic, but at the same time, there
Speaker 1: is a lot that we just don't know, which has
Speaker 1: led people to wonder whether Wanta had a tragic love
Speaker 1: affair at court, and if so, who it was with,
Speaker 1: and what that person's gender was. This tickles me a
Speaker 1: little because I certainly know that I have read the
Speaker 1: writing of people who have never had a romantic relationship
Speaker 1: who right as though they did. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny to think, like she must have been involved with someone,
Speaker 1: look what she wrote. I'm like, not necessarily, she may
Speaker 1: have just been perceptive. Yeah, as we noted earlier, the
Speaker 1: vice Regency of New Spain was a temporary position. Juana
Speaker 1: seemed to have been very comfortable, cared for, and liked
Speaker 1: during her time at court, but she also knew that
Speaker 1: once the Viceroy and Vice rene went back to Spain,
Speaker 1: there was no guarantee that she would find herself similarly
Speaker 1: favored by their replacements. It was also incredibly unlikely that
Speaker 1: she would find a husband while she was at court.
Speaker 1: Number one, most of the men at court were already married.
Speaker 1: They did like to flirt. There were, for her dalliances
Speaker 1: and affairs, but they were already married. No, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying there were necessarily affairs with her, just they existed. Also.
Speaker 1: Number two, marriages were negotiated between families, and Wada didn't
Speaker 1: have anybody at court who could be negotiating on her behalf.
Speaker 1: Number three, she still had no dowry. More important than
Speaker 1: all of that, though, She just didn't want to get married.
Speaker 1: Even if she did have a dowry, it was incredibly
Speaker 1: unlikely that a husband would just allow her to continue
Speaker 1: on with her self, educating and her writing, rather than
Speaker 1: expecting her to leave all that behind and take up
Speaker 1: the duties of a wife. She said she felt a
Speaker 1: quote total antipathy towards marriage, so she decided to become
Speaker 1: a nun. As was true for many other women at
Speaker 1: the time, this was more of a practical decision than
Speaker 1: a religious calling. Wanna was a devout Catholic, but she
Speaker 1: had never expressed a desire to devote herself to a
Speaker 1: religious life. Instead, she recognized that a convent was the
Speaker 1: place that she was most likely to be able to
Speaker 1: continue on with her course of study and writing. One
Speaker 1: flaw in this plan was that women whose parents were
Speaker 1: not married were not generally allowed to join, So Juanna
Speaker 1: said her birth was legitimate, something she repeated it numerous
Speaker 1: points throughout her life, even though it seems to have
Speaker 1: been common knowledge that her parents were not married. Religious
Speaker 1: orders and convents in New Spain were stratified and segregated
Speaker 1: in the same way that the rest of the general
Speaker 1: society was different. Convents had different levels of wealth. Some
Speaker 1: of them were only open to people directly from Spain,
Speaker 1: and others were open only to Creolya women. The first
Speaker 1: one that Wanna joined was the convent of the Discounsed
Speaker 1: Caramelites of St. Joseph, but she was only there for
Speaker 1: a few months. Some sources say that she left because
Speaker 1: of her health, but there's really no record that it
Speaker 1: is more likely that she just found this particular order
Speaker 1: way too restrictive for her tastes. About eighteen months later,
Speaker 1: she tried again. On February sixteen sixty nine, she became
Speaker 1: sore Juana and As de la Cruz at the convent
Speaker 1: of Santa Paula of the Heernomite Order in Mexico City.
Speaker 1: In the minds of many in Mexico City, this was
Speaker 1: the best possible outcome, not just for Juanna but for
Speaker 1: society as a whole. Intelligent women were regarded as a threat,
Speaker 1: and so were beautiful women. Her Jesuit confessor, and Tonio
Speaker 1: Nuniez de Miranda, said that he rejoiced once she was
Speaker 1: in a convent, because her continuing to be in the
Speaker 1: public eye had the potential to cause a lot of
Speaker 1: harm thanks to how beautiful and learned she was. This
Speaker 1: convent was a little different from the very spare, minimal
Speaker 1: existence that might immediately come to mind. Each woman joining
Speaker 1: the convent was required to provide a dowry. The Convent
Speaker 1: of Santa Paula had an average of between three thousand
Speaker 1: and four thousand pesos for the dowries that it's nuns provided.
Speaker 1: Sarwanda's dowry was provided by Pedro Velaska's de la Cadena.
Speaker 1: Sorwana also had a few hundred pastos of her own,
Speaker 1: which had been given to her while she was at court,
Speaker 1: and she willed that to her mother. The nuns lived
Speaker 1: in spacious cells that were more like apartments, with their
Speaker 1: own small kitchens. Sor Juana bought one in sixteen ninety
Speaker 1: one that had two floors. A nun's servants lived with her,
Speaker 1: as did any children or young women they were sheltering
Speaker 1: or teaching. Although the nuns in theory lived communally, these
Speaker 1: rules were not strictly observed in sor Juana's convent. Many
Speaker 1: of the nuns ate food prepared in the kitchens in
Speaker 1: their own cells, rather than eating with their religious sisters.
Speaker 1: The convent as a whole was supported by a staff
Speaker 1: of servants, some of whom were enslaved. Sor Juana's mother
Speaker 1: gave her an enslaved servant the year that she joined
Speaker 1: the convent, and this woman's name is listed as wanted
Speaker 1: to San Jose. Then in sixteen eighty four, Sorwana sold
Speaker 1: wanted to San Jose and her baby to her sister,
Speaker 1: Josepha Maria, for two d fifty pacos. On average, there
Speaker 1: were three maids for each nun at this convent, so
Speaker 1: it's very likely that Srijuana had other servants who were
Speaker 1: either free or enslaved while she was living there. They're
Speaker 1: just not specifically documented anywhere. Altogether, about two hundred women
Speaker 1: were living in the convent. Daily life in the convent
Speaker 1: was broken up into a regular pattern of prayers, meals,
Speaker 1: and other religious duties. It was a very predictable and
Speaker 1: regimented pattern. At the same time, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of time for chatter and gossip, which really annoyed sor Juana.
Speaker 1: To her, the place seemed like a hotbed of ongoing
Speaker 1: petty jealous ees and intrigues, and she often wrote about
Speaker 1: settling into study. Only for one of her sisters to
Speaker 1: come in and gossip, or being interrupted by someone playing
Speaker 1: an instrument, or having allowed conversation, or otherwise being disruptive.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the convent was relatively permissive in
Speaker 1: terms of things like personal wealth. There wasn't a strictly
Speaker 1: enforced vow of poverty for any of these nuns, so
Speaker 1: Sarwana turned her cell into her personal library. She had
Speaker 1: at least fift undred volumes and possibly as many as
Speaker 1: four thousand. She also collected scientific and musical instruments. The
Speaker 1: convent was also pretty lax about visitors. The nuns didn't
Speaker 1: really leave the convent, but they welcomed visitors and entertainers. Frequently,
Speaker 1: sor Juana turned the locutorio, or the sitting area where
Speaker 1: the nuns were allowed to have visitors, into a literary salon.
Speaker 1: The nuns were technically supposed to keep their faces veiled
Speaker 1: when they met with outsiders, but this really wasn't enforced either.
Speaker 1: So the decision to join a convent, and to join
Speaker 1: this particular convent, given how permissive it was, was an
Speaker 1: incredibly savvy move in terms of what Sarwana wanted out
Speaker 1: of life. She had various prayers and duties that she
Speaker 1: had to tend to throughout the day, but she was
Speaker 1: also able to keep studying and learning and writing and
Speaker 1: making a name for herself both within and outside of
Speaker 1: the convent. We'll talk about her most productive years after
Speaker 1: we first pause for a little sponsor break. Overall, cer
Speaker 1: Juana seems to have been pretty well respected within her convent.
Speaker 1: The nuns elected women from among themselves to serve as
Speaker 1: mother superior and in other important positions, and at various points,
Speaker 1: Sir Juanna was elected to be an archivist and a bookkeeper.
Speaker 1: As bookkeeper, she also did an excellent job at managing
Speaker 1: the convents funds and interests. She also taught music and
Speaker 1: drama at the convent school, and it's possible that she
Speaker 1: was a painter. One of the portraits that we have
Speaker 1: of her as labeled as being copied from one that
Speaker 1: was made by her own hand. She may have also
Speaker 1: painted miniatures, including things like the medallion that she wore
Speaker 1: as part of her religious dress, but no examples of
Speaker 1: her painting survives if that was the case. Viceroy Antonio
Speaker 1: Sebastian de Toledo was recalled to Spain in sixteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: and the following year, his wife, Leonar Caretto died. Sor
Speaker 1: Juana wrote three sonnets to commemorate her passing. Other than that,
Speaker 1: sor Juana's first decade at the convent seems to have
Speaker 1: been pretty quiet, although members of the church hierarchy did
Speaker 1: sometimes admonish her to spend more of her time on
Speaker 1: religious matters rather than all of this secular study in writing. Then,
Speaker 1: in sixteen eighty, Tomas de la Serta, the third Marquess
Speaker 1: of La Laguna, became New Spain's new viceroy. His wife,
Speaker 1: Maria Luisa, was almost exactly the same age as sor Juana,
Speaker 1: and the two of them became very close. The Vice
Speaker 1: Regin visited Sarwuana frequently at the convent and arranged for
Speaker 1: the publication of her work. Over time, sor Juana became
Speaker 1: something of an unofficial court poet. From within the walls
Speaker 1: of the convent, sor Juanna wrote Maria Luisa numerous passionate
Speaker 1: love poems addressing her as Lisi or Licida, and they
Speaker 1: were generally more passionate and intimate than the ones that
Speaker 1: she had written to Donia Leonard Corretto, and as with
Speaker 1: those earlier poems, these didn't really attract a lot of
Speaker 1: notice thanks to the huge gap in status between the
Speaker 1: two women. It was really such a gulf that Sri
Speaker 1: Juana often referred to herself as the Viceroy and vice
Speaker 1: reigns servant, or even sometimes their slave. Like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: a lot of Srijuana's work is undated, so it's not
Speaker 1: always possible to tell exactly when she wrote a particular piece,
Speaker 1: but we do know that she demonstrated immense skill in
Speaker 1: the multiple poetic forms that were valued during the Spanish
Speaker 1: Golden Age. She wrote plays in verse, which were preceded
Speaker 1: by short theatrical works known as lous. She wrote liturgical
Speaker 1: musical works known as viencicos. She wrote at least twenty
Speaker 1: love sonnets and at least forty sonnets on other subjects,
Speaker 1: as well as ballads that were known as romances. The
Speaker 1: piece that's considered her masterpiece translates into English's first Dream,
Speaker 1: and it is a very long, complex philosophical poem, and
Speaker 1: her range with all of this work was huge. It
Speaker 1: spanned from the body and erotic to cloak and dagger
Speaker 1: drama to religious work. She wrote a satirical poem called
Speaker 1: Ambre Nacios or Foolish Men, in which she pointed out
Speaker 1: the double standards in the behavioral expectations of men and women.
Speaker 1: She also incorporated multiple languages and dialects, including the Nawada
Speaker 1: language and Hispanic African dialects, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of this work collected today. It takes up four volumes,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that was published during her lifetime.
Speaker 1: In nine a collection titled Castilian Flood was published in Madrid,
Speaker 1: and then other editions of that work followed. Her work
Speaker 1: was collected into three volumes during her lifetime, which were
Speaker 1: all published in the years just before and after her death.
Speaker 1: Thomas de la Cerda was recalled to space in sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, and some biographers point to this as the
Speaker 1: moment that sor Juana lost all of her protection and prestige,
Speaker 1: but that's not exactly so. She had been writing and
Speaker 1: studying before the Marquess and his wife arrived, and she
Speaker 1: continued to do so afterward. She didn't have as much
Speaker 1: help getting her work published or performed or in front
Speaker 1: of the court, but it wasn't as though there was
Speaker 1: suddenly a switch flipped and no one was reading her work. Anymore.
Speaker 1: By sixteen ninety, she was one of the wealthiest nuns
Speaker 1: in her convent. That year, though, Sorwana got caught up
Speaker 1: in a dispute between Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz, the
Speaker 1: Bishop of Puebla, and the Archbishop Francisco de Aguiar say Us.
Speaker 1: The bishop asked sor Juana to write a critique of
Speaker 1: a sermon that had been delivered forty years before by
Speaker 1: Jesuit priest Antonio Vieira. When she did this, he published
Speaker 1: it without her permission, and when he published it, he
Speaker 1: added a letter ahead of it that both praise her
Speaker 1: work and scolded her for spending too much of her
Speaker 1: time on secular things rather than on religious matters. The
Speaker 1: bishop didn't sign this under his own name, though he
Speaker 1: signed it sore Philotia, framing it as this being the
Speaker 1: opinion of a fellow nun. The archbishop was a friend
Speaker 1: and a colleague of Antonio Verea, who had written this sermon,
Speaker 1: and it helped get that sermon published, so sorwana Is
Speaker 1: criticism of the sermon had been arranged to kind of
Speaker 1: criticize the archbishop by proxy, because the Bishop of Puebla
Speaker 1: didn't get along with him it's very complicated and petty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was essentially used as a tool by uh squabbling man.
Speaker 1: Who knows what the Bishop of Puebla thought was going
Speaker 1: to happen when he pulled sor Juana into this dispute.
Speaker 1: But what did happen is that a few months later,
Speaker 1: sor Juana replied to sor Pilot defending both her actions
Speaker 1: and the right of women to learn. Her response is
Speaker 1: simultaneously really conciliatory and absolutely unyielding. Sorwana starts off by
Speaker 1: praising sor Philotea and expressing that she herself wasn't at
Speaker 1: all worthy to be writing this, and she went on
Speaker 1: to say that her desire to learn wasn't something she
Speaker 1: had chosen for herself. It had come from beyond herself
Speaker 1: and was just part of her nature. She talked about
Speaker 1: her upbringing and her time and the convent and how
Speaker 1: it related to this desire to learn. She also gave
Speaker 1: examples from her life, like the time that a mother
Speaker 1: superior ordered her not to study from her books anymore,
Speaker 1: and that was an order that she obeyed, but she
Speaker 1: wasn't able to stop herself from studying whatever was around her,
Speaker 1: like when she saw some children playing with a top.
Speaker 1: She scattered some flower onto the ground to see whether
Speaker 1: the tip made perfect circles when it made its way
Speaker 1: through it. I'm just curious. I can't help it. She
Speaker 1: also described how her desire to learn had mostly brought
Speaker 1: her hardship because to be different was to be seen
Speaker 1: as evil, and because a mind like hers was not
Speaker 1: considered suitable for a woman. But she also writes about
Speaker 1: some of the exceptional women in the Bible, including Deborrah, Esther,
Speaker 1: and the Queen of Sheba. It's a little reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the Book of the City of Ladies, which we already
Speaker 1: have an episode on if you would like to check
Speaker 1: that out over and over. In this piece, sor Juana
Speaker 1: combines the idea that her intelligence and aptitude and desire
Speaker 1: to learn are a hardship because of her gender with
Speaker 1: the idea that it's also just natural to her and it.
Speaker 1: She calls her poetry her quote twice unhappy ability, while
Speaker 1: she also says that it is such a core part
Speaker 1: of her that she has had to struggle not to
Speaker 1: write the letter in verse. Sar Juana's response was not
Speaker 1: formally published during her lifetime, but it was passed around
Speaker 1: in religious circles, and the reaction varied from place to place.
Speaker 1: She got some sympathy and support in Spain, but total
Speaker 1: derision in places where Antonio Vieira was especially revered. Her confessor,
Speaker 1: Antonio Nuniez de Miranda, refused to see her. He was
Speaker 1: also reported as saying that if he had realized she
Speaker 1: was going to do all this writing, he would have
Speaker 1: seen her married instead. The archbishop demanded that sor Juana
Speaker 1: give up her studies. He had criticized her secular studies before,
Speaker 1: so this was not new, but things definitely did escalate.
Speaker 1: This might have blown over, but in sixte there were
Speaker 1: extensive floods in the region, and then there was a
Speaker 1: solar eclipse, and then that was followed by a plague
Speaker 1: of weevils, which people either blamed on the eclipse or
Speaker 1: thought the eclipse had predicted. That's all. The whole flooding
Speaker 1: and we evil infestation then led to a famine and
Speaker 1: food riots in sixteen. The National Palace was attacked and
Speaker 1: burned during the riots, along with a lot of the
Speaker 1: market in the main square of Mexico City. On April
Speaker 1: two of that year, Tomas de Leserta died, so sar
Speaker 1: Wuana no longer had a former viceroy on her side,
Speaker 1: and his widow, who she had been so close to,
Speaker 1: was naturally occupied with other matters. This was a time
Speaker 1: of hardship and chaos for everybody, and everybody, including the church,
Speaker 1: was totally on edge. Sar Juanna wrote her last published
Speaker 1: work during this time. That was a set of carols
Speaker 1: to St. Catherine of Alexandria. In sixteen ninety three, she
Speaker 1: sold off her library and her collections of scientific and
Speaker 1: musical instruments, with the proceeds going to help the poor.
Speaker 1: She renewed her relationship with her former confessor, and on
Speaker 1: March five she wrote a repentance signed in her blood.
Speaker 1: That sounds very dramatic, but it was a fairly common
Speaker 1: practice at this time. After all of this, her cell
Speaker 1: was described as containing only three devotional books, along with
Speaker 1: some hair shirts and scourges, although after her death it
Speaker 1: was found that she also still had some money and jewelry.
Speaker 1: A few months before her death, sor Juanna wrote this
Speaker 1: in the Convinced Book of Professions. Quote in this place
Speaker 1: is to be noted the day, month, and year of
Speaker 1: my death. For the love of God, and His most
Speaker 1: Holy Mother. I entreat my beloved sisters, the nuns, who
Speaker 1: are here now and who shall be in the future,
Speaker 1: to commend me to God. For I have been and
Speaker 1: am the worst among them. Of them, I ask forgiveness
Speaker 1: for the love of God and His Mother, I worst
Speaker 1: of all in the world. Juana and as de la Cruz.
Speaker 1: This was not an unusual amount of self judgment in
Speaker 1: these sorts of religious writings at the time, but it
Speaker 1: is still very evocative, so we don't have any of
Speaker 1: sor Juanna's own writing about all this. Catholic biographers, especially
Speaker 1: in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, framed this as coming
Speaker 1: from devotion and from a sincere desire for sor Juana
Speaker 1: to re dedicate herself to religious life. Other more recent
Speaker 1: biographers have described it as a punishment that was inflicted
Speaker 1: on her by an archbishop who was outraged over the
Speaker 1: events of sixteen ninety. Still, others have suggested that it
Speaker 1: might have been more pragmatic. The younger sar Juana had
Speaker 1: recognized that a convent was the best place for her
Speaker 1: to continue her studies, even though she didn't actually feel
Speaker 1: a religious calling to be there. The older sar Juana
Speaker 1: may have thought that the best way to secure her
Speaker 1: future was to, at least for a time, put aside
Speaker 1: her secular study in writing. If that was the case,
Speaker 1: though she didn't get the chance to see if she
Speaker 1: might return to her study and writing someday. In the
Speaker 1: spring of sixteen and epidemics struck the convent. It is
Speaker 1: sometimes described as plague and sometimes as a plague. I
Speaker 1: do not know what type of plague it was, regardless,
Speaker 1: though Sarwana contracted it while caring for her religious sisters.
Speaker 1: She died on September seventeen, sixte at the age of
Speaker 1: about forty six. During her lifetime, sor Juana was nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Tenth Muse and the Phoenix of America, but her
Speaker 1: work fell out of view for of time after her death,
Speaker 1: An edition of her work was published in seventeen and
Speaker 1: that was it for more than two hundred years. Also,
Speaker 1: laws banning communal ownership of property led to church archives
Speaker 1: being scattered and lost, including records and documents that were
Speaker 1: related to Sri Juana. But interest in her work really
Speaker 1: started to be renewed after the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: especially after the Mexican Revolution. The first modern edition of
Speaker 1: sor Juana's work was published in nineteen forty. Multiple biographies
Speaker 1: have been written since then, including one by Mexican poet
Speaker 1: Octavio Pass that was one of those sources for this episode.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it, especially if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about her poetry, because this work is as much
Speaker 1: about literary criticism as it is about her actual biography.
Speaker 1: There's definitely more recent work about the biography itself, but
Speaker 1: having a work about her poetry being written by a
Speaker 1: Mexican poet is like particularly insightful in terms of her writing.
Speaker 1: Her life has also been the subject of numerous plays
Speaker 1: and movies and TV shows, including a twenty sixteen mini
Speaker 1: series called Wanna Enz, which I haven't watched, but it's
Speaker 1: on Netflix. There's so much on Netflix. Um. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, sor Juana's convent was being refurbished and a
Speaker 1: set of remains was found with a badge that was
Speaker 1: typical of the medallion that she usually wore. The badge
Speaker 1: was so warned that it was impossible to tell what
Speaker 1: was on it. Sor Juana's had depicted the annunciation, but
Speaker 1: it was more common for nuns to where one depicting
Speaker 1: the Immaculate conception. Mexican novelist Margharita Lopez Portillo, who was
Speaker 1: a scholar of sor Juana, took the medallion home with her,
Speaker 1: which became a huge issue. Ultimately she returned it and
Speaker 1: the remains and the medallion were reinterred in the church
Speaker 1: of Santa Gronemo on the three and twentieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: sor Juana's death. Yeah, people, a lot of times these
Speaker 1: remains aren't described as belonging to her, and it's not
Speaker 1: impossible that they are hers, but the medallion that she
Speaker 1: wore was very commonly warned among nuns in her order
Speaker 1: during her time, with the exception that hers had a
Speaker 1: different depiction on it than was more commonly worn. So
Speaker 1: it's a lot it's it's not a certain that these
Speaker 1: were her remains, but they have been treated as there
Speaker 1: they are until very recently. Sir Wanta was on the
Speaker 1: two Paso note. Redesigned bills that don't feature her anymore
Speaker 1: are entering circulation literally as we are recording this podcast.
Speaker 1: Her birthplace was also renamed now it's Naputala Disorder Juanna
Speaker 1: and as Dela Cruz and her old convent is now
Speaker 1: a university that is named after her. She is a
Speaker 1: fascinating figure to me, and also a lot more complicated
Speaker 1: than like a lot of the one page write ups
Speaker 1: that you will find about her, like on online. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they're almost one dimensional as sort of
Speaker 1: like this is sor Wanna who was such a rebel,
Speaker 1: or this is Sorwana who was like such a child prodigy,
Speaker 1: or this is Sorwana who was the first feminist. And
Speaker 1: that one is particularly troubling because none of those grapple
Speaker 1: with the fact that she enslaved people while she was
Speaker 1: in the comment Yeah, well that's always the case, right.
Speaker 1: We discover over and over there's something that's come up
Speaker 1: or someone has asked us to do it because they're like,
Speaker 1: so and so it was a vampire. It's like wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: their life is way more nuanced than yeah. So that
Speaker 1: is why we do the work we do. Do you
Speaker 1: have a little bit of listener mail? I do have
Speaker 1: listener mail. It's from Alexia and we actually just got
Speaker 1: this email last night. And Alexia says, dear Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: I was so excited to hear the episode on the
Speaker 1: Guatemalan coup as we are recording this, the second part
Speaker 1: of that is not even out yet. The letter goes on,
Speaker 1: I love Latin American history, which is so important but
Speaker 1: so overlooked, in particular the complicated histories of twentieth century
Speaker 1: Latin American countries. As an archivist, I had to reach
Speaker 1: out following this episode because one of the most important
Speaker 1: endangered human rights archives is in Guatemala, and the more
Speaker 1: awareness the better. The archive is the Archivo Historica de
Speaker 1: la Policia Nacional or the National Police Archives, which was
Speaker 1: discovered in quotation marks in two thousand six and international
Speaker 1: investment created the a h p N as an independent entity,
Speaker 1: even though the records remained owned by the National Police.
Speaker 1: This archive documents the National Police going back to the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, but especially documents the human rights abuses
Speaker 1: in the later part of the twentieth century and especially
Speaker 1: during the most violent years of the Civil War in
Speaker 1: the intervening gears. There has been a post custodial project
Speaker 1: between the a h p N and the University of
Speaker 1: Texas at Austin, where the original documents are maintained in Guatemala,
Speaker 1: but the digitized surrogus are housed at u T Austin
Speaker 1: for safekeeping. This archive is vital toward preserving the history
Speaker 1: of Guatemala, pursuing justice, and forgiving friends and family members
Speaker 1: answers about what happened to their loved ones. However, it
Speaker 1: is currently under extreme threat by the government, which has
Speaker 1: replaced its head with a politician, continues to threaten staff,
Speaker 1: and has even threatened UT Austin with a lawsuit that
Speaker 1: it is stealing its national heritage. More awareness is needed
Speaker 1: about this archive to hopefully save it, hence this email.
Speaker 1: For more information, please check out the links above or
Speaker 1: Kristen Welds brilliant book Paper Cadavers about how the archive
Speaker 1: was created out of US military training, maintained and later
Speaker 1: rediscovered by activists. I've loved the podcast for years. I
Speaker 1: find it super helpful when processing collections. Best regards, Alexeia.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for this email, Alexeia, I had
Speaker 1: not heard about this at all, but basically, in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, one of the oversight organizations that have been
Speaker 1: created in in Guatemala found literally warehouses full of these
Speaker 1: um full of these national police documents, literally millions of documents,
Speaker 1: and the decision was made to the interest of human
Speaker 1: rights and the interest of reconciliation to try to protect
Speaker 1: them from being destroyed and to make it transparent to
Speaker 1: people what had happened in the past. And so there's
Speaker 1: this huge effort involving digitizing these millions and millions of documents.
Speaker 1: And then over the last year or so, things have
Speaker 1: shifted in terms of what I just read in the email,
Speaker 1: and the archive went from a staff of about two
Speaker 1: hundred two as of the last news article that I
Speaker 1: read about it this morning, more like thirty. So it's
Speaker 1: been a huge issue that are that people are trying
Speaker 1: to to make sure that the archive continues to be
Speaker 1: protected because it's an enormous wealth of information about all
Speaker 1: of this basically last century in Guatemalan history and documentation
Speaker 1: of all kinds of human rights issues that happened during
Speaker 1: that time. So thank you again, Alexia for sending this email.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write us, we're at history
Speaker 1: Podcasts at how stuff Works dot com, and then we're
Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History. You can
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