First feminist of the Americas: Sor Juana de la Cruz
By Glenda Robinson (Mar 3, 2006)
Quick …close your eyes. Okay …who is pictured on the 200-peso note? It may surprise you to realize that a woman holds this place of honor. And, even more surprising this woman was a 17th-century feminist nun whose most famous work is a poem poking fun at the opposite sex entitled "Hombres Necios" ("Foolish Men"). Her name is Sor Juana de la Cruz.
"Sor Juana is the most famous person of letters-man or woman-to emerge from the entire 300 years of colonial Mexico," Mamie Spiegel excitedly tells me as we sit, appropriately enough, in what was once a convent courtyard at the Bellas Artes Café. I am here to interview Mamie about her upcoming PEN lecture, "First Feminist of the Americas."
"Sor Juana's output was astonishing. Her sonnets, carols, ballads and plays were celebrated throughout Europe and South America. There was no one else of her literary stature in Mexico until the early 20th century. She's practically unheard of in North America, but in this country every Mexican knows her."
And just to make sure it's true, Mamie suddenly jumps up, runs to the next table, and asks three Mexicans, including our waitress, if they know of Sor Juana. Indeed they do.
Glenda Robinson: You're currently writing a book about Sor Juana. How did you settle on her?
Mamie Spiegel: Well, when I finished San Miguel and the War for Independence, I started casting about for the subject of my next book. When Beverly Donofrio suggested Sor Juana, I thought to myself, "A nun … the 17th century … poetry … Catholicism? That sounds really boring." But after I did a little research, I fell in love with her.
GR: And why did you find Sor Juana so captivating?
MS: First of all, she was fiercely intelligent, one of the great minds of her century. A child prodigy who taught herself reading at the age of three, and Latin a few years later. She devoured every book she could get her hands on. When she was in her teens, the Viceroy of New Spain (as Mexico was then called) was so impressed by the breadth and depth of her knowledge that he invited 40 of the most esteemed scientists, theologians and philosophers of the time to ask her the toughest questions they could conjure, and she answered them all with unruffled ease.
I like Sor Juana because she was so brave. She wrote things women weren't supposed to write. She broke the rules. She knew she was leading a dangerous life, living on the edge. She even seems to have predicted her own downfall! At the end of her life she wrote a whole bunch of poems honoring St. Catherine, another brilliant woman who was martyred. It's as if she foresaw her own fate.
But I guess the thing that I really love about Sor Juana is that she was a rebel. Men of power and authority simply did not intimidate her, and she continually refused to succumb to their dictates. I like rebels. My first book was about the rebels who drove the Spanish out of Mexico.
Mamie, as it turns out, is something of a rebel herself. She comes from a family of "verbal-intellectual types," most of whom ended up being academics. So naturally, she dropped out of Barnard and became an artist. A very accomplished artist, as it turns out: a professional ceramicist who received an NEA grant and was once honored by a show at the NYC American Crafts Museum.
GR: So how-and why-did you make the leap from a 25-year career in ceramics to writing?
MS: In my fifties, I reverted to type. I started to look longingly at books, thinking I would much rather be reading them than making things out of clay. So I went back to Columbia. After I graduated, a friend invited me to visit her in San Miguel. I looked around for a book about the history of this place, and found next to nothing. So with the utter gall of the uninformed, I thought, "I can do this," and lurched into the writing of my first book. At the time I knew nothing about Mexican history. In fact, I knew nothing about Mexico. But I loved my subject, and I learned.
Many mysteries still surround the life of Sor Juana. Why did this beautiful, accomplished, and celebrated darling of the court choose to enter a convent at the age of 19? Were the passionate poems she wrote to her patroness, the Countess of Paredes, evidence of a physically consumated relationship? And why, at the peak of her influence, did she publicly renounce her work and sell off her precious collection of books, musical instruments and scientific equipment?
For answers to these questions and more, come to Mamie Spiegel's PEN Lecture, "The First Feminist of the Americas." If you have already read San Miguel and the War for Independence, you know firsthand Mamie's talent for bringing history to life with wit and energy-and this lecture promises no less.
The funds raised at this lecture help provide PEN scholarships for deserving local students and support the ongoing efforts of PEN International: defending writers imprisoned or under attack for their work and promoting freedom of expression throughout the world. For more information about San Miguel PEN, call Lucina Kathmann at 152-0614.
"First Feminist of the Americas: Sor Juana de la Cruz"
A San Miguel PEN lecture
by Mamie Spiegel
Tuesday, March 7, 6pm
Bellas Artes Auditorium
50 pesos
A Conversation with campesinas affected by migration
March 8 is International Women's Day. On that date, around the world, and in many ways, the gains in women's rights are celebrated, and the commitment to struggle for greater equality for women is renewed. This year in San Miguel de Allende, the Center for Global Justice marks International Women's Day with a discussion with Mexican women from the surrounding campo about the effects of migration on them and their families.
We often hear about the men who go to El Norte to work. But what about the women and families they leave behind? How does this emigration affect the wives whose husbands are absent, the mothers who worry about their sons, the siblings without a father or an older brother? No doubt, there are positive as well as negative results. But what exactly are the consequences of this fateful decision to migrate? And what happens when they return (if they return), often changed by their experiences in a foreign land? How have women's traditional roles been changed, and how has their self-concept developed?
Julieta Sánchez will lead a conversation to explore such questions with women from the La Huerta area. A resident of San Miguel de Allende, Julieta Sánchez is an experienced interviewer, having hosted a local radio program. You are invited to join her conversation on International Women's Day.
On the following Saturday, March 11, the Center for Global Justice will sponsor a trip to the campo to observe conditions and visit with members of a rural community. This day-long excursion will cost 200 pesos. It includes a picnic comida prepared by the host Mexican community and a discussion with its members about the issues they face. Advance registration is required. Call 150-0025 weekday mornings.
Conversation with campesinas
Snowbird Symposium of the Center for Global Justice
Wednesday, March 8, 10:30am
Sala Quetzal, Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
An outbreak of censorship: When talk of warming becomes absolutely chilling
By Ross Gelbspan
The accelerating pace of climatic change is truly frightening, and growing numbers of scientists express concerns that we are passing a "point of no return" beyond which impacts on the climate will become increasingly destructive and widespread.
Whereas big coal and big oil have spent millions of dollars on disinformation about climate change, the Bush Administration has upped the ante by turning industry-generated denial into a government policy of censorship.
The targets are some of the most respected climate scientists in the United States. Jim Hansen, a NASA researcher who first told Americans in 1988 that "global warming is at hand," complained recently he is being muzzled by officials in his own agency.
The censorship is not limited to NASA. Similar tactics are being employed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to silence scientists who confirm the connection between global warming and hurricane intensity.
Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, declared: "There are a lot of scientists there who know [the Administration's position on climate change] is nonsense, but they are being discouraged from talking to the press about it."
The timing couldn't be more ominous. Around the world, we are heating the deep oceans and melting earth's glaciers. We have reversed the carbon cycle by 650,000 years. We loosed a wave of violent weather, and we have altered the timing of the seasons.
The rest of the world is beginning to address this threat by taking steps to switch away from carbon fuels to such proven sources of clean energy as wind, solar and tidal power and other technologies.
Even as NASA and NOAA administrators claimed in mid-February they were changing their policies, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would begin monitoring all contacts between its researchers and the press.
Ross Gelbspan
Presented by Snowbird Symposium
of the Center for Global Justice
Monday, March 6, 10:30am
Teatro Santa Ana, Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
Nuclear apocalypse: the threat and the hope
Leonard Bird, Ph.D., of the National Association of Atomic Veterans, will discuss the dangers posed by ionizing radiation in his lecture on March 7 at Teatro Santa Ana. He will base his remarks on his 1957 experience as a young Marine at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, his three visits (1954, 1981 and 1993) to Hiroshima's Park for World Peace, and his current research. Using passages from his recently published memoir, Folding Paper Cranes, Bird will delineate the problem and provide one thread of hope.
In addition to global warming and environmental degradation, our children face many threats: increasing degrees of inequality, injustice, poverty and disease-and the instability they spawn. In the United States and around the world we are dividing into mutually antagonistic camps governed by the most dangerous people on the planet: true believers spewing hate.
Since the initial euphoria following the end of the Cold War a quarter-century ago, we have moved closer to nuclear midnight, and American foreign policy is increasing the danger. What can we do to decrease the threat? Where is the hope? An open discussion will follow Bird's presentation.
Lecture on Nuclear Apocalypse
By Leonard Bird
Tuesday, March 7, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana, Reloj 50
50 pesos
The Codex Mendoza Revealed
One of the most fascinating documents of the immediate post-conquest era in Mexico is the Aztec book known as the Codex Mendoza. Retired professor of humanities Guillermo Méndez will give an illustrated lecture (in English) on this interesting record of the past on Wednesday, March 8.
The Codex was commissioned by the first viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), Antonio de Mendoza. It was made by Aztec scribes in the Aztec style of the early 16th century. Since the Aztecs had no written language, their books contained only images. Nevertheless, they were able to communicate a great deal, as the Codex Mendoza reveals. The Codex was made at about the same time that San Miguel de Allende was founded: 1541-42.
With a little knowledge it is possible to "read" this document and gain considerable insight into the culture of the reigning indigenous power in central Mexico in the early 16th century. The codex contains sections on the history and conquests of the Aztec kings, the tax or tribute lists of conquered cities and, perhaps most interesting of all, a section on Aztec daily life, including birth ceremonies, marriage rites, child-rearing practices, education, warfare training and moral customs.
Lecture by Guillermo Méndez on the Codex Mendoza
Wednesday, March 8, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos
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