during the celebrations of the 197th Independence of Mexico
14 September 2007
Ambassador de Maria y Campos
Your Excellencies Ambassadors and High Commissioners accredited to South
Africa
Members of the Diplomatic Community
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
On behalf of the Government of South Africa and President Thabo Mbeki, I
bring greetings to you on the occasion of the 197th anniversary of the
independence of Mexico. South Africa and Mexico have much in common and we have
demonstrated an important capacity to work together in the international arena.
One of our most notable recent achievements was working closely to ensure that
the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its
Optional Protocol was adopted at the 61st Session of the United Nations General
Assembly. I note with pride that both our countries signed the Convention and
the Optional Protocol and that South Africa has also ratified both.
Your Excellencies, last month was Women's Month in South Africa and in
continuing the spirit of women's month, and as Minister in the Presidency who
has responsibility of the Office on the Status of Women, I would like to
reflect on the contribution to the socio-political and intellectual liberation
of women made by one of the most fascinating female literary figures to have
ever emerged out of Mexico Juana Inés de la Cruz, also known as Sor Juana.
A child prodigy and genius, Sor Juana was a proto-feminist and slave-owner,
philosopher and musicologist, court favourite and, eventually, nun. She was
also the last great poet of the Spanish Empire and arguably the world's
greatest writer at the time of her death in 1695. At the age of three Juana
taught herself to read by following her elder sister to school and looking on
through the window. By the age of eleven she had read all the books in her
grandfather's great library. At thirteen, she was summoned to the viceroy's
court, where a number of sages (some say forty) from the Royal University
grilled her for hours to determine if the astonishing rumours of her learning
were true.
Even in her own lifetime her status was mythic: throughout the Spanish
Empire, she was variously known as the "Tenth Muse," "Phoenix of America," "Sum
of the Ten Sibyls," "Pythoness of Delphi." She died in 1695, but for
twenty-five years she had championed a woman's right to engage in intellectual
pursuits on par with men. Defying her confessor, the Chief Censor for the Holy
Inquisition, she also defended a nun's right to compose exquisitely sensuous
and lucid poetry.
But how could this woman who towered above her male contemporaries in talent
and intellect, a genius to whom the same inquisitors who threatened and
persecuted her would often bring their theological essays for correction, a
poet who from a convent in ultra-conservative Mexico could begin her famous
poem, "Fools, you men â so very adept at wrongly faulting womankind." How could
she suddenly surrender and sign a pitiful statement of contrition in blood,
then fall silent till the day she died?
The answer of course lies in the very tradition of resistance and assertion
of identity and commitment to equality that mark her poetry, her music, letters
and her plays. Sor Juana challenged the reigning orthodoxy. When the power of
that orthodoxy was turned on her and she found herself isolated she retreated
into her shell, her convent. Nobel-laureate Octavio Paz described her as a
political prisoner of the Church, and likened the startling self-denunciations
at the end of her career to those of the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s. Paz
has called her the greatest versifier of the Spanish language.
But we can and must understand her retreat. Sor Juana found herself in 17th
Century colonial Mexico which was a highly autocratic society, ruled by
viceroys sent from Spain and rotated in practice every seven or eight years.
The Archbishop held great power, and the Santo Oficio, or Holy Inquisition, was
greatly feared. The University founded in 1551 was only open to men. And Mexico
City was the seat of the Viceregal Court, rivalled in importance only by the
court of the Viceroyalty of Peru in Lima. To understand Sor Juana, therefore,
is to understand the political and ideological forces at work in that
autocratic, theocratic, male-dominated society, in which the subjugation of
women was absolute.
Octavio Paz says that, of the three central institutions of the country, the
University, the Church, and the Court, the Court represented an aesthetic and
vital way of life, a "dramatic ballet whose characters were the human passions,
from the sensual to the ambitious, dancing to a strict yet elegant geometry"
(in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, o, las trampas de la fe).
Sor Juana found herself trapped in a world in which power, knowledge and
intellect was the preserve of men. For culture in this environment was almost
entirely a masculine culture. Its writers were men and its readers were men.
The doors of the educational institutions were entirely locked for women. This
is why it is so extraordinary that the greatest writer to emerge from Nueva
España, the first great poet of Spanish America, should have been a woman.
One of the major themes of Sor Juana's work is knowledge, and in particular
the right of women to have access to learning. In "Hombres necios" (Stubborn
men) she criticises the sexism of the society of her time, and pokes fun at men
who publicly condemn prostitutes but privately hire them. She also had a
philosophical approach to the relative immorality of prostitution, exemplified
by a question she poses in the poem: 'Who sins more, she who sins for pay or he
who pays for sin?' This question is for her not about morality but is about the
pursuit of liberty and knowledge.
But it is her logical and sterling defence of women and the education and
liberation of women that has most caught and captured my attention. Sor Juana's
insatiable desire to understand everything around her, coupled with her studies
in classical and medieval philosophy and her fierce assertion of a woman's
right to fully participate in scholastic inquiry mark her as a philosopher of
repute.
Juana strictly avoided theology until 1690 when she criticised a Jesuit
priest in a private letter to the Bishop of Pedula who then published it
without her permission. In the cover letter, the Bishop admonished and attacked
Sor Juana and signed himself Sor Philothea de la Cruz. Her Reply to Sor
Philothea was an encomium defending women's biblical and theological rights to
an education and the advantages which accrue to society when women are
educated. Unfortunately, the Archbishop was too powerful and she was forced to
sell all her books, an extensive library of some 4 000 volumes, as well as her
musical and scientific instruments. She wrote no more works for public
consumption.
As was customary for her time, Sor Juana began her reply to the Archbishop
by discounting her own abilities and her "limited education" as well as the
hurdles she had to overcome to attain her education. She stresses the need for
educated women so that new generations of women can have teachers of their own
sex. She concludes by noting the accomplishments of educated, secular women,
demonstrating once again the advantages of educating women. In her reply to the
Bishop posing as Sor Philothea she writes:
"Oh, how much harm would be avoided in our country if older women were as
learned as Laeta and knew how to teach in the way Saint Paul and my Father
Saint Jerome direct? Instead of which, if fathers wish to educate their
daughters beyond what is customary, for want of trained older women and on
account of the extreme negligence which has become women's sad lit, since well
educated older women are unavailable, they are obliged to bring in men teachers
to give instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, playing musical
instruments, and other skills. No little harm is done by this, as we witness
every day in the pitiful examples of ill-assorted unions; from the ease of
contact and the close company kept over a period of time, there easily comes
about something not thought possible. As a result of this, many fathers prefer
leaving their daughters in a barbaric, uncivilised state to exposing them to an
evident danger such as familiarity with men breeds. All of which would be
eliminated if there were older women of learning, as Saint Paul desires, and
instruction were passed down from one group to another, as in the case with
needlework and other traditional activities".
Hers was a coherent world view, a richly textured defence of the rights of
women. After this public expose, enormous pressure was brought to bear on this
genius to turn from the intellectual and the philosophical. And thus she
repents for "having lived so long without religion in a religious community."
She is silenced but her words live on. This is the tradition of over 400 years
that the women of Mexico have given to us in the rest of the world.
So Ambassador, on this day when we celebrate with you and the people of
Mexico the 197th anniversary of your independence, let us toast the women of
Mexico who in their courage, conviction and wisdom challenged power. And in
conclusion, please accept my sincere appreciation for the invitation to this
celebration. Allow me say to all present "Mexicanos, viva México", "Long live
the Heroes of the Mexican Revolution and Long Live the Women of Mexico".
I thank you.
Issued by: The Presidency
14 September 2007
