Celebrated Mexican Nun was Baroque Sensation, but Catholic Church Put a Stop to That Oakland Ross - Toronto Star
go to original March 19, 2013

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Willy H)

MEXICO CITY - If ever there was a female martyr to men’s domination of the Roman Catholic Church, then her name is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a woman whose image reappears in Mexico daily - just about every time anyone pulls out a wallet or a purse.

It’s her likeness you see on the country’s 200-peso banknotes (worth about $16).

Sor Juana lived - and died - more than 300 years ago, but she remains a rarity in Mexico, a symbol of female achievement and even supremacy in a land that is still far more closely identified with masculine pursuits and accomplishments, a nation of matadors, mescal and machismo.

Born around 1651, Sor Juana was the pre-eminent figure of either sex to emerge during a period of Mexican history known as the viceroyalty, an era that stretched from the Spanish conquest in 1521 to Mexico’s independence from Madrid 300 years later.

“In three centuries of the viceroyalty,” says Mexican historian Santiago Cortes Hernandez, “the most important figure is Sor Juana.”

And, yet, she died a diseased and broken woman - silent, anonymous, unsung - defeated by the very church that she had served for much of her life.

Read the rest at Toronto Star

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