Sor Juana and Elvira Sastre – Ecological Advocacy and the Female Voice as Witness in Patronage Economies

Abstract

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is frequently hailed as Latin America’s first feminist, in whose writing activism and art converge to advocate for education for all. Throughout her literary corpus, knowledge is connected with light and divinity, and one’s connection with the natural world further strengthens a philosophical relationship with God. In Sor Juana’s writing, the destruction of the land in post-Conquest Latin America becomes an assault on the self, where the poetic voice both observes and critiques ecological and patriarchal violence. In the modern day, the social media platform Instagram is employed by a new generation of Spanish poets for the publication and promotion of their work. Elvira Sastre engages with rhetoric surrounding the climate crisis whilst negotiating her personal expression through representation of the body as Earth. Again, by observing the literal destruction of the Earth, Sastre’s poetic voice rises above this violence, self-fashioning as an advocate for change. This paper therefore explores ecological advocacy in both female authors’ work and positions, underscoring how they both use their positions as writers within their respective creative patronage economies to reconcile (male) violence with the female voice.