The “Other” Sor Juana: Racialized Subjectivities, Languages, and Cultures in the Ensaladilla to the Villancico Series in Honor of San Pedro Nolasco (1677)

Abstract

In “The ‘Mexican’ Sor Juana” (2007), Stephanie Merrim presents a very compelling approach to Sor Juana’s writings in which the reader traces the “Mexican” texts the nun used as the basis for her writings, a collection of texts Merrim identifies as “the Mexican archive” (78). Even though I find this approach to reading Sor Juana’s texts very appealing, my main contention with this approach is not considering the non-written sources Sor Juana uses and references in her writings and forgetting that Sor Juana wrote for a diverse audience, not only the learned and erudite Spanish and Creole community. As scholars such as Yolanda Martínez San Miguel and Alfred Arteaga have pointed out, Sor Juana also wrote for the “common people,” that is, for the multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural society of late 17th Century Spanish America. Hence, I propose to expand Merrim’s notion of Sor Juana’s “Mexican archive” to include the multiple dialects, languages, cultures, and subjectivities of marginalized groups. Sor Juana’s ensaladillas to various villancicos illustrates this “living archive” the nun uses in her writings while making a critique of Spanish American society. In this article I focus on the ensaladilla which closes the series of villancicos in honor of San Pedro Nolasco, founder of the Order of Mercy. Thus, the ensaladillas and villancicos Sor Juana wrote for public performances reveal an “Other” Sor Juana, a Sor Juana who writes for the common people and presents a critical vision of the dialects, languages, cultures and subjectivities of a diverse multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-cultural society.