![]() ![]() Many do not realize that in Mexico there was a highly refined Aztec literary tradition that predated the Spanish and continued well after the Conquest. Besides, in that massive library of her grandfather’s there was most likely a book or two of poetry written in Nahuatl. Juana learned the Aztec language because it was widely used around her and depending on the viceroy in charge at any given time, Nahuatl was an official language of New Spain, alongside Spanish. As stated earlier, the Ramírez and Asbaje families were pure Spanish. Modern-day authors who want to classify Juana as “oppressed” or “marginalized” claim that she learned Nahuatl to get a better understanding of her indigenous roots. Within a year, likely with some help of native speakers in her life, Juana mastered this indigenous language and would later even write poetry in it. In her grandfather’s vast book collection Juana discovered a work on the grammar of Nahuatl, the native language of the Aztecs. The budding poet wrote her first poem by the age of 8. By the age of three Juana could read Latin and by five she was able to understand the various ledgers and accounts connected with the finances of the hacienda. Her yearning for knowledge led her to follow her older sister to school to eavesdrop on lessons. ![]() Yelapa: arriving and walking along the beach (Cabo Corrientes, Mexico)Īs a young girl Juana spent a great deal of time in her grandfather’s very extensive library. As Juana’s father was from Spain and her mother was Spanish born in the New World, Juana was considered criolla in the social hierarchy of colonial Mexico. Juana never knew her father, a Spanish military captain from the Basque region named Pedro Manuel de Asbaje. Juana’s mother, Isabel, managed the hacienda at Panoayán. Young Juana’s maternal grandfather, the Andalusia-born Pedro Ramírez de Santillana owned two profitable haciendas. Although somewhat scandalous for 17 th Century New Spain, Juana’s mother made do as she was from a family of modest means. Juana’s mother, Isabel Ramírez de Santillana, never married and had five other children from two different men. Juana Inés de Asbaje Ramírez de Santillana was born in colonial Mexico a full century after the Aztec Conquest. One of the giants of Spanish literature of her time, and read from Spain to India to the Philippines, many people do not know much about this woman other than wondering casually who is behind the face on the Mexican 200-peso note. While lost to history for the better part of two hundred years, it was only in the 20 th century that scholars and biographers began examining the life and times of this fascinating historical figure. The person who would later become one of the most renown and controversial women in colonial Mexico was born on Novemin this sunny place between Cuernavaca and Puebla in central New Spain. So wrote the nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz about her humble birth, in the small town of San Miguel Nepantla, in the fertile foothills of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl. ![]()
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