Sor Juana in Prison

A virtual pageant play

For Channel 40

by Jesusa Rodríguez

with the collaboration of Tito Vasconcelos, Manuel Poncelis and Liliana Felipe

Translated by Diana Taylor (with the help of Doris Sommer and Marlène Ramírez-Cancio)[i]

The spectacle that you are about to see is the result of years of experimentation with high tech.

It is the Blessed Year of Our Lord 2000, and thanks to Him the National re-Action Party has come to power in Mexico and finally restored decency and good manners to the social and political life of our country.

Any resemblance to real life is purely virtual.

The scene takes place in Sor Juana’s jail cell in the Almoloya penitentiary. Stage left is the nun’s desk, filled with books, ancient geometrical instruments, a pen, an inkwell, and a small Macintosh computer, the first kind to be introduced into the market. Downstage center is a single cot, and above it, a video screen. To the right, a black grand piano.

Sor Juana laughs as she reads a letter ex-President of Mexico Salinas de Gotari sent to the press in November 1995. The text of that letter and a photograph of the ex-President dressed as Sister (Sor) Philothea, are projected on the screen.

JUANA: Ha, ha ha, this guy was really something! What a man! With one little letter written from his virtual exile he activated a whole group of politicians and intellectuals. “It was all a huge conspiracy,” he said. Ha, ha, ha. What a guy, smart-ass, and with that he got off the hook. He never got accused of anything, he was never forced to testify about the murders and the collapse of the country, he never returned a penny of what he stole, come on, he didn’t even get kicked out of the Party. No doubt about it: either this guy was a genius, or his peers were total assholes.

Oh well. The important thing is that the epistolary genre is alive and well again in Mexico. This can be my chance to get out of here. I have to send a message to the media, though it’s probably like throwing a letter in a bottle out to sea—or better, launching a bit into cyberspace. Naturally, only letters sent from abroad matter around here. I’ve got it! I’ll answer the ex-President’s letter! It never occurred to anyone to respond back then, and a five-year-old news item might interest the press.

I will title it: “Sister Sor Juana Gets Sore Philothea”

To my most illustrious Ex-president, Ex-man, Ex-Cell-Intense, Carlos Salinas Kissinher, Count of Con.com, Bare-on of Bumsfeld, Chain-me, and lineage of the Fucksy, folksy Bush, Marquise of Twisted Tongue:

It is no will of mine, but my indignation, that has held up my reply these many years. It can hardly be a surprise that at the outset my bungling digital pen encountered two obstacles. The first, and for me the most obdurate, I find myself imprisoned in the Almoloya jail, where I was brought, deceived by men who said they believed in the NAP (later I found out it meant the right-wing “National Action Party” that you supported to gain power). Perversely, they scrambled the 17^th and the 21^st centuries through virtual technology— imposing a reign of terror and persecution in Mexico, refrying ancient laws to the detriment of people like me, who refuse to have their brains fried and prefer to think freely.

When I recall how that Angel of the Media, David Brock, on being questioned about his silence towards Newt Gingrich, his mentor, replied that he was keeping silent because there was nothing he could say worthy of Newt, how much more reason must there be for me to keep silent—not, like the saint, out of humility--

but because I am cut off from the outside world, under surveillance night and day. As if that weren’t enough, they’ve assigned me a criminal lawyer, who, far from defending me, has been paid off and will try to condemn me.

The second impossibility is that they have placed in my cell, as if it were the convent of St. Jerome, a false, two-dimensional library, courtesy of The Official Press, with hologram furniture, and an obviously obsolete Internet system. I would have preferred the Quadra 605 to this two-bit Apple BCE. To top it all off, they want me to write their speeches for them, write splendid praises to their fundamentalism, and build triumphant arches to Presidents Fucks and Bush, which, needless to say, is not in my nature.
[…]
Actually I know a lot of those guys get off jack-free. Take Cheney: although he did good things, that all seemed bad, he didn’t do any bad things that seemed worse. But me, they have in chains, to beat and humiliate me just for being a woman and inclined to COGITATION. I write desperately because today the attorney —believe it or not, NAP has put a nun in charge of the tribunal— today she will pass sentence on my case and I have reasons to fear she won’t even give me a chance to defend myself.

In short, I know that you (to resort to the language of NAP) don’t give a fuck, but whereas thou hast more influence than any among the NAPPERS, I appeal to thy merciful internet beseeching thy intercession on my behalf from the bottom of your hard drive. From this Convent of Our Father Saint Ignatius of Almoloya, your least fortunate, Juana Inés de la Cruz.

JUANA: Perfect, now I just have to format it, and it’s done. (Presses the wrong button) Oh my God! I made a mistake! I just sent twelve carrier pigeons to Sarajevo! Oh, bionics can be cruel! (Presses another key, again a mistaken one.) Shit! I messed up again! Well, what can you expect? I wasn’t born with a mouse in my hand. My God! I just materialized my horrendous attorney! Well, tough. You’ll have to sit through scene from “Impounding the House,” a little play I wrote for those anti-gentrification doves as well as the hawks in Congress and the Office of Homeland Security. I’ll remain alienated by a Brechtian effect they now call “TV presence”, and wait patiently for this guy to finish.

Meanwhile, I’ll compose Sonnet 165.

(From the other side of the stage, the attorney materializes, cross-dressed as the viceroy’s wife.)

Text of Mr. Starr, the attorney

ATTORNEY: What do you think, ladies?

The Viceroy’s wife has paid me
Eighty thousand new pesos
to trade jewels, clothes,
shoes and accessories with her,
and to fool the guards
at the Almoloya penitentiary.

Lucky for me, I didn’t wear
brown sweatpants today.
I can just imagine the Vicereine
dressed in Benetton gear.
The truth is, I’m a fucking genius

And not a fucking turn-coat.
I’m taking off these rags
starting with the jacket.

I’m an honest attorney,
but faced with such pressure
That twisted my arm, (and greased my palm),
I have to wear this, and sweeten my gestures
because my job is at stake.

So first let me tie up this mass of hair

For death to all if it flows freely

And with this mane, I’ll cover my crown

If it looks good, they’ll be calling me ‘Blondie’!

Now on with the crinolines!

Jesus! What fabric! No doubt I’ll look radiant

And because I’m dark, they’ll say I’m succulent.

And what do you think of this whale dress, ladies?

Even if the priests dressed me,

I couldn’t look better.

What about a push-up bra?

Do I need one? I doubt it.

Being a attorney, I always make a clean breast of tit.

Isn’t it true I’m a beauty?

God love me, I’m stunning.

Everything looks good on me

Because my figure is so alluring.

Now let me finish decorating myself

I’m still not the perfect lady

Shoes, thus so

So my feet don’t show

And even though my bunions burn

I can still dance a damn good turn

Make-up’s really not my vice
but if I want to be the mirror
of the Viceroy’s insipid wife
I’ll have to add an extra layer
Just like Fuck’s spouse, Ms. Martha

Lord! This vice-dress covers up a lot!
I can walk into the White House without being stopped
and stash sausages and fine wines in my crotch

To distribute to poor children in the anti-hunger plot

And win their souls for the Legions of Christ.

There’s no thief that hides as much,
no page that lies as much
no gypsy can out-scam me,
I am an attorney for NAP,

And before I was pro-PRI.

So, dear ladies,
I step lightly,
with upright posture
and graceful spirit,

my head inclined
my hand in my dress.

I gotta go, because beauty

wilts in confinement.
Plus I fear some other party
might seduce me.

(EXIT)

JUANA: There! I’m finally able to initial this! It didn’t come out too bad, my friends tell me.

But I beseech you intervene.

For a passive audience

Fails to fulfill the demands

Of an interactive sonnet.

Sonnet 165

(To the ex-President)

Semblance of my elusive Viceroy, hold still—

Image of a dope I fondly cherish

The creep that robs my heart of joy

Fucking fool that makes it joy to perish.

Since already my resources, like willing iron,

Yield to the powerful magnet of your transnationals

Why must you so flatteringly allure me,

Then slip away and cheat my eager arms?

Even so, you shan’t boast, self-satisfied,

That your tyranny has triumphed over me,

Evade as you might the closing net

That the drug agencies have laid for you

In vain shall you elude the deadly bullet

The deadly clasp

If the World Tribunal, or I, catch you in our grasp.

(Enter the Countess of Paredes --aka the Marquise de la Laguna, Vicereine of Mexico-- dressed as an attorney, stealthily walks in with her back turned to Sor Juana.)

JUANA: Attorney! Get out of here immediately! How many times have I told you not to enter without knocking! I am caught up in a whirl of inspiration and I can’t stand being interrupted. Out!

LISY: (smiles and turns around.) Juana...

JUANA: Oh voice of the awesome sun, whose light we needs extinguish. Either we block it with our wings, or exhaust it with our vision! Lawy...Lili, Lisy! It’s you! (They walk around each other in silence)

LISY: How do I look?

JUANA: Divine! You look like you’ve been airbrushed in Page Maker. But why are you wearing this disguise?

LISY: It was a ruse to enter your cell. I thought it up with your attorney, who by the way is an idiot. Where did you get him?

JUANA: I know he’s an asshole, but they won’t let me choose another. But tell me little Lisy, now that I’m close to you, now that you’re close to me… Did you bring me those diskettes, those Double High Density?

LISY: Enough of hypertexts, my lovely, enough!

Don’t let the techno tyrants torment you,

Nor contrast your tranquility on that vile screen,

for in liquid humor you’ve typed and seen

my software melting in your hands.

But what you really need, my love,

is to unglue yourself from that odious computer

and have something to eat.

Look, I brought you some sushi.

JUANA: Eeh! And what is that?

LISY: They’re just like Haikus,

except they come in different flavors.

(Lisy hands her a lunch box, Juana takes out the chopsticks from the plastic bag).

JUANA: These are strange haikus if one eats them with a compass.

LISY: Juana, listen, we have no time to lose.

Do you know the Holy Orifice is on the verge of condemning you?

(She kneels down.) I implore you, renounce! For our love, for God’s sake, for the immaculate correction, for whatever you want, I beg you: Renounce.

JUANA: No, no, I can’t.

LISY: Please, my adored love, renounce your books, let them burn them. What the hell, when you get out of here you can write them again.

JUANA: It’s too late. They’ve been accepted for publication by Flee Expression. And anyway I gave them to Inside/Out and I think even ViceVerse is going to publish some sonnets. My work’s even been pirated by MTV! I’m lost!

LISY: Come here, calm down. The situation is serious. Let’s think calmly. (They sit on the cot while a voice from OFF expounds the opinions of Octavio Paz about the relationship between the two women.)

VOICE OFF: The majority of Sor Juana’s biographers would give every last cent of their fellowships and grant money to have the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the scene that you are about to see. Octavio Paz, in his book on Sor Juana, The Traps of Faith, dispels all doubts that might have arisen concerning the decent and chaste relationship between the Most Excellent Doña María Luisa Manrique de Lara, Countess of Paredes, Marquise de la Laguna, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a professed nun in the Convent of St. Jerome in this loyal and faithful Mexico City. We will have the opportunity of fully understanding the true significance of the terms used by this erudite and pristine thinker to explain this friendship. (The two women move dangerously close to each other.) “Note the sublimated sapphism.” (The women start kissing passionately.) ‘Regard how they surrender to the silent orgies of meditation. One a nun, the other married. What could they possibly have done together? (Sor Juana jumps on top of the Vicereine and they frolic wildly.)

LYSI: Renounce! Renounce!

JUANA: Relax! Relax!

VOICE OFF: ‘Sor Juana’s powerful libido finds no outlet; her medallion is a symbol of sublimated virility. The Vicereine is ultimately a muse for Sor Juana, pregnant not with children but with tropes and metaphors.’ (The two women compose themselves.)

LYSI: Explain the rhyme pattern to me.

JUANA: I don’t know anything about that. I just know what I feel inside, and if by happenstance I’m a woman, no one will ever attest to it. Oh Lysi!! You touched an odd cord in me. You just inspired me with a decasyllable romance. Let’s see what you think.

May Heaven serve as a copper plate, Lísida,

On which to engrave your angelic form;

May the sun turn its beams into quills

May all the stars compose their syllables.

LYSI: I understood the quills part, but I don’t get the stars composing.

JUANA: Hum, maybe I should change it or Octavio Paz will write that we were sexing.

LYSI: While we were thinking I was also inspired by a song (Plays the piano and signs “The Sexes” by Henry Miller.)

[…]

JUANA: You know, your song got me thinking about that idea of Octavio Paz being a hermaphrodite that Paco Ignacio Taibo III proposes. In his biography of the poet he says: “The only thing we know about his relationship with Mary Jo Jo the only thing that interested him was the collage: The mixing of elements from daily life with formal receptions. From that, we can infer traces of spiritual androgyny. For the profession of being a public intellectual on T.V. has neutralized the poet’s libido, and there are even those who seeing him on the screen confuse him with Dolly Parsons—spiritually, of course.

What I don’t get is why biographies have to meddle with people’s intimate lives. Intimate life is sacred. As a response to Paz’s Traps of Faith, I will write a philosophic satire:

You silly men, who wrongly fault women of lacking reason

Fail to note the many of us who know full well the reason

You half-baked intellectuals, aching for a Nobel, prove half-assed

When you go along with those who gave the prize to Paz.

You attend his lecture, and then with gravitas

Accuse the press of maligning him with levitas

Paz wants another prize, he’s been heard to report

After all, we’ve heard him say, the Nobel’s come up short.

[…]

(As Sor Juana writes, the Attorney enters, dressed as the Vicereine.)

ATTORNEY: Vicereine! Ladies, what should we do? The Prosecutor confused me with your excellency and is on her way here, following me.

JUANA: It’s no surprise she would confuse you! You’re as alike as Bush and Bush!

ATTORNEY: Listen, ladies, one tries to have things come out as honestly as possible, but the truth is that I’m doing things that aren’t becoming of an attorney. I have a family, too, you know, and imagine what my kids would say if they saw me dressed up like this! (He cries.) Oh God, I’m don’t know what to do, have mercy on poor little me!

(The Prosecutor enters, and sings the NAP hymn to the music of Shostacovich’s 7^th symphony.)

PROSECUTOR:

Death to faggots,

Kill the blind,

Then the prostitutes and degenerates!

Clean the earth of unclean vertebrates!

God told a few of us, fervent NAPPERS,

That all sexes are filthy,

They’re hairy holes, and they’re stinky,

And, to top it all off, they’re kinky.

God gave us genitals so we could multiply,

Multiply, like rats and rabbits.

HE said, “Oh, great prosecutor,

Your purity makes my soul stand erect,

I have no interest for the wormy ways of sex.

God gave us genitals to make us human,

To multiply,

Multiply like rats and rabbits.

God gave us genitals to make us fecund,

To make us fervent NAPPERS.

To multiple,

Multiple like rats and rabbits.

(The Prosecutor’s cell phone rings.)

PROSECUTOR: Hello? Mister Inquisitor! How are you? Really? You’re burning down our National Archive? How moving! Oh, and our Monsignor Lawless is starting his livecast on the internet? I’ll log on right now. Bye!

(She approaches Sor Juana’s desk.)

Get out of the way! What is this piece of shit? Where’s it turn on? What’s the password?

JUANA: I don’t know, Mother, I just use it for word processing.

ATTORNEY: Hit enter.

PROSECUTOR: By the holy foreskin! How many MBs does this mother have?

JUANA: I don’t know anything about those BMs, Mother.

ATTORNEY: Back it up and initialize it.

PROSECUTOR: I’m referring to the memory, Sister, rams. Is your scanner manual or a flatbed?

JUANA: I don’t know Mother. I think it’s a cot.

ATTORNEY: Don’t press undo! You’ve fucked it up now.

PROSECUTOR: Madame Marquise!

LYSI: By the way, permit me to introduce you, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and the Prosecutor, Mother Condom Rice.

JUANA: My pleasure, Mother.

PROSECUTOR: You won’t be so happy when you hear what I’ve come about, Sister. I want you to know that your virtual pageant does not qualify, and it is prohibited on the grounds that it offends intimacy, genitality, and human reproduction according to the regulations for spectacles mandated by the municipality.

JUANA: But Mother! This pageant is being presented in the Capital!

PROSECUTOR: But you have Dolly Parsons in the cast, and she’s native American, and Trudy Guiliani says it’s a piece of shit.

LYSI: Address my client more respectfully!

PROSECUTOR: Attorney, you be quiet and stay over there. You’ve already forfeited your Christmas basket.

ATTORNEY: As the Vicereine, I demand that you re-instate the Christmas basket for the Attorney, and that you add a couple of cheeses and some eggnog.

PROSECUTOR: I’m sorry, Vicereine, but that attorney is an ass-hole. By the way, the pageant can’t be presented anywhere else either.

JUANA: Excuse me, Mother, but I removed that scene of Mary Magdalene table-dancing.

PROSECUTOR: According to chapter nine of the law of Spectacles, Article one hundred and forty, it is absolutely forbidden to display a naked human body in any establishment, as well as any sexual acts that go against morality and good manners, as well as any other act that goes contra natura.

JUANA: But Mother, what is really contra natura in my view is the current attack on civil liberties.

PROSECUTOR: We have resolved that issue. Don’t you read the newspapers? But don’t change the topic. We have concluded that your pageant is destabilizing. Why do the poor have to speak? Don’t you understand that it provokes subversion? People are the ones who provoke violence. Why would they go out in their cars if they know they’re going to get robbed? Provocation. Anyway, you’re an emissary from the past. Can you tell me why you mention events from 1995 in your pageant?

JUANA: I’m only trying to give some historical fundamentals.

PROSECUTOR: I see. Fundamentals, is it? And they say that we’re the fundamentalists.

(The President comes on the screen with whatever news made the headlines that day. “Economic recovery is not only wishful thinking. It’s bush-whacked idiocy.”

JUANA: By the way, Mother, who is that guy? No one remembers him anymore.

PROSECUTOR: He was a functionary of the past regime, but he died at the hands of his wife. And because we’re behind in cataloging, his name hasn’t been entered into the database yet.

JUANA: And what happened to sub-commandante Marcos?

PROSECUTOR: His cause became meaningless. Now that we’ve exterminated all the Indians in the country, the Zapatista movement has become obsolete. But I’m the interrogator here, Sister.

LYSI: I demand that you respect my client’s human rights.

PROSECUTOR: The Commission on Human Rights no longer exists, Attorney. That was merely one of the excesses of the last regime. And so that you learn your lesson, you’ve just lost your bonus and your Christmas blanket.

(The Attorney, dressed as the Vicereine, becomes desperate and starts to cry.)

Now you’ve done it, Attorney. You’ve made the Vicereine cry! You’re fired!

(Lysi laughs at the confusion.)

JUANA: All right, Mother. I want to know exactly what I stand accused of.

PROSECUTOR: You stage the birth of the Messiah live, and that goes against the intimacy of human persons according to Article 30 of the regulations. Moreover, in that scene, you include a total frontal nudity with the object of attracting morbid attention and increasing your revenues.

JUANA: But Mother, that is not correct. I never staged frontal nudity.

PROSECUTOR: What are you talking about? Let’s look at that Nativity scene.

(Image of the Manger with the classic Virgin and Child pose.)

There! You see! The baby is stark naked!

VICEREINE: But it’s a baby!

PROSECUTOR: Baby or not, his disgusting little things hang down.

JUANA: Medical science has still not succeeded in dressing baby Jesuses in utero, Mother.

PROSECUTOR: Well it can’t be that difficult. It’s like building one of those little ships in a bottle.

JUANA: It seems someone has been trying it, and three patients are suing him and no more virgins are willing to undergo the procedure.

PROSECUTOR: Well I’m sorry, but this is an obscenity.

(She grabs the Baby Jesus from the Virgin’s arms and stabs him against Sor Juana’s desk. Oh look, a baby’s cadaver on your desk, Sister, speared with a paperknife. Sister, you are a confessed murderer.

JUANA: I didn’t murder anyone. (To the attorney.) You’re my witness, Attorney. You too, Lysi, you saw that I didn’t do it.

PROSECUTOR: What do you mean, ‘Attorney’? What’s going on here?

ATTORNEY: Let me explain. These fucking lesbians forced me to dress up like this.

JUANA: Retract that ‘fucking’ immediately!

ATTORNEY: You know how homosexuals are. They told me that if I didn’t dress up as the Vicereine I’d have to go on the Oprah Winfire show.

JUANA: That’s a lie! He accepted for money.

ATTORNEY: Shut-up you fucking nun!

LYSI: Listen here, she’s the tenth Muse, the Phoenix of the Americas!

PROSECUTOR: She’ll never make Turkey of Amecameca. So we can add complicity and intent to deceive in addition to pushing public functionaries into prostitution and travestism. No ladies, the Inquisition’s got you now.

JUANA: Lysi, I’m lost, but you still have a chance to save yourself.

VICEREINE: No way. The Tribunal of the Holy Orifice is going to hear what I have to say.

(Sings.)

Music, Liliana Felipe. Words, Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe. […]

PROSECUTOR: (Attacks the Vicereine and hits her over the head with an enormous volume by Athanasius Kircher.) Attorney, lock this woman up at Bellevue, the Ronald Reagan psychiatric pavilion.

(The Vicereine is dragged out.)

JUANA: (crying.) Good-bye, Lysi, my love, and remember: Neither being a woman, nor being absent, is an impediment to my love for you, for you know that souls ignore both distance and sex.

PROSECUTOR: And you, enemy of Mexico, give it up. You’re going to rot in Almoloya. Here is the sentence passed by the Holy Tribunal:

Edict:

In exercise of the power vested in us, we, the NAPPING Inquisitors against depraved heresy and apostasy declare:

Hitherto, the virtual pageant by the nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, is banned In Totum.

Or better still, the work of the aforementioned nun is banned In Tototototum Piarum Aurium. And it will banned by the Holy Orifice in any language, even for those who do know how to read, even in books-on-tape. It cannot be translated, nor printed, nor pirated on pain of Excomunio Ipsofacto Incurrenda. And aforementioned nun will remain in custody all her days to write the hagiographies of the saints: Saint Jesse Helms, Saint Strom Thurman, and Saint Clarence Thomas.

Furthermore and in addition, all instruments of torture that were on display in the Med School and expropriated by our party for the benefit of morality and good manners in our nation will be tested on Sor Juana to see if they still work.

Ours by the grace of God.

Mexico, ever true.

National reAction Party.

(Exits.)

JUANA: (Desperate.) Gods! This was the democratic change we were waiting for? We’ve moved from the dinosaurs to the fundamentalist troglodytes. Poor Mexico. The beginning of the NAP for the elite, and the end of the nap for the workers. The worst torture is to lose hope. I will write my epitaph.

“I, Juana Inés de la Cruz, ratify my version of events and sign it with my blood. I wish I could let all of it in benefit of the truth. I beg my beloved sisters to take pity on this country and not vote either for the dinosaurs or the troglodytes. I, the worst of all: Juana Inés de la Cruz.”

Condemned unto perpetuity, Sor Juana finished her days in the Almoloya prison. Others, however, were set free after proving their innocence: Pinochet of Chile, Kissinger of the U.S., Menem and Cavallo of Argentina. The list goes on and on. To conclude, we will listen to the opinions on Sor Juana offered by the moral authorities of the Americas.

John Asscroft: We also know the nun by the name, Sin Laden, aka, the Avocado.

Trudy Guiliani: These fishnet stockings look better on me than they did on her!

University President Slumbers: So what if Coronel goes to Princeton and she goes to Yale, I mean… jail.

Reverend Farewell: It’s all their fault, fucking commie lesbo bitches.

Phyllis Shatly: Kill that anti-life freak.

President Bushed: Can’t talk now. There’s an orange alert. Or is it yellow? Or red? Dick….!!!!

The End