This form of difference, the beginnings of a hybrid European and
American culture, is reflected in some of Sor Juana's popular villancicos
or songs. Poem 258 playfully ilustrates
this hybridization, at the very level of the signifier. The language of
this poem is a far cry from the sophisticated classical reference of Sor
Juana's courtly poems:
|
|
[. . .]Estribillo 1-¡Ha, ha, ha! |
|
|
Estribillo Morenica la esposa está,
porque el sol en el rostro le da. Coplas Aunque en el negro
arrebol
[. . .]
|
There is an uncomfortable wavering in this poem between Christian and Aztec belief systems -- the God that ensures the 'purity' of the Black Spouse, is 'dangerously' close to a to Sun God, while blackness in the poem hovers between the 'evil' it is associated with in the Christian tradition, and a sign of the favour bestowed upon her by this Sun God. The black Virgen de Guadalupe (see illustration) is still worshipped today in Mexico. In the poem, the hybridization of two cultures in the melting-pot (crisol) of the Mexican sun, and the hybridization of two codes of belief, the Christian and the Aztec, produces an excess of significations, creating multiple and contradictory connotations.This difference, the difference of the racial other, haunts many of these poems as both a hesitation of signficance and a celebration of 'otherness'.