The Rebel and the Icon Juana de Ibarbourou and the Emblem of Juana de América

Abstract

Juana de Ibarbourou’s first poetic collection, Las lenguas de diamante (Diamond Tongues) (1919) impressed the Uruguayan and wider Hispanic public with its rebellious voice. Nevertheless Ibarbourou’s naming as “Juana de América” (Juana of America) and her subsequent glorification as a transnational symbol of Latin American womanhood have eclipsed what I contend is the subversive nature of her writing. This article demonstrates how Ibarbourou and her work historically have been read as virginal and passive, and argues that her poetry belies traditional feminine iconography through the brazen expression of a sexual desire that challenges discourses of docile femininity.

Uruguayan author Juana de Ibarbourou’s (1892–1979) first poetic collection, Las lenguas de diamante (Diamond Tongues; my translation throughout), published in 1919, captured the imagination of the Uruguayan people and caused Ibarbourou to become a figure of international importance known as Juana de América (Juana of America). In some ways Ibarbourou’s fame came to overshadow her writings, which are innovative in the way that they inscribe a female poetic subject that challenges hegemonic gender and literary discourses. In discussing Juana de Ibarbourou, one must consider the great contrast between the perception of Ibarbourou as Juana de América, a transnational symbol of Uruguayan and Latin American womanhood and cultural production, and the self-defined rebellious poetic voice of Las lenguas de diamante, who ironically subverts the very same literary and social norms of femininity that would silence her behind that mask of Juana de América.

Ibarbourou’s work creates this challenge in ways too numerous to be fully discussed here, however the clearest subversion of a traditional mode of femininity that must be explored is her expression of eroticism. A close look at Las lenguas de diamante reveals a discourse of intense desire through which the poetic voice breaks free from the boundaries of social mores, going so far as to defy the limits of existence with the strength of her erogenous cravings. Exploring this transgressive mis-citation of gender norms is central to my focus here and to the establishment of a new reading of Juana de Ibarbourou’s work. Considering the idea that the gender and sexuality of a person are created through the constant citation or process of regulated repetition in the performance of gender and heteronormative desire, then the inscription of female desire in Las lenguas de diamante can be seen as a mis-citation of these norms because of the way that it refuses or neglects to conform to this repetition (Butler 52, 218). Instead the poetic voice’s expression of erotic craving is that of a life force that burns fiercely within her and gives her a powerful transience that nothing, not even death, can break or destroy, even as it is a simultaneous combination of submission and dominance, passivity and activity.¹ Ibarbourou inscribes a desire that is demanding and active, demonstrated by verses such as “¡Tómame ahora que aún es temprano / Y que tengo rica de nardos la mano!” (Take me now that it is still early / and my hands are rich with tuberose flowers) from “La hora” (The Hour) (134), or the even more explicit “Fluí / Para ti. / Bébeme” (I flowed / For you / Drink me) from “El fuerte lazo” (The Strong Tie) (140). This erotic craving permeates the text, and is expressed by a clearly female poetic voice with a male object of desire. In creating such a poetic subject, Ibarbourou breaks with poetic tradition and the modernista authors of her time, whom she nevertheless uses as inspiration, by refusing to follow the established pattern of male-poet-subject who speaks of his female-object-muse, in the process subverting normative conceptualizations of female sexuality (San Román 158; Rojas, Ovares, and Mora 109).

This mis-citation is nowhere clearer than in the poem “Rebelde” (Rebel), wherein the poetic voice defies Charon, the being who ferries the souls of the dead across the river Styx. Inspired by themes and tropes from Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Don Juan aux enfers” (Don Juan in Hell) (1857), “Rebelde” appropriates Baudelaire’s melancholic representation of Don Juan, on his way to hell for his sins. Baudelaire’s Don Juan is jaded and asexual, languishing in the darkness of the underworld as he apathetically ignores all around him: “But the calm hero, leaning on his sword / Gazed back, and would not offer one look around” (Baudelaire 23). In Ibarbourou’s “Rebelde,” however, the figure of Don Juan is transformed into a female poetic voice that is the antithesis of the Baudelairean version of Don Juan; he is splenetic, whereas she is infused with desire.² The poetic voice of “Rebelde” is a woman who speaks for herself in the first person, rather than the more impersonal third-person style that is found in Baudelaire’s piece. This female poetic voice is as rebellious as the title suggests, speaking directly to Charon while she crosses the river Styx and declaring that she will be a scandal in his boat: “Por más que tú no quieras, por más guiños siniestros / Que me hagan tus dos ojos, en el terror maestros, / Caronte, yo en tu barca seré como un escándalo” (However strong your rejection, however sinister the gestures / your two eyes make toward me, masters in terror / Charon, I will be like a scandal in your boat) (135). The key to her scandal lies in that direct gaze infused with desire that refuses to yield to Charon, the “siniestro patriarca” (sinister patriarch) (135). Calling the conveyor of the dead a sinister patriarch underscores the poetic voice’s rebelliousness, specifically as a female expression of opposition to what she calls patriarchal rule over her will. She is refusing to be carried to death by the power of this male figure, and she will not allow this authority to destroy her essence. She is not merely behaving outrageously but rather declares that she will be a scandal, meaning that her existence itself and her agency in retaining her self beyond the borders of death are, in her own words, scandalous.

Such an implication is furthered when the female poetic voice emphasizes her difference from the others on the boat, proclaiming,

Yo iré como una alondra cantando por el río Y llevaré a tu barca mi perfume salvaje, E irradiaré en las ondas del arroyo sombrío Como una azul linterna que alumbrara en el viaje. (I will go like a lark singing along the river And I will carry to your boat my savage perfume, And I will shine on the waves of the somber stream Like a blue lantern that illuminates the voyage.)

(135)

Whereas the others on the boat are mere shadows beyond the body, symbolizing a lack of substance or self, who writhe and cry in fear of Charon and the crossing to the land of the dead – “Mientras las otras sombras recen, giman, o lloren, / Y bajo tus miradas de siniestro patriarca / Las tímidas y tristes, en bajo acento, oren” (While the other shadows implore, moan, or cry, / And beneath your sinister patriarch’s gaze / Timid and sad, in low voices, pray)—the poetic voice is defiantly active and happy, singing and shining as she takes the voyage (135). This is no sad soul filled with ennui that apathetically allows herself to be carried away. Instead of exhibiting Don Juan’s studied indifference, she is actively unapologetic as she brings her savage perfume onto Charon’s ferry, a significant image in two ways. For one, by bringing this essence with her she retains substance, unlike the shadows that surround her. For another, this wild perfume conjures up images of desire and sensuality in the face of and even beyond death, a theme that arises in many of the poems throughout Las lenguas de diamante. The female poetic voice refuses to die, and refuses to let her desire sputter and burn to ash. Instead she spreads her wild perfume throughout the boat and declares herself as not a victim, but as a prize: “Me bajarán tus brazos cual conquista de vándalo” (Your arms will lower me down / like a vandal’s conquest) (135). Her passion for life is transgressive in its transcendence of death. She dares to embody desire and, by doing so, to spite Charon and all for which he stands.

The poetic voice thus announces her so-called scandalous nature as a woman whose very essence is shockingly bright and disobedient, who speaks in the first person, refusing to cower before death and refusing to let her passion for life die. Her passion is indeed the central theme to the collection, one that is expressed as wild and savage in the way that she uses it for control and fulfillment of personal desire. In “El fuerte lazo”(The Strong Tie), for example, she demands that her lover fulfill her innermost desires, which border on the sadomasochistic: “Tálame. Mi acacia / Implora a tus manos su golpe de gracia” (Cut me down. My acacia / Implores from your hands their coup de grâce) (140). She continues, crying out for blood and suffering:

Por ti sufriré. ¡Bendito sea el daño que tu amor me dé! ¡Bendita sea el hacha, bendita la red. Y loadas sean tijeras y sed!

Sangre del costado Manaré, mi amado. ¿Qué broche más bello, qué joya más grata, Que por ti una llaga color escarlata? (For you I will suffer. Blessed be the hurt that your love gives me! Blessed be the hatchet, blessed the net. And praised be scissors and thirst! Blood from my side I will flow, my love. What brooch more beautiful, what jewel more pleasing, Than a scarlet wound from you?)

(140)

The blood flowing from wounds and the pain that she feels function as demonstrations of the poetic voice’s desire, as jewels and ornaments that display her all-consuming passion. Most importantly, however, it must be noted that the poetic voice is not a victim here, despite her suffering. Using the imperative mood, she commands her lover to make her blood flow, an image that in itself simultaneously represents passion in terms of the symbolic flowing or beating of the heart; the loss of virginity through the violent rupture of the hymen, which is corroborated by the phallic image of the hatchet; and the literal blood streaming from her body from the cuts and hits for which she begs her lover. This demand indicates a choice, an agency that she enacts in order to decide how she wants her desire to be fulfilled. In fact the last stanza suddenly reverses the position of receptivity: “Y tú llorarás / Y entonces . . . ¡más mío que nunca serás!” (And you will cry / And then . . . you will be more mine than ever!) (141). Her commands for her lover to treat her in this way tie him to her, and the fact that he follows through with her wishes reveals her power even in a receiving position.

Desire for Ibarbourou’s poetic subject hereby enters the realm of pain and pleasure, and the enjoyment of these two experiences. Whereas normative feminine and masculine heterosexuality is based on the dichotomy of passive/active, where the feminine is considered a receptive object vis-à-vis a masculine active subject, Ibarbourou’s inscription of female desire takes these expectations and challenges them by playing with what it means to be receptive. Her poetic voice is an agent in her receptivity, choosing when, how, and how much to be receptive, thereby using, confronting, and changing the norm. In enacting that choice, she confounds the binary, making the separation between active and passive more opaque. Even while writhing like a dog at her lover’s feet, an image that conveys total subservience, her poetic voice retains agency and subjectivity. In the poem “Lo que soy para ti,” (What I Am for You) where she likens herself to a dog, among other animals, plants, and natural objects, the poetic voice is always in control of giving these things, these parts of herself, to her lover: “Mi alma en todas sus formas te di” (My soul in all of its forms I gave to you) (133). It is a choice, an action that she takes; even if it is to give herself to another, it comes from her desire for him and the election to do this deed. Indeed if her lover does not please her or does not do as she asks, she strongly rebuffs him, though he comes begging later for the return of her devotion, as in the poem “Implacable” (Ruthless). She tells him, “Oye, pordiosero: / Ahora que tú quieres es que yo no quiero” (Listen, beggar:/ Now that you want it I do not) (137). Effectively, then, Ibarbourou’s early inscriptions of a female poetic voice express untamed desire, one that refuses to be controlled or dominated by social convention. It is in other words, a mis-citation of traditional femininity, and indeed of the label of “domesticated” that was attributed to Ibarbourou along with her title of Juana de América.

In fact, the reception of this collection and the consequent creation of the internationally celebrated figure of Juana de América, a title granted to her in 1929 and further reiterated in 1953 when the Unión de Mujeres Americanas (Union of American Women) of New York named her “Mujer de las Américas,” (Woman of the Americas) have caused much of the transformative and innovative literary and social aspects of the text to be hidden or ignored throughout nearly a century of criticism. To reference Juana de América is to allude to a national and international figure of mythological proportions, seen within Latin America as one of the quintessential representatives of la raza hispana (the Hispanic race) and Hispanic femininity (see “Juana de Ibarbourou, desde ayer Juana de América”). She is portrayed as graceful, feminine, and beautiful, with magical poetry whose use of image and metaphor is sentimental and sumptuous. Her relevance in Uruguay is such that many institutions, particularly in Montevideo, carry the name “Juana de América,” from grammar schools to foundations for the arts, and her face even appears on the thousand-peso bill. As a demonstration of her continued cultural importance in the twenty-first century, in 2009 the Parlamento de Uruguay held a ceremony celebrating the eightieth anniversary of her appellation as Juana de América, that included an orchestral performance of the national anthem, as well as music dedicated to Ibarbourou played by local artists and children from the schools that carry her name, and speeches by important scholars and diplomats (“Juana volvió a conmover”).³ These tributes display nationalism and affection for the poet and were underscored by the declaration at the 2009 event by Andrés Echevarría, one of the more recent scholars to edit works by and on Ibarbourou, that “el arte de Juana está en contacto con lo más íntimo del ser uruguayo y que la autora es una de las figuras más importantes de nuestro país” (Juana’s art is in contact with the most intimate of the Uruguayan being and she is one of the most important figures of our country) (“Juana volvió a conmover”). In such effusive demonstrations of enchantment for Juana de América, we can see the way that she continues to be an important symbolic figure that foments feelings of national pride for Uruguayans as well as an exaltation of Latin American cultural production, as she was from the very beginning.

Various critics have debated the reasons for the instant popularity of Ibarbourou and Las lenguas de diamante. Dora Isella Russell attributes the appeal of Ibarbourou’s first anthology and the enthusiasm with which it was received on both sides of the Atlantic to the fact that it filled a general emotional need. In her opinion, the text shone like a beacon of life-giving hope and youthful exuberance to a generation that was exhausted by the cruel and chaotic First World War (11). Jorge Rodríguez Padrón, on the other hand, describes the rapid fame of the collection as a spontaneous accident of sorts, which came about even though Ibarbourou was not a part of the established intellectual circles and had no formal intellectual training (26). He insinuates, in other words, that the literati of Montevideo were starved for new poetic talent, and that Ibarbourou filled this need perfectly, causing her to become a star overnight. Both interpretations describe the ambience in the Uruguayan and Hispanic literary world of the era to a certain extent. What is clear is that the 1919 publication of Las lenguas de diamante helped to fill a void left by the recent deaths of many of the great poets of the era, including Julio Herrera y Reissig (in 1910), Delmira Agustini (in 1914), and José Enrique Rodó (in 1917). Las lenguas was instantly used as a part of a project to establish a modern Latin American identity, and as its author was put forth as an emblem of Latin American literary and cultural superiority.

Indeed the creation of Juana de América as an identity symbol of latinoamericanidad (Latin Americanness) began almost as soon Las lenguas de diamante was published, creating a transatlantic discussion of the poet’s literary worth. In a letter sent to Ibarbourou in 1919, Miguel de Unamuno praises her work, which is notable since the Spanish author confesses a “desconfianza” (mistrust) of women’s poetry (8; see also Echevarría, “Con Jorge Arbeleche junto al recuerdo” 21–22). He admits to being “sorprendido gratísimamente [por] la castísima desnudez espiritual de las poesías de usted, tan frescas y ardorosas a la vez” (happily surprised by the chaste spiritual nakedness of your poetry, so fresh and burning at the same time) and tells Ibarbourou that he will pass along her poetry to Juan Ramón Jiménez and the brothers Antonio and Manuel Machado, thus ensuring the dissemination of her work in Spanish literary circles (8). Unamuno argues that poetry such as that written by Ibarbourou would not be produced by a woman in Spain: “Una mujer, una novia, aquí, no escribiría versos como los de usted aunque se le viniera a la mientes y si los escribiera no los publicaría y menos después de haberse casado con el que los inspiró. Y si una mujer, aquí, se sale de la hoja de parra de mitiquerías escribidoras es para caer en cosas antiguas y malsanas” (A woman, a bride, here, would not write verses like yours even if they were to come to mind and if she were to write them she would not publish them and even less after having married the one who inspired them. And if a woman, here, overcomes the prudishness of writing about petty subjects it is to fall into antiquated and twisted things) (8). Such a comment demonstrates the uniqueness of Ibarbourou’s position as a woman writing in Spanish, and betrays the cultural expectations against most literature written by women of the time. It furthermore sets up a dichotomy, acknowledged by Unamuno, between Spanish and Latin American literary production, which from the Latin American standpoint allows for a discourse of cultural competition and identity construction.

The criticism coming from Latin America, though similar to the Spanish, contained a large amount of national and continental pride for Ibarbourou’s work. In the prologue to the first edition of Las lenguas de diamante, Manuel Gálvez argues that Juana de Ibarbourou writes about “los temas del amor sinla pudibundez de la vieja retórica y de la moral oficial” (the topics of love without the prudishness of the old rhetoric and official moral values) (128). This comment would seem to indicate an acknowledgment of the subversive aspects of Ibarbourou’s poetry, yet Gálvez contradicts such a notion when he reassures the reader of the morality and innocence of Las lenguas de diamante. He declares, “Pero no contiene el volumen, sin embargo, verdadero sensualismo. Felizmente, carece de impureza, y la voluptuosidad es en él escasa. Todo está dicho con dignidad, noble y bellamente, y no creo que pueda despertar en ninguna alma pensamientos impuros” (But the volume does not contain, however, true sensualism. Happily, it lacks impurity, and the voluptuousness in it is scarce. Everything is said with dignity, nobly and beautifully, and I do not believe that it could awake impure thoughts in any soul) (129). He reiterates this feeling, stating that Las lenguas de diamante “está a buena distancia de esos libros de versos repugnantemente sensuales, olientes a voluptuosidad de lenocinio, que solían aparecer hace algunos años” (is far from those repugnantly sensual books of verse, smelling of vile voluptuousness, that tended to appear a few years ago) (129). This remark shows Gálvez’s awareness of the socially scandalous potential of Ibarbourou’s work in the cultural context of the time. He placates any qualms that detractors of the collection may have against its erotic content. Moreover, he denies even any potential eroticism in Las lenguas de diamante and does so through demonizing desire by implying that “true sensuality” and “impure thoughts” are morally and socially repugnant. He effectually reiterates and reflects the very “moral oficial” (official moral values) that Ibarbourou’s work supposedly avoids, casting her poetry within a mold of conformity (Gálvez 128).

This begs the question, then, of exactly what Gálvez is implying with the terms vieja retórica (old rhetoric) and moral oficial, which can be seen as a reference to Spanish hegemony and imperialism, rather than the idea of social and cultural normative discourse. This is clear in the arguments that he makes with regard to women writers in Latin America versus those in Spain. Similar to Unamuno, Gálvez maintains, “Mientras en España no ha habido una mujer que merezca el nombre de poeta, fuera de la maravillosa Rosalía de Castro que escribió en gallego, aquí, en el Río de la Plata, son varias las que han versificado con talento” (While in Spain there has not been a woman who deserves the name of poet, aside from the marvelous Rosalía de Castro who wrote in Galician, here, in Rio de la Plata, there are several who have written verses with talent) (127). As one of these authors, Juana de Ibarbourou writes verses that express, according to Gálvez, “un amor que no tuvo nunca expresión lírica en la literatura hispanoamericana, a lo menos sentido y cantado por mujeres” (a love that never had lyrical expression in Hispanic American literature, at least felt and sung by women) (127). This literary and cultural advantage, from Gálvez’s perspective, is one of no little pleasure for him as a Uruguayan and, more especially, as a Latin American above and in the face of the Spanish literary canonical authority (127). He uses these arguments not simply to compliment Ibarbourou but additionally to showcase an ideology of cultural superiority over the “old rhetoric” of Spain.

Gálvez hence uses the prologue of Las lenguas de diamante to create a discourse of Latin American Hispanism or americanismo that defines its culture against Spain instead of descended from it (Shumway 288). This kind of ideology, as Joan Ramon Resina argues, is never without an ulterior motive, particularly since Hispanism has many variations as well as political and cultural motivations (161). The undercurrent of americanismo in the prologue upholds a general feeling of a common continental cultural and political identity that is used to create a distance from Spain in a postcolonial context (Faber 67). Gálvez creates the comparison between Spanish and Latin American women authors with the ulterior motive of supporting the creation of a Latin American common cultural identity and authority. His preface illustrates the cultural competition between Spain and its former colonies that, particularly in the literary intellectual circles, were working to see themselves as a unified Latin America.⁴ Gálvez directly partakes of such ideas, a move that is clear from the very beginning of his praise for Las lenguas de diamante when he declares that “esta superioridad nuestra” (this superiority of ours) of having women authors is due to “la sensibilidad y libertad de la mujer, mayores aquí que en España” (the sensibility and liberty of the woman, greater here than in Spain) and because the Latin American countries are “países optimistas, sin cansancio y de pocos prejuicios” (optimistic countries, free from weariness and of few prejudices) (127). He reflects the belief, widely circulated at the time, in Latin America as a land of promise and of the future, the Utopia of humanity, as opposed to the weary and pessimistic Spain of the European continent, war torn and decadent (Franco 69).⁵

Furthermore Gálvez’s reassurance that Las lenguas de diamante does not contain any real sensuality or socially inappropriate sexuality (meaning non-feminine in a traditional sense) reinforces a hegemonic discourse of feminine sentimentality. Hence Gálvez’s argument for the so-called cultural and social superiority of Latin America reinforces the conceptualizations of femininity circulating at the time, even as it celebrates the proliferation of women authors in Latin America. His line of reasoning demonstrates another aspect of a certain kind of Latin American Hispanism or americanismo which not only rejects Spanish cultural authority as decayed and decadent, but also argues in favor of a transnational, unified, cultural and political identity of Latin America as a continent (Faber 67, 75). This discourse is in effect one of cultural nationalism, which is used as a publicity campaign, to borrow Sebastiaan Faber’s phrase, for social superiority in order to gain symbolic power and capital (89). It is, moreover, a promotion of hegemonic goals through the use of culture, and often at the expense of anything that strays from that hegemony (Resina 161). It is partly for this reason that the subversive anti-hegemonic potential and originality of Ibarbourou’s text has been denied from the outset, buried behind Gálvez’s ideology of americanismo.

The arguments made by Gálvez and Unamuno were the beginning of a long development of the creation of the emblem of Juana de América. As a part of this process Juana de Ibarbourou becomes not only a representative of Uruguayan literature, but she also comes to emblematize latinoamericanidad and the entirety of the cultural production of Latin America. This discourse was further galvanized at the 1929 ceremony held in the Salón de los Pasos Perdidos del Palacio Legislativo in Montevideo where Ibarbourou was dubbed “Juana de América.” The occasion was attended and presided over by many famous political and cultural figures of the time including Alfonso Reyes and Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (see Arbeleche 9; Echevarría, “Prólogo: Juana de Ibarbourou” 36). The event occurred at a moment of political instability (which would eventually lead to the 1933 coup d’état of President Gabriel Terra,) a coincidence that Jorge Rodríguez Padrón argues was intentional.⁶ Padrón states that the self-importance and paraphernalia that made up the ceremony were calculated to create a feeling of patriotic exaltation—a sentiment that it did in fact produce—meant to counter or mask the political problems of the moment (108).

The journalism of the time reflected this discourse, as seen in the newspaper La Mañana, which on the day after the original event in 1929 reported that the ceremony was an homage to Ibarbourou’s “altos méritos intelectuales y a su obra, cuyo valor indiscutible ha trascendido las fronteras del país, haciéndose acreedora a la más alta justipreciación de la crítica hispano-ame icana” (high intellectual merits and her work, whose indisputable valor has transcended the borders of the country, making itself worthy of the highest praise from Hispanic American criticism) (“El homenaje”). Similarly in 2009 at the event that commemorated the 1929 ceremony, Roque Arregui, president of the Cámara de Diputados of Uruguay, noted that the importance of Ibarbourou “había logrado trascender los límites de nuestro país” (had succeeded in transcending the limits of our country), again attempting to demonstrate Uruguay’s cultural strength and its transnational reach (Juana volvió a con-mover). Such a declaration reiterates the americanista themes attached to the figure of Juana de América that have gone relatively unchallenged ever since the 1929 consecration service, and which were established then through a series of symbolically loaded actions.

The ceremony was indeed filled with pomp and circumstance and graced with many famous political and cultural figures. Its patriotic importance has been prolonged throughout the intervening century, and is repeatedly described in terms of a nationalistic mythology intertwined with discourses of gender and race. At this event Alfonso Reyes, speaking of Ibarbourou, declared, “Y Juana en el Norte, Juana en el Sur, en el Este y en el Oeste: por todas partes fueron cayendo las palabras. Juana donde se dice poesía y Juana donde se dice mujer. Juana en todo sitio de América, donde hacía falta un aliento” (And Juana in the North, Juana in the South, in the East and in the West: the words were heard everywhere. Juana where they say poetry and Juana where they say woman. Juana in every place in America, wherever a breath of fresh air was needed) (qtd. in Arbeleche, Juana de Ibarbourou 22; my emphasis). The name “Juana” becomes loaded with symbolic importance, tying together all of the geographical corners of America—“en todo sitio de América” (in every place in America). Furthermore she becomes attached to the word poesía (poetry), making her self and work synonymous with all Latin American literary production. Most crucially, “Juana” becomes tantamount to the word mujer (woman), and this combined with the poet’s association with the geopolitical land of “América” establishes the emblem of Ibarbourou as the ideal representation of the Latin American woman.

To call Ibarbourou Juana de América the woman of America, and to declare that she is everywhere, like a breath of fresh air, begs the question of exactly what it is that she stands for, and the answer has interesting ramifications for Ibarbourou’s work and historical reading. If seen through the lens of the historical context and social mores of the time, her social position becomes one of representing Latin American womanhood and traditional femininity. She becomes, in a sense, an Everywoman of Latin America, a symbolic role that acts as a way to avoid or remove the subversive potential of her poetry, confining it instead within heteronormative cultural expectation. As evidence of this, the moment when Ibarbourou was named as “Juana de América,” was structured as a curious parallel of a marriage ceremony. The poet Roberto Ibáñez presented her with a golden ring, while at the same time Juan Zorrilla de San Martín proclaimed that this ring symbolized her marriage to America (Pickenhayn 21; Russell 19).⁷ This consecration service becomes then a nuptial rite, and the giving of the name Juana de América becomes a change of name in accordance with traditional modes of marriage whereby the woman takes on her husband’s name in an act of giving herself over to him.

Ironically, however, the men who performed the marriage rite used the feminine word for the continent of “la América” (Pickenhayn 21; Russell 19). Considering that “América” has been consistently depicted as a woman, particularly within nationalistic visual and literary representations, it is curious that a woman poet would be then married to such a figure. In other words, while on the one hand the ceremony is a reinforcement of heteronormativity, it is simultaneously and unwittingly a pseudo-lesbian wedding, a fact that no one apparently realized either at the time or since. If seen through this lens, her marriage to the continent can itself be deconstructed as one that undermines the heteronormative values that it assumes in the very attempt to create a unifying intellectual and yet domesticated symbol for America.

This is not what happened historically, however. Instead Ibarbourou has been consistently depicted as the weak feminine figure in a heteronormative binary. She became the literal representative of her new “spouse,” tied to the continent, while her work was hidden behind the symbolic importance of the title, either out of blindness or an intentional refusal to acknowledge its daring content. As Rodríguez Padrón puts it, “Cuando se la nombra Juana de América . . . La poeta desaparece” (When they name her Juana of America . . . The poet disappears) (99). Furthermore, I argue, the giving of the symbolic wedding ring and the proclamation made by important male figures of the time was a moment of enacted speech that simultaneously functioned as a way to silence any subversive agency in Ibarbourou’s work while reinforcing national, racial, and gender stereotypes that were part of the building of a Latin American identity.

As if to underscore the traditional gender roles in this symbolic marriage, the descriptions of the event both at the time and in later recollections reinforce Ibarbourou’s sweet feminine frailty in comparison to the grand strength of the great men of the era who were giving her this title. In the newspaper El Bien Público, for example, appears an article from 11 August 1929, the day after the ceremony, in which Ibarbourou is declared to be “la encarnación de la sensibilidad femenina,” (the incarnation of feminine sensibility), who writes “con la gran voz de la raza, con entusiasmo espontáneo y hondo, con femenina dulzura” (with the great voice of the race, with spontaneous and deep enthusiasm, with feminine sweetness) (“Juana de Ibarbourou, desde ayer Juana de América”). This comment makes a clear connection between Ibarbourou’s supposed femininity and her attributed symbolic voice for la raza, tying together hegemonic gender norms with discourses of ethnicity. Gabriela Mistral further added to the idea of the essential feminine nature or aura that supposedly made up “Juana de América.”⁸ She calls Ibarbourou the hija del Uruguay (daughter of Uruguay) and states, “no es ningún azar ese apelativo que le dieron y que la deja sola con la América, dueña de la llave inefable de nuestro mujerío, es decir, con la fórmula de la feminidad americana” (it is not a matter of chance that title they gave her that leaves her alone with America, owner of the ineffable key to our womanhood, meaning, with the formula of American femininity) (qtd. in Russell 27). Such a statement reinforces the essential Latin American femininity that Juana de Ibarbourou was seen to represent. She came to be known as a conservative poet, and therefore she was not seen as threatening to hegemonic order or the ideals of a capitalist bourgeois class to which she belonged (Rodríguez Padrón 27).

Dora Isella Russell perpetuates these themes in her highly influential 1951 account of the celebration, which along with her biography of Ibarbourou’s life, has been used as a voice of authority on Ibarbourou for nigh on sixty years. The fact that Russell perpetuates both the image of traditional femininity as well as the discourse of racial superiority and nationalism has meant that much of criticism on Ibarbourou has also perpetuated this line of thought. It is with unadulterated pride and zeal that Russell describes the way that, on the day of the event, “un sol de invierno doraba, hacia la media tarde, las anchas torres esculpidas del Palacio Legislativo de Montevideo, refulgía en las astas de las banderas, se espejaba en los cascos y las corazas de la Guardia Republicana, se reflectaba en el aire con resplandores de triunfo” (a winter sun made golden, towards the middle of the afternoon, the wide sculptured towers of the Palace of Legislation of Montevideo, shone brightly on the flagpoles, polished the helmets and breastplates of the Republican Guard, reflected in the air with the splendor of triumph) (18). The images of the golden sun triumphantly shining on the nation’s flag, its guards, and on the palace create a discourse of nationalism that encompasses the description of Ibarbourou’s naming as Juana de América.

Here Russell weaves a fabric of patriotism with a heteronormative reiteration of femininity and masculinity in the description of the persons present at the event as juxtaposed with Ibarbourou herself. The author soon to be crowned with the gloria (glory) of the nation is referred to by her first name and described in infantilizing terms: “llegó Juana, menuda, blanca, bella de belleza y de juventud, talento y gracia, con su vestido de encaje albo que la hacía más frágil” (Juana arrived, small, white, beautiful in her beauty and her youth, talent and grace, with her white lace dress that made her more fragile) (19). Ibarbourou is described as passive, weak, and beautiful with traditional feminine grace, which is contrasted immediately with the description of the “altas autoridades del país y los representantes diplomáticos de las veinte repúblicas americanas” (high authorities of the country and the diplomatic representatives of the twenty American republics) and the way that “la suave muchacha que tomaba el nombre de un continente como suyo, parecía buscar amparo junto a la figura venerable de Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, patriarca” (the gentle young girl who was taking the name of a continent for her own, seemed to look for support beside the venerable figure of Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, patriarch) (19). With language such as this to frame the critical reckoning of the event, we can see how the naming of Ibarbourou as Juana de América has functioned to create a national myth surrounding her figure, which, as any national myth, reinforces hegemonic gender norms.

The point here is that the fascination with Ibarbourou as a figure has shadowed the criticism of her texts, has upheld a hegemonic and indeed heteronormative standard ideal of Hispanic femininity, and has masked the transgressive potential of her work behind a façade of canonization. Much of the criticism on Ibarbourou has functioned in precisely this manner, reading Las lenguas de diamante and Ibarbourou’s later publications as somehow essentially feminine, and therefore sentimental, not serious or dissident, interpretations of the natural world and of life. In fact, until the late 1970s, there was very little textual criticism on Ibarbourou’s work, and each successive text she published received less and less attention (see Echevarría “Prólogo” Una mirada 5). The majority of the criticism that one can find on Ibarbourou is largely biographical, praising with excitement the life of Juana de América with very little attention to the texts themselves. This can be seen in the comments by Sidonia Carmen Rosenbaum in 1945, for example, who both infantilizes Ibarbourou’s earlier work for its “chaste” and sweet “naturalness” in the expression of innocent love, and normalizes her later writings, calling them “serious, proper and domestic” (231–32).⁹ This representation has been little challenged throughout most of the twentieth century, and resurges as recently as 1997 in another stereotypical portrait of Ibarbourou as the famous-by-accident shy girl-woman who is always overwhelmed by the attention she receives (Richero). Even more crucially this account describes Ibarbourou as the incarnation of Cinderella, a “mujer, mujer bella, mujer joven, campesina milagrosa que le canta a su Arcadia. Cenicienta virginal que de la nada irrumpe en el parnaso de la literatura uruguaya con unos versos rebeldes para con la muerte, exultantes de vida y felicidad” (woman, a beautiful woman, a young woman, a miraculous country girl who sings for her Arcadia. A virginal Cinderella who from nothing bursts into the Parnassus of Uruguayan literature with verses rebelling against death, exultant in life and happiness) (141; my emphasis).

Once again Ibarbourou as a figure is constructed in terms denoting a beautiful, young, and innocent country girl. The use of the infantilizing virginal has the effect of devaluing her work and ignoring the erotic and clearly unchaste content of such verses as “Y a mis manos largas se enrosca el deseo / Como una invisible serpentina loca” (And around my hands desire coils itself / Like an invisible crazy serpent) from “La cita” (The Meeting) (Las lenguas de diamante 161). Cinderella is a figure of victimhood, one who is an obedient daughter even in the face of emotional abuse, and who must be saved by a powerful and beautiful prince in order to live happily ever after.¹⁰ It is, in other words, a fairy tale that reiterates heteronormative power dichotomies, and in putting Ibarbourou in the position of Cinderella her figure is likewise placed yet again in the powerless position of a woman who has had recognition thrust upon her, almost despite herself. It must also be asked, who is Ibarbourou’s prince in such a metaphor? Logically “he” can be understood as a polysemic symbol, one that denotes the continent to which Juana de América is symbolically married; the power, from a certain perspective, of la raza hispana, which is her champion and which she also represents; and the male figures of authority (Zorrilla, Reyes, and Ibáñez for example) who bestowed the position of importance on Ibarbourou in this paradigm. This is a problematic presentation of Ibarbourou, and the fact that it arises at the end of the twentieth century demonstrates that the concepts of heteronormative femininity are still very much present in the discourse surrounding this national and international Hispanic literary figure.

I argue for a return to Ibarbourou’s texts, whereby we can analyze the naming of Ibarbourou as Juana de América the “Mujer de las Américas” in a new light, taking into consideration a rereading of her work as a mis-citation of literary and social norms. While on the one hand the use of the title Juana de América has functioned as a way to confine her persona within normative hegemonic discourse, on the other hand if we analyze this mis-citation in her writings, her title becomes ironic because it is given to a woman whose works are decidedly a challenge to heteronormative expectations for female desire. Her poetry undermines the moral oficial in a way that is even more daring than Gálvez ever intended when he used those words in his prologue to the first edition of Las lenguas de diamante (128). In light of this new way of conceiving her work, the title of Juana de América can be resignified as one that is ironic and transgressive, since Ibarbourou’s work is in fact subversive, illicit, and creates an inscription of female desire that confounds static definition. In Las lenguas de diamante, the poetic voice is not one who is domesticated or compromised but rather is the self-declared rebel who will desire as she pleases, whether this puts her in a position of subservience to her object of desire, or whether she casts off all mortal chains, living forever through a wild, uncontrollable, immortal erotic craving. This is Ibarbourou’s legacy, one that transgresses the constructed figure of traditional femininity used by hegemonic discourse to create the patriotic emblem of Juana de América.