A deluge and a poem: Sor Tadea, the little-known story of the first Chilean writer

It was pure coincidence. One of those unexpected moments that life throws at us from time to time. In search of a survey she was conducting as part of a Fondecyt project, the historian Alexandra Araya -Doctor in History and specialist in Colonial History- investigated the Central Archive Andrés Bello, of the University of Chile. There, among the files and funds, he identified an 18th-century manuscript that caught his eye.

After examining it, he realized that he had a jewel in his hands. . The original of Account of the flood that caused the Mapocho Riverof 1783, attributed to a Carmelite nun born in Chile: Sister Tadea of ​​San Joaquin . In other words, it is the discovery of the first recorded Chilean writer. Something like our very own Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

“Sonia Montecino, the first female director of the Archives, called on me as a historian to enhance the collections, integrating a gender perspective ever since,” Araya said. Worship -. I did my doctoral thesis at the Colegio de México on so-called conventual writing, studying the letters of the nun Sor Josefa de los Dolores Peña y Lillo, I got to know the repertoire of the so-called conventual genre, so when I recognized the text I was very moved, great and I communicated it immediately because it was excellent news.

So much so that Araya filed a request to have the Archives’ collection declared a National Historic Landmark, “precisely because of the value of the collection and of this specific manuscript.” This was done in 2009.

“She was the first Chilean writer, to our knowledge today. There is a systematic work of many scholars in Latin America who constantly bring to light other handwritten and published texts, but so far we have not heard of another woman born in the Captaincy General of Chile”, adds Araya. In fact, she was so misunderstood that no portrait of her exists.

Strictly speaking, that of Sor Tadea is a long, fairly narrativized poem, somewhat in the style of The Iliad, The Odysseyeither The Araucanian. It is written in perfect octosyllabic meter. , one of the two most used in poetry prior to the 20th century (the other is the hendecasyllable). It turns out that his confessor asked him to record the flooding of the Carmelite convent on June 16, 1783, following a flood of the Mapocho River in Santiago. 260 years ago.

“It seemed that Neptune / quitting his old position / was spreading in the Clouds / without looking with his respect / and liquidating the Seas / I judge that the Firmament / Ilover Oceans did / for our feeling / because in this way he has become / more powerful and violent / the great Mapocho who runs / in front of the convent”, is said in one part.It also intersects with reflections on divine, theological thought and on society.

“It is about a woman who writes in a very remarkable way, by her precision and her pleasure, the flooding of the city by the Mapocho river. and that the account of the disaster also allows us to read his poem as a chronicle and short story of an event that moved the city to the point of circulating in printed form as a book,” adds the historian.

Mapocho floods were frequent with winter rains, and despite the fact that temporary locks had been built to contain the waters in previous centuries, they were solely under the governor’s management. Ambrose O’Higgins It was in 1788 that the final tokens were built. They were finished in 1808. They started from what is now Condell Street, in Providencia, to the Cal y Canto bridge.

The register, in any case, is no exception, comments Araya. “It was customary for nuns to write poems inside convents. Indeed, monastic life was one of the possibilities offered to women to have access to writing and reading within the framework of their religious training, of their functions of financial administration of the convent, but also within the framework of their spiritual. Writing was also a profession, that is to say, a difficult task and several times the confessors ordered them to do it within the framework of penances or spiritual direction”.

How was poetic writing considered at that time? Araya replies, “Poetry is not my field, but I can say that it was respectable and authorized. But it must be considered that the circulation of the manuscripts had private, intimate and sometimes more open routes. But publishing was something else. What is important about Sor Tadea is that by being published, she becomes recognized as a public author. “.

The poem has been edited and published in a total of 18 editions; 15 printed and 3 digital, published in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. The first took place in Lima, in 1784, which is quite logical, since at that time it was the capital of the viceroyalty and concentrated most of the kingdom’s activities. Today, the poem has returned to store windows in a new edition, through the Editorial Universitaria.