Rosario Castellanos Figueroa (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈsaɾjo kasteˈʝanos]; 25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and writer. She was one of Mexico’s most important literary figures in the 20th century. During her life, she wrote clearly about problems related to culture and gender inequality. Her work helped shape Mexican feminist ideas and cultural studies. Although she died at a young age, she helped create opportunities for women in Mexican literature. Her impact is still felt today.
Career
Castellanos was born in Mexico City but grew up in Comitán, near her family's ranch in Chiapas, a southern state in Mexico. As a young girl, she was quiet and noticed the difficult lives of the indigenous Maya who worked for her family. She said she felt separated from her family after a person who predicted the future told her mother that one of her two children would die soon. Her mother cried out, "Not the boy!"
The family's situation changed when President Lázaro Cárdenas introduced a land reform and a policy to free peasants from land ownership, which caused the family to lose much of their land. At fifteen, Castellanos and her parents moved to Mexico City. In 1948, both of her parents died in an accident, leaving her without parents at age 23.
Although she remained quiet, she joined a group of Mexican and Central American intellectuals, read many books, and began writing. She studied philosophy and literature at UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico), where she later taught, and became part of the National Indigenous Institute. She created scripts for puppet shows performed in poor areas to help people learn to read. The Institute had been founded by President Cárdenas. She also wrote a weekly column for the newspaper Excélsior.
She married Ricardo Guerra Tejada, a philosophy professor, in 1958. The birth of their son, Gabriel Guerra Castellanos (now a political scientist), in 1961 was an important moment in her life. Before this, she had experienced depression after several miscarriages. However, she and Guerra divorced after 13 years of marriage because Guerra was unfaithful. Her personal life was marked by a difficult marriage and ongoing depression, but she focused much of her work on defending women's rights and is remembered as a symbol of Latin American feminism.
In addition to her writing, Castellanos held several government positions. In 1971, she was appointed as Mexico's ambassador to Israel for her contributions to Mexican literature.
Death
On August 7, 1974, Castellanos died in Tel Aviv after being electrocuted by a lamp while she was answering the phone after taking a bath. Little is known about the exact circumstances of her death, and people have made different guesses about what happened, including suggestions of suicide or murder.
Work and influences
Throughout her career, Castellanos wrote poetry, essays, one major play, and three novels: the semi-autobiographical Balún-Canán (translated into English as The Nine Guardians), Oficio de tinieblas (translated into English as The Book of Lamentations), and Rito de iniciación. Oficio de tinieblas describes a Tzotzil indigenous uprising in Chiapas, based on a real event that happened in the 19th century. Rito de iniciación is a story about a young woman who discovers her calling as a writer. Although Castellanos was not of indigenous descent, she showed deep care and understanding for the struggles of indigenous people in her works.
A major theme in Castellanos' fiction, poetry, and essays is her support for women's rights. She was an early leader in the fight for women's rights in Mexico. Her first important feminist essay was her 1950 Master's thesis titled Sobre cultura feminina (On Feminine Culture), in which she examined the roles of women throughout history. In her 1973 essay collection Mujer que sabe latin (The Woman Who Knows Latin), she explored women's roles in society, the expectations placed on them, and ways to move forward, especially in the essay "La mujer y su imagen" ("Woman and Her Image"). In her posthumous play El eterno femenino (The Eternal Feminine, 1975), Castellanos showed how women in Mexican history, such as poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, independence hero Josefa Ortíz de Domínguez, and Austrian Empress Charlotte (wife of Emperor Ferdinand Maximilian), interacted and shared their experiences.
"Cartas a Ricardo," a collection of Castellanos's letters to her husband, Ricardo Guerra, was published after her death, as was her third novel, Rito de iniciación. In "Cartas a Ricardo," there are about 28 letters Castellanos wrote from Spain (1950–51), where she traveled with her friend, the poet Dolores Castro.
Ciudad Real is a collection of short stories published in 1960. In these stories, Castellanos focused on differences between groups, such as whites and indigenous people, as well as between men and women. Communication is an important theme in her work, and Ciudad Real shows the tension between the indigenous people of Chiapas, Mexico, and whites, who cannot understand each other because they speak different languages. These themes of loneliness and being left out appear often in the collection. However, the final story is different. In this story, the main character, Arthur, knows both Spanish and the indigenous language, which allows him to bridge the gap between the two groups. At the end, Arthur connects with nature (a rare theme in Castellanos' work) and finds peace with himself and the world. This is the only story in the collection with a "happy ending."
Castellanos admired writers such as Gabriela Mistral, Emily Dickinson, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, and Simone Weil. Her poem, "Valium 10," is in the confessional style, and is a powerful feminist poem similar to Sylvia Plath's "Daddy."
Awards and honours
In 1958, she was awarded the Chiapas Award for Balún Canán. Two years later, she received the Xavier Villaurrutia Award for Ciudad Real. She also received the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award in 1962, the Carlos Trouyet Award of Letters in 1967, and the Elías Sourasky Award of Letters in 1972. In addition, many public places are named after her.