Ibero-America

Ibero-America / Iberoamerica is a unifying concept, like Latin America, but includes the European "mother countries" and only those American countries where Spanish or Portuguese is the first language. So, whereas Latin America includes French-speaking countries, Iberoamerica doesn't.

In a sense, the Iberoamerican ideal recreates major swaths of the Spanish and Portuguese empires for the purposes of trade and cultural preservation, but gives the Americas equal power, too. The closest thing to this in the English-speaking world is the Commonwealth connecting Great Britain with many of its former imperial colonies, but not including the USA (rebel upstarts, after all).


Today is the birthday of Iberoamerican writer-poet-philosopher-dramatist Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana (ca. 1648-1695). She is, along with artist Frida Kahlo, a Mexican hero, virtually a saint.

What was a woman to do in the 1600s? If she wanted to have any degree of independence, she must be either very rich or become a nun. Sor Juana wasn't rich.


Radha Mitchell (b. Radha Rani Amber Indigo Anunda Mitchell) was born not in Ibero-America, but in Australia. Still, it's her birthday (she's 34) and I liked her in Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda (2004) -- playing both Melindas. One tragic, the other comic.


Alejandra Guzmán (Alejandra Gabriela Guzmán Pinal), part Mexican and part Venezuelan, is popular throughout Iberoamerica and Latin America. Can you dig?

Today's Rune: The Warrior.