The Convent as Model for Just Systems

Sor Juana's convent, despite its constraints, offered something the larger colonial society did not: a structured community where women's intellectual development was valued and women had some agency in their governance. While not utopian, it demonstrates that alternative systems are possible. This becomes a conceptual resource for imagining human-animal relations differently. Instead of extractive systems (factory farming, animal experimentation, entertainment industries), what would communities look like designed around mutual flourishing? Indigenous ecological practices often embodied such relationships—reciprocal rather than extractive, respecting animal agency and autonomy. Sor Juana's convent reminds us that the systems we currently accept are not inevitable; they are constructed and therefore changeable. We can imagine and build communities where humans and animals coexist with greater justice: sanctuaries, rewilded lands, urban ecosystems designed for non-human flourishing. This concept repositions animal rights not as restriction on human freedom but as opportunity to create more just, stable, beautiful systems of shared existence.