Institutional Repentance vs. Individual Punishment

Sor Juana's conflict with religious and patriarchal institutions reveals a critical blind spot in purely individual punishment: systems themselves must transform. Punitive justice often focuses narrowly on individual actors while leaving oppressive structures intact. Restorative justice informed by Sor Juana's struggle demands institutional repentance—that churches, governments, and organizations fundamentally change policies, cultures, and power arrangements that permitted harm. This means examining how hierarchies enabled abuse, how silencing operated, how dissent was crushed. True restoration requires institutions to acknowledge complicity, dismantle enabling conditions, and rebuild with accountability embedded in governance. Individual wrongdoers are part of a larger ecosystem; restoration that ignores institutional transformation merely recycles harm through different actors, perpetuating cycles of injustice that Sor Juana's life exemplifies.