Justice as Radical Accountability and Repair

Sor Juana's life represented both personal intellectual triumph and systemic failure—her society refused to grant her the rights she deserved, silencing her ultimately through institutional pressure. This experience illuminates how individual virtue without systemic change perpetuates injustice. Similarly, personal guilt about animal suffering, while potentially motivating, cannot substitute for structural transformation. This concept demands accountability frameworks that go beyond individual ethical consumption to address institutional exploitation. Legal reforms recognizing animal personhood, reparations for ecosystems destroyed by animal agriculture, and fundamental economic restructuring become necessary expressions of justice. Sor Juana's intellectual legacy includes her recognition that knowledge without justice remains complicit in oppression. Animal ethics similarly cannot rest with awareness; it requires accountability: from governments for species extinction, from corporations for environmental devastation, from societies for normalized cruelty. Justice also requires repair—restoration of damaged ecosystems, rehabilitation of traumatized animals, and construction of new relationships based on respect rather than exploitation. This demanding vision of justice echoes Sor Juana's refusal to accept partial or compromised recognition, insisting instead on the comprehensive transformation that dignity requires.