Walk around park for Alzheimer's Society ; In brief

SOUTH WEALD: A walk in aid of the Alzheimer's Society will takeplace on Sunday.

The meet-up for the charity stroll will be at the cricket clubcar …

S.Korean Leader: Offer to Help Unheeded

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press that a Seoul offer to help resolve a banking impasse blocking North Korea's nuclear disarmament went unheeded by Washington and Pyongyang.

Roh, whose term expires in February, also said there could be time while he's in office to hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il - but only if the reclusive North moves to abandon its nuclear program.

"We have offered to help in resolving the (bank) issue to both sides, but after our offer there has not been an answer from either side," Roh said during an interview with AP President and CEO Tom Curley.

…

Businessman pleads guilty in NY pension probe

A California businessman has pleaded guilty to securities fraud in connection with an investigation of alleged corruption at New York's public pension fund.

The attorney general's office said Tuesday Julio (HOO'-lee-oh) Ramirez entered into a corrupt agreement with a top political aide to former New York Comptroller Alan …

Media Are Urged to Help Heal Race Rifts

Journalists need to break through stereotyped news coverage andtake a healing role to improve race relations in Chicago and theUnited States, three Northwestern University researchers saidThursday at a downtown forum.

The professors presented studies of network TV coverage, mayoralelection coverage in Chicago and articles on Native Americans thatthey say show bias toward stereotypes and a lack of serious analysisof racial issues.

Often subtle in its stereotyping, they said such coverage canexacerbate what sociologists call sometimes covert "modern racism"among whites.

For example, a survey of network news in 1990 and 1991 found"nearly two-thirds of …

Cardinals 7, Braves 3

St. Louis			Atlanta
ab r h bi		ab r h bi
Schmkr 2b	5 0 1 0		OInfant 2b	5 0 2 0
Jay rf	5 1 1 0		Heywrd rf	3 1 2 0
Pujols 1b	5 2 2 2		Prado 3b	5 0 1 1
Hollidy lf	3 2 2 …

Clemson Stuns No. 7 Duke in ACC Tourney

Clemson's dubious basketball history has drawn chuckles for years, and the depth of its futility _ try 0-53 at North Carolina _ is difficult to comprehend.

Well, this Clemson team is starting to shed the image that it's a football school in a basketball league.

The Tigers stunned No. 7 Duke 78-74 Saturday to advance to their first Atlantic Coast Conference final in 46 years. Clemson had lost 22 straight games to the Blue Devils and is the only charter member of the ACC to never win the league tournament title.

Trevor Booker scored 18 points and Cliff Hammonds added 17 for the third-seeded Tigers (24-8), who hadn't beaten the Blue …

Comedy gem still sparkles a century later

Oscar Wilde certainly knew how to keep audiences laughing.

The Importance of Being Earnest is still pulling the crowds morethan a century after it was written in 1895. And we still love it.

The role of Lady Bracknell seems the ideal fit for Penelope Keith,who portrays the formidable matriarch with the cynicism she honedto perfection in To The Manor Born.

William Ellis and …

Self publishing: What you should know before you begin

Self-publishing isn't for everyone. Linda Radke, author of The Economical Guide to Self-Publishing: How to Produce and Market Your Book on a Budget, offers these tips for beginners.

1. Research your market. It is a healthy sign if other books are available on the same topic. Maybe you can create a unique angle on the subject. When I wrote The Economical Guide to Self-Publishing, there were several great books available on that topic and my challenge was to make my book stand out from the others. I accomplished this by focusing on the economics side of self-publishing.

2. Have your manuscript evaluated by a professional editor. When clients hire us to evaluate their …

China defends its ivory policy after UN grants permission for disputed African imports

China defended its ivory policy on Thursday after conservationists criticized a U.N. panel's decision to allow the country to import elephant ivory from African government stockpiles.

The vote this week by the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, qualifies China for a one-time auction because it has dramatically improved its enforcement of ivory rules.

But some environmental groups disagreed, saying that China had over a dozen years lost track of 121 tons of ivory that probably was sold on illegal markets.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao called the accusation "not correct and not in line …

Notes on a lifelong friendship: Dust for 140 years, and it's as if she has just left the room

I'VE been hanging out with Charlotte for years. You could sayshe's one of my best friends.

We generally meet at night, when I curl up on the couch. In amoment, the denim fabric, the sensible tan wallpaper, the scatteredtoys - all are gone.

I'm gone, too, from southern Wisconsin to the desolate, windsweptYorkshire moors.

There's the smoke from the mills (you don't expect it; but thiswas industrial England); there is the churchyard with its smoothcrypts like refrigerators lying on their sides, the narrow fir trees,the isolated parsonage, where Charlotte lived with her two sistersand one brother and their father, the eccentric Rev. Patrick Bronte.

I know …

Russian-Iranian reactor contract restarts work at Bushehr complex

DESPITE INTENSE U.S. diplomatic efforts to halt Russian-Iranian nuclear cooperation, construction work has begun under Russia's $800 million contract to finish building one of two partially completed nuclear reactors at Iran's Bushehr complex 450 miles south of Tehran. The Clinton administration has repeatedly asked the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin to cancel the January 1995 deal.

The United States opposes all nuclear cooperation with Iran on the grounds that it would enhance Tehran's ability to build nuclear weapons. In an annual proliferation report released in April, the Pentagon described Iran as "committed to acquiring nuclear weapons."

Iran and …

Funeral for Kay Yow scheduled for Friday afternoon

Friends, fans and colleagues of N.C. State women's basketball coach Kay Yow will gather at a church to pay their final respects.

The funeral for the Naismith Hall of Fame inductee is scheduled for Friday afternoon at Colonial Baptist Church in Cary after a public viewing beginning in the morning. Yow will be buried on Saturday in her hometown of Gibsonville, about 70 …

DNC, Davis rip Bush on failing economy

With Pentagon officials predicting a war against Iraq could cost more than $95 billion, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-7th) sharply criticized President Bush for his "failed" economy.

DNC Chairman McAuliffe and Davis predicted the deficit will soar even higher.

"It's the worst kind of economic policy one can dream up," Davis told the Chicago Defender. "Turkey wants more than $87 billion...just in order for us to use their land..." to attack Iraq.

"The whole Bush program seems to be how do we sink the country.... War plus voodoo economics equal disaster, and I think that is where we're headed," Davis warned.

McAuliffe agreed saying: "As a result of President Bush's failed economic policies, this month consumer confidence plummeted to its lowest level in nearly ten years, plunging from a revised index of 78.8 in January to 64.0 in February, far below the forecasted 77.0.

"This dramatic 15 point drop in consumer confidence is a sign that George Bush's unwillingness to be honest with America about the true costs and effects of his economic policies is eating away at his credibility," the chairman said.

"It will be impossible to restore confidence in our economy without an honest debate.

"Bush's irresponsible tax plan, continuing job losses, rising costs, and the threat of war and terrorism all continue to affect our economic outlook.

"For our lackluster economy -- with no recovery in sight and an administration unwilling to engage in honest debate -- we can, yet again, thank George Bush's failed leadership."

In the interim, officials say the nation's consumer confidence is crumbling.

Whatever the price, Congress must approve Bush's war budget, and members of the Black Congressional Caucus and other progressive congressmen say they'll oppose a price tag that Davis said could be better spent on improving America's education and other employment needs.

Photograph (Danny K. Davis)

Thursday's Sports Scoreboard

All Times Eastern
Major League Baseball Playoffs Championship Series
Philadelphia vs L.A. Dodgers, 8:07 p.m.
National Football League
No games today.
National Basketball Association Preseason
Houston vs Toronto, 7 p.m.
Detroit vs Dallas, 8:30 p.m.
New Orleans vs Miami at Kansas City, Mo., 8:30 p.m.
Portland vs Utah, 9 p.m.
Sacramento vs L.A. Lakers at Las Vegas, 10 p.m.
National Hockey League
San Jose vs Washington, 7 p.m.
Colorado vs Montreal, 7:30 p.m.
Los Angeles vs Detroit, 7:30 p.m.
Tampa Bay vs Ottawa, 7:30 p.m.
Chicago vs Nashville, 8 p.m.
St. Louis vs Phoenix, 10 p.m.
Top 25 College Football
Cincinnati (8) vs South Florida (21), 7:30 p.m.
WNBA Basketball
No games today.
Major League Soccer
No games today.

Grenade Fired at Home of Palestinian PM

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A rocket-propelled grenade hit the home of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday in what his Hamas movement said was an assassination attempt by Fatah, but caused no injuries. Exasperated Egyptian mediators said the bitter rivals turned down an appeal to meet for truce talks.

Heavy gun battles erupted in several locations, in what security officials described as a Hamas assault on positions of the Fatah-allied security forces, and four security bases were overrun by Hamas in the southern town of Khan Younis. In the West Bank, Fatah gunmen threatened to retaliate by killing Hamas leaders.

Abbas, who is in the West Bank, accused Hamas of trying to seize control of Gaza by force and appealed for a new cease-fire. Earlier, four mortar shells hit his Gaza City compound, but caused no injuries.

In all, 18 Palestinians were killed over two days in a new spike in the yearlong Hamas-Fatah power struggle. Some people were shot at close range in street executions, others in shootouts that turned hospitals into battle grounds. Residents huddled indoors, and university exams were canceled.

Hamas and Fatah have been sharing power in an uneasy coalition for three months, but put off the key disputes, including wrangling over control of the security forces. Most of the forces are dominated by Fatah loyalists, while Hamas has formed its own militia over the past year in addition to the thousands of gunmen at its command.

Abbas' office said in a statement that "some Hamas political and military leaders are planning to stage a coup ... thinking they will be able to control Gaza by force."

Each group used Web sites and text messages to call for the execution of the other side's military and political leaders. Both sides described the fighting, which is turning more brutal with each day, as all-out civil war. In all, more than 80 people have been killed since mid-May, most of them militants.

The head of the Egyptian mediation team, Lt. Col. Burhan Hamad, said neither side responded to his call to hold truce talks Tuesday.

"It seems they don't want to come. We must make them ashamed of themselves. They have killed all hope. They have killed the future," said Hamad, who brokered several previous short-lived cease-fires.

Hamad said both sides were about equal in firepower. "Neither can have a decisive victory," he said. "To be decisive, they need weapons that neither side has."

He said he would call civilians out into the streets to protest if the two rivals did not agree to stand down.

Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas militia, brushed aside the latest truce efforts. "It's all talk. It's not serious," he said.

Both sides have become more and more ruthless in recent days. Two men were thrown off high-rises earlier in the week, several people have been shot from close range in field executions, and hospitals have become firing zones.

On Tuesday morning, a gun battle erupted at the European Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. Hamas gunmen controlling the rooftop traded fire with Fatah-allied security forces posted nearby. Fifteen children attending a kindergarten in the line of fire were rushed into the main building of the hospital, funded largely by European donations.

Earlier in the day, a rocket-propelled grenade hit the home of Haniyeh in the Shati refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City. His son, Abdel Salam, said a grenade hit the side of the house, damaging it, while the family was inside.

A Hamas Web site described the incident as an assassination attempt. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum accused Fatah of targeting Palestinian institutions to bring down Hamas. "They crossed all the red lines," he said of Fatah. It was the second straight day that Haniyeh's home has come under fire.

Elsewhere, a member of the Hamas military wing was kidnapped and executed by Fatah gunmen. The dead man was identified as a cousin of Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader Israel assassinated in 2004.

Separately, Hamas gunmen attacked the home of a senior Fatah security official with mortars and grenades, killing his 14-year-old son and three women in the house, security officials said. Other Fatah gunmen stormed the house of a Hamas lawmaker and burned it to the ground.

The fighting also spilled into the West Bank, with Palestinian security forces seizing two employees of the Hamas-linked Al Aqsa TV station in the city of Ramallah and confiscating equipment. Fatah gunmen said Hamas leaders in the West Bank, a Fatah stronghold, would be targeted if Hamas doesn't halt its attacks in Gaza.

The latest fighting disrupted final exams for university and high school students. The three Gaza universities called off final exams set for Tuesday. High schools were trying to move test centers to areas out of the range of fire, said Mohammed Abu Shkeir, the deputy minister of education.

Hamas and Fatah have been locked in a violent power struggle since Hamas defeated Fatah in January 2006 legislative elections, ending four decades of Fatah rule.

Hamas brought Fatah into its government in March in an effort to quell the internal strife, but the fighting reignited in mid-May over an unresolved dispute over who controls the powerful security forces.

Frontier, Verizon respond to critics: ; Company officials say concerns about deal are 'misplaced'

Frontier Communications and Verizon have filed hundreds of pagesof testimony countering every criticism leveled at Frontier's planto buy Verizon's wire line business.

Frontier even got Billy Jack Gregg, the commission's formerconsumer advocate, to testify on the company's behalf to counter thetestimony of Byron Harris, the current consumer advocate, whoopposes the deal.

The testimony was filed with the West Virginia Public ServiceCommission late Tuesday and posted on the commission's Web siteWednesday.

The Communications Workers of America has argued that Frontier isbiting off more than it can chew and won't have the financialstrength to maintain and improve Verizon's West Virginia networkafter the transaction.

Stephen Smith and Kathy Buckley, testifying on behalf of Verizon,called Frontier "the ideal acquirer" of Verizon's wire line assetsin West Virginia. They argued that the concerns raised about thedeal are "misplaced."

Smith is vice president of business development for Verizon'sDomestic Telecommunications Group. Buckley is vice president forpublic policy for Verizon West Virginia.

"Despite the number of interveners, opposing witnesses, and thelength of their testimonies, the fact remains that this transaction -bargained for at arms-length by two large and sophisticatedtelecommunications providers - will benefit West Virginiacustomers," Smith and Buckley said. "Nothing in those testimoniesundermines the significant benefits of this transaction to WestVirginia consumers..."

Smith and Buckley claimed:

* Frontier will increase broadband availability in West Virginia.

* "Existing retail and wholesale customers will continue, at aminimum, to receive substantially the same services on the sameterms and conditions under their existing contracts, agreements, andtariffs."

* "Verizon's fiber and copper-based wire line network willcontinue to provide quality service in West Virginia, and Frontierwill continue to invest in it."

* Moving customers from Verizon's systems to Frontier's won't bea problem.

* "The same people that engineer, construct, maintain, andoperate Verizon's network and customer service operations willcontinue to do so after the transaction. Verizon WV will remainintact, and the new owner, Frontier, already has a proven trackrecord in West Virginia..."

David Whitehouse, Frontier's treasurer, said "the evidence isclear" that the transaction presents relatively little risk; "thereis no evidence of demonstrable harm" that will result from the deal;and there is "considerable evidence that the combined company willbe one of the most financially sound incumbent local exchangecarriers in the U.S.

"The contention by the (union) and (the consumer advocate) thatFrontier's business model is not sound or that Frontier is notfinancially fit to own and operate the business of Verizon in WestVirginia is contrary to the evidence," Whitehouse said.

Paul Vasington, a director of state public policy for Verizon,said critics' proposals that Verizon set aside money to guaranteethat the transaction will work "represent a bald attempt to placeonerous conditions on the deal."

Vasington said the argument that Verizon hasn't been investingenough in its network is "demonstrably false."

The number of Verizon's access lines has dropped by almost 30percent and local call volumes have dropped by half since 2002 butexpenditures declined during the period by a minimal amount, hesaid.

"It is not surprising that capital expenditures have decreased inrecent years because during periods of annual growth, capitalexpenditures were driven in large part by the need to construct morelines," Vasington said. "Verizon has lost that growth, plus 30percent of its existing lines."

Frontier executives Daniel McCarthy, Michael Swatts and StevenWard addressed systems issues. They said Frontier will ensure theirsystems operate as they do today and that Frontier will havesufficient personnel to operate their systems and process retail andwholesale orders.

The Public Service Commission's Consumer Advocate Division is anindependent operation. Harris, who heads the division, has urged thecommission to reject the proposed deal. He said last month thatVerizon is providing sub-standard service in West Virginia becauseof years of neglect.

Gregg headed the Consumer Advocate Division from 1981, when theposition was created, until his retirement in 2007. After retiringGregg opened a consulting business and has since testified inseveral cases.

Gregg said critics of the deal who argue that prior acquisitionsby Frontier resulted in a deterioration of service quality did notproperly analyze the data." I conclude there has been no decline inservice quality in service territories recently acquired byFrontier," he said.

"Based upon my review of the transaction and my previous historywith both providers, I believe the transfer of assets to Frontiercan provide a benefit to consumers in West Virginia and is in thepublic interest," Gregg said.

The $8.6 billion Frontier-Verizon deal must be approved by thePublic Service Commission to be completed. The commission hasscheduled hearings Jan. 12-14 in Charleston.

Frontier also plans to acquire Verizon wire lines in 13 otherstates. Frontier's target date to close the deal is April 30, 2010.If it is approved, West Virginia would be Frontier's largest market.

Contact writer George Hohmann at business@dailymail.com or 304-348-4836.

Emanuel likely to stay out of battle for his House seat

Rahm Emanuel's role in attempting to influence Gov. Blagojevich's choice of a U.S. Senate replacement for President-elect Barack Obama could impact the heated race to fill another important vacancy: Emanuel's own seat in Congress.

Ald. Pat O'Connor (40th), Mayor Daley's unofficial City Council floor leader, had hoped to emerge from the crowded field of candidates in the 5th Congressional District by winning Daley's support and by persuading Emanuel to use his formidable powers of persuasion to clear the field.

But now that the Chicago Sun-Times has lifted the veil on Emanuel's efforts to persuade Blagojevich to appoint Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate, Emanuel has -- as one veteran ward boss put it -- "gone underground."

The new White House chief of staff is reluctant to get involved in the 5th District race, which has attracted more than two dozen candidates.

On Wednesday, O'Connor acknowledged he had not yet lined up the support he needs to win the Democratic endorsement, in part because Emanuel is standing on the sidelines.

"The problem is, they're in the middle of a very serious situation and this is less important [by] comparison," O'Connor said, referring to the transition process.

Measuring his words carefully to avoid alienating Emanuel, the alderman said: "He could clear the field, but I'm not asking him to do that at this time."

After reviewing the transcripts of the Blagojevich tapes, O'Connor said he doesn't believe Emanuel will be tainted by the scandal.

"The only thing Congressman Emanuel has done was indicate that they had some preferences as to who they wanted [in] the seat, and that all they were willing to trade for that was their appreciation," O'Connor said.

Emanuel was on track to become U.S. House speaker someday before accepting Obama's offer. He has told Democratic ward bosses that he would like to reclaim the seat after a few years as chief of staff.

He was believed to be leaning toward O'Connor, in part, because the alderman might be amenable to giving up the seat at some point.

Comment at suntimes.com.

Photo: Pat O'Connor ; Photo: Rahm Emanuel ;

Ex-peace envoys: Bosnian peace deal may collapse

Bosnia's fragile peace deal is in danger of collapsing as the world turns its attention elsewhere, the U.S. architect of the agreement and another top envoy warned Wednesday.

Former U.S. peace envoy Richard Holbrooke and Paddy Ashdown, the former international administrator in Bosnia, said another Bosnia crisis is ready to erupt because Bosnian Serbs are exploiting the lack of U.S. attention and the European Union's inability to deal with Bosnia's problems to create the conditions to secede.

Their comments were published in Bosnia's daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz.

Tens of thousands of people were killed before the peace deal ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Christian Orthodox Serbs fought to annex parts of the country to neighboring Serbia and to cleanse the region of other ethnic groups, while Muslim Bosniaks and Roman Catholic Croats fought to keep the country together and independent.

Holbrooke brokered a peace deal that divided the country into two fairly autonomous ministates _ one for the Bosnian Serbs and the other shared by the Bosniaks and the Croats. The two are linked by joint institutions into one state.

Now, the envoy say the Bosnian Serbs are trying to weaken central institutions so the country disintegrates, while Bosniaks and Croats are trying to strengthen them to better unite the country.

The two former envoys claim that Russia backs the most influential Bosnian Serb _ the prime minister of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, who has a clear policy of putting his region "in a position to secede if the opportunity arises."

In the past two years, Dodik has reversed much of the real progress Bosnia has made toward being a functioning state, the envoys said.

"(Russia is) making trouble for the US and EU where possible" and its efforts must be rebuffed, the envoys wrote.

Dodik's main rival, the current president of Bosnia, Haris Silajdzic, stresses the need to abolish ethnic divisions.

"This toxic interaction is at the heart of today's Bosnian crisis. As a result, the suspicion and fear that began the war in 1992 has been reinvigorated," the envoys wrote.

They urged the EU and the new US administration to get more engaged in Bosnia before the situation deteriorates.

"(Otherwise, things could get) very nasty quickly. By now, we should all know the price of that," Holbrooke and Ashdown warned.

Iraqi PM and president discuss 'final' US pact

Iraq's prime minister and president reviewed on Tuesday the "final draft" of the security pact with the United States _ a first step in a process that could finally end in an agreement governing U.S. troops in Iraq.

Yassin Majid, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, did not say whether the draft resolved the contentious issue of legal immunity for U.S. troops, the last major obstacle standing in the way of a deal.

Although Iraqi officials had said the issue was unresolved, Majid's use of the phrase "final draft" suggested that negotiations have ended.

American and Iraqi negotiators have been working for most of this year to hammer out an agreement setting down rules for the U.S. military mission beginning next year.

The meeting with President Jalal Talabani, as well as the Sunni and Shiite vice presidents, lasted for several hours and was the first in a series of planned sessions aimed at measuring political support for the agreement before al-Maliki submits it to parliament for a final decision.

An official statement said al-Maliki, Talabani and the two vice presidents _ Tarik al-Hashemi and Adil Abdul-Mahdi _ studied the draft "in depth and in detail" but have no indication how the participants reacted to details of the document.

Majid told The Associated Press that the prime minister will show the draft Wednesday to the National Security Council, a consultative body that includes the prime minister, president, the two vice presidents, the leaders of political blocs and the parliament speaker.

If those groups are favorable, he will then submit the draft to his Cabinet and ask for their approval by a two-thirds majority.

The final step will be parliament's approval.

The official statement, issued several hours after Majid spoke to the AP, confirmed these steps as al-Maliki's road map for adopting the security pact, but gave no time frame.

Aides to al-Maliki, who explained the strategy, said the prime minister wants to make sure he is on solid ground politically before risking his political career on an agreement which would keep American troops on Iraqi soil nearly six years after the U.S.-led invasion.

The aides said the draft calls for U.S. troops to pull out of Iraqi cities by the end of June next year and leave Iraq by Dec. 31, 2011, unless the Baghdad government asks them to stay. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are sensitive.

Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who control 30 of the 275 parliament seats, oppose any agreement that would keep U.S. soldiers here. Shiite-dominated Iran, which wields considerable influence among some Shiite parties, also opposes the agreement.

The major obstacle has been jurisdiction over U.S. troops. The United States had demanded exclusive right to prosecute U.S. troops for offenses committed here. The Iraqis had insisted on the right to try Americans _ at least in offenses committed off American bases.

Despite the decline in violence, Iraqi officials have said they still must rely on American troops although they are anxious for a greater role in security operations.

UK suspect in Iran missile plot to be sent to US

LONDON (AP) — A retired British businessman accused of plotting to sell missile components to Iran will be extradited to the United States, his lawyer said Monday.

Karen Todner said in a statement that Christopher Tappin's attempt to appeal his extradition to the European Court of Human Rights had failed and that he would be sent to the U.S. in 10 days.

Tappin faces charges in Texas over allegations that he offered in 2006 to sell specialized batteries for Hawk missiles for $25,000 to undercover American agents posing as Iranians.

Two other men have been sentenced to prison in Texas for trying to buy and export the batteries, according to court records.

Tappin faces up to 35 years in jail if convicted in the United States. He denies wrongdoing, saying he was the victim of a sting operation.

Todner condemned her client's extradition as "an example of the gross injustice" imposed on British citizens by fast track extradition procedures introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001.

British defense lawyers and lawmakers have long complained that the rules — originally introduced to help streamline the exchange of terror suspects — allow American officials to extradite Britons without having to offer substantial proof of wrongdoing.

However, in October a British judge-led review found that extradition agreements between the United States and United Kingdom are fair and unbiased.

___

Online:

Tappin's law firm: http://www.kaimtodner.com/

Angels 6, Red Sox 2

45Angels 6, Red Sox 2
LOS ANGELES @ BOSTON @
ab r h bi @ab r h bi
Figgins 3b 2 0 1 1 Pedroia 2b 3 1 1 0
Kndrck 2b 3 0 1 1 Yukilis 1b 4 1 1 2
Izturis ss 3 0 1 2 Ortiz dh 4 0 0 0
Grrero rf 4 0 0 0 MRmrz lf 3 0 0 0
Hunter cf 4 1 1 0 Lowell 3b 4 0 0 0
GAndsn dh 4 1 1 2 JDrew rf 2 0 0 0
JRivra lf 4 0 0 0 Varitek c 3 0 0 0
Quinlan 1b 4 2 1 0 Cora ss 3 0 0 0
Mathis c 3 2 1 0 Ellsbry cf 3 0 0 0
Totals @ 31 6 7 6 Totals @29 2 2 2
Los Angeles 002 200 200_6
Boston 000 000 002_2
E_Lowell (7). DP_Boston 1. LOB_Los Angeles 3, Boston 3. 3B_Quinlan (1). HR_GAnderson (10), Youkilis (18). SB_Figgins (19). CS_Figgins (8). SF_Kendrick.
IP H R ER BB SO
Los Angeles @
Lackey W,9-2 9 2 2 2 2 4
Boston @
Buchholz L,2-6 6 1-3 6 6 5 3 5
Hansen 2-3 1 0 0 1 0
Okajima 1 0 0 0 0 0
Papelbon 1 0 0 0 0 2
HBP_by Lackey (JDrew).
Umpires_Home, Bob Davidson	First, Rob Drake	Second, Alfonso Marquez	Third, Mike Reilly.
T_2:28. A_38,110 (37,400).

9-man Sporting holds Atletico to 0-0 draw

Sporting held Atletico Madrid to a goalless draw despite having two men sent off in the first leg of a Europa League last-16 match on Thursday.

Leandro Grimi was given a red card in the 30th minute after receiving a second caution for a challenge on Jose Antonio Reyes when the winger was bursting down the right.

Defender Tonel was sent off in the 89th for pushing Atletico striker Sergio Aguero over.

Aguero was in lively form but could not find the target as Atletico failed to make its numerical advantage count.

Before kick-off, Sporting's players presented Atletico with a floral tribute to the victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, on the sixth anniversary of the attack.

The home side were forced to make a substitution in the 13th minute as Juan Valera came on for the injured Luis Perea.

Aguero dribbled into the area in the 25th minute, going past two men before shooting just wide. The Argentina international came close on several more occasions, striking into the side-netting after one run and shooting just wide after another.

Liedsen pounced on a defensive error and struck the post for the Portuguese team in the 28th minute although after Grimi's sending-off, it struggled to create chances.

Atletico's lack of accuracy let it down again as Tomas Ujfalusi headed wide from a Simao Sabrosa freekick in the 54th.

Eduardo Salvio replaced Simao, a former Sporting player, for the last half hour and Jose Manuel Jurado came on for Raul Garcia as Atletico sought in vain to break the deadlock.

The second leg will be played on March 18.

Hopes fade for man missing in the lake; 'Float on your back .

Hopes that a 21-year-old man would be pulled alive from the chilly waters of Lake Michigan -- more than 36 hours after a boating trip went terribly wrong -- began to fade Saturday as friends and family waited for good news that failed to come.

Chicago Police are still searching for Christopher Gary, a one-time Columbia College student who has been missing since a boating excursion with three friends Thursday night.

The body of Gary's friend and Lincoln Park High School classmate James Shepherd, 21, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was pulled from the water Friday.

Two young women who were with the men on Lake Michigan, Irene Rogers and Kristin Masterson, were rescued by fishermen after treading water for about five hours. Rogers remains hospitalized in good condition.

Masterson, who was released from the hospital Saturday, said thoughts of her family kept her going.

"I think what I kept saying was really just like this isn't how I die," Masterson, 19, told WBBM-Channel 2 on Saturday.

Gary's encouragement also helped.

Masterson said the last words he said to her were: "Float on your back, girl. You can make it."

Late Saturday, police said they would continue a surface search for Gary overnight, while divers and a police helicopter will take up the search again after sunrise today.

"We're trying to bring this tragedy to a closure with the recovery of the second body," Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis said.

"I would urge everyone, if you're out on the water and you don't swim well, wear a life jacket. If you do swim well, wear a life jacket. We can't have any more of these tragedies," Weis said.

Police had still not gotten a blow-by-blow account of why all four college kids went in the water without life preservers while the boat, which to Shepherd's grandfather, drifted away near Randolph Street, Weis said.

As late as 6 p.m. Saturday, Gary's father, Randolph Gary, remained hopeful his son would be found alive.

"We taught him to swim early on," Gary, 60, told the Sun-Times.

Friends of Christopher Gary stopped by his family's South Shore home throughout the day, bringing food and comfort to his parents and younger sister.

Gathered inside the home were Gary's closest friends, those he went to school with at the UIC Lab School and fellow graduates of Lincoln Park High School.

Speaking of their friend in the past tense, they described Gary as a talented young man who lived for his art.

"He was a muralist, a painter. He worked with found objects and made them beautiful art," said Raphaelle Cuenod, 19, a friend of Gary's since the eighth grade.

She and others pointed to Gary's plan to go to San Francisco to study art as an undergraduate at the Academy of Art University.

It was a lifelong dream for him to go to the prestigious school.

Gary's mother was set to take him there in two weeks.

"We had everything planned already," Gary's mother, Ning Gary, tearfully told WGN-Channel 9.

Friends who had spoken to Rogers and Masterson said Shepherd, an experienced sailor, was to have remained on the boat while his three friends went swimming.

When Rogers had trouble staying afloat, Gary went to help her, Ning Gary said.

"She said that was the last time that she saw Chris," Gary said.

Photo: ABC7 / Christopher Gary

`Painted Lady' Contest Open

It's time to finish that summer house-painting job if you want tomeet the Labor Day deadline for multicolor newly painted housescompeting in the seventh annual Chicago's Finest Painted Ladiescontest.

Any dwelling within a 50-mile radius of Chicago is eligible, andthe house need not be a Victorian. Judges base their decisions onbeauty of paint application, how the colors fit the home and how theyfit the neighborhood.

Winners receive a complementary plaque and their houses aredescribed in a Chicago Sun-Times article.

To obtain an entry blank, write to the sponsoring Chicago Paint& Coatings Association, Suite 975, 1051 Perimeter Dr., Schaumburg,60173, or telephone (708) 240-0930.

GOD VS. GOVERNMENT

Part I

Normally, I prefer not to smorgasbord the Internet for information. If you want to trust anything you learn on the Internet, that's your business. But as far as I'm concerned, way too much of it is little more than a snazzy upgrade of the old Ma Bell party line, on which every know-it-all in the neighborhood could talk at once.

With that said, I admit to sauntering some Internet just the other day. There was something in the other Boise paper-which I won't name for reasons I'll explain later, but to give you a hint, it's the one that's laying employees off, as opposed to the Boise Weekly, which has lately been hiring-that intrigued me. I can't even guess why anyone, let alone what passes for the area's premier newspaper, would be repeating anything Bryan Fischer says, but indeed they were. They do often, in fact, in that patronizing little corner of the editorial page they call "Other Voices."

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against other voices-unless, of course, those other voices are 1) boring, 2) stupid, 3) a lazy rehash of slop the voicer mopped up off the Internet or, 4) all of the above. The trouble with the "Other Voices" section of the Stat... er, that newspaper in town that isn't BW ... is that the same eight or 10 other voices keep showing up in it. From the right, that includes Adam Graham, Dennis Mansfield, Dave Frazier, and Bryan Fischer. (I could name the usual suspects from the left, too, but I'd rather not. Sooner or later, I'm going to be sitting across the dinner table from one or all of them at some Democratic function, and I see no advantage to spoiling the evening in advance.)

This time, the "other voice" from Bryan Fischer was his understanding of the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. As excerpted in The Statesm ... er, that daily newspaper in Boise that changes ownership like Christie Brinkley changes husbands ... Fischer said, "A conservative worldview believes that a culture's strength lies in its willingness to acknowledge God as the source of our civil rights and our liberties.

"A liberal world view, on the other hand, looks to government as the solution for virtually everything. Government replaces God as our ultimate resource, and citizens are taught to look first to government rather than God, themselves, or their families for help."

I left out some of what the other newspaper said Bryan Fischer said. Out of the three paragraphs they printed, I only passed on two. One thing all newspapers have in common, be they downsizing papers or up-sizing papers, is how many words they can cram into a given space. So I'm trying to reserve myself a column inch or two for later on by not quoting the other paper's entire iquote of Bryan Fischer.

Yet I couldn't help but wondei, since I know the Sta ... er, that other p'aper ... has to be as concerned as I am with word limits, what they left out of the original source. And that's when I went Internet scooting, to find out where that other paper got their "other voice" from.

More to the point, I needed to know if Fischer can possibly be as simplfrininded as the other paper made him sound when the quote they pulled is put in the context of his complete statement.

Short answer: yes.

I didn't slink the Internet long before I found Fischer's entire blog post on this subject of how to tell a conservative from a liberal, which was no surprise. As you know, Bryan Fischer is a huge, huge presence in Idaho's stable of unavoidable people, having lost his position a few years ago as the Idaho Legislature's official prayer invoker, then having lost the battle with the city to keep the Ten Commandments monument in Julia Davis Park, then having run the Idaho Values Alliance so far into the ground he was begging for handouts not six months ago, and then most recently, having lost the decision as to whether he and his widdle buddy Brandi Swindell should pay the court costs for their big Ten Commandments adventure. Nor is it a surprise the Stat... er, the other paper ... considers him somebody to quote. Often, the bigger a loser you are, the more attention you get.

But is this not what the blog-o-rama part of the Internet excels at-giving people with no tangible talents other than their mouths a platform from which to spout and spew? Fischer's particular spewing platform is the Idaho Values Alliance Web site. In fact, from what I can gather, the IVA web site is about all there is left of the IVA anymore. And it was from this source that the Sta ... er, the newspaper on which RC Willey relies so heavily for ad distribution ... lifted Fischer's voice-three paragraphs of it from the original 13.

Which isn't to say they left out anything that would add any noticeable heft to Fischer's feather-weight manifesto. In his full statement, Fischer just expands on the notion that conservatives have God at the center of their sensibilities, while it is the liberal attitude that a government can do much more for its citizenry than regulate interstate trade and start wars. If Mr. Fischer realizes he is mixing abstract apples and organizational oranges in his argument, it doesn't show. But then, we mustn't expect logical consistency from anyone who would equate morality with the politics of George Bush, Karl Rove and Larry Craig.

Nevertheless, an argument might be lightweight and feeble-minded, and still carry a veneer of truth. I am certain that what Fischer puts forth as an axiomatic description of the differing worldviews is what many conservatives believe, and therefore merits further examination. After all, what we're dealing with here-if Fischer is right-is the most basic and irreducible definitions of the yin and the yang of all political thought.

But alas, I have done a piss poor job of controlling my own word limit on this column, and will have to delay that further examination until next week. And who could have ever imagined that anything Bryan Fischer said would get a Part I and a Part II out of moi?

Incidentally, Fischer begins his post by referencing an article in BW (BW, News, "Platform Diving," July 9, 2008) that dealt with the different considerations Idaho's Republicans and Democrats constructed into their party platforms, So this whole little circle began on these pages in the first place-a detail the St ... that other paper ... failed to include. This is why I will no longer write their name in public. I intend to show that we can ignore them every bit as thoroughly as they can ignore us.

MORE COMPOSTING, ENERGY RECOVERY STRESSED FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM, REPORTS WARMER BULLETIN

The United Kingdom government has published a new strategy for cutting waste in England, with an emphasis on its role in tackling climate change and resource efficiency. As reported in the June 2007 issue of Warmer Bulletin, the UK government has opened consultation on allowing local authorities to introduce financial incentives for recycling and composting. Key objectives are to: Decouple waste growth from economic growth with more emphasis on reuse; Exceed the Landfill Directive diversion targets for biodegradable MSW; Get the most environmental benefit from that investment through increased recovery of energy from residual waste using a mix of technologies. Overall impact is expected to be an annual net reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions from waste management of at least 9.3 million tons of carbon dioxide. A greater focus on waste prevention will be done through a new target to reduce household waste not reused, recycled or composted from over 22.2 metric tons in 2000 by 29 percent to 15.8 metric tons in 2010, and 12.2 metric tons in 2020 - a reduction of 45 percent. Higher national targets have been set for composting of MSW - at least 40 percent by 2010, 45 percent by 2015, and 50 percent by 2020.

Main points of the new strategy are to: Incentivize efforts to reduce, recycle and recover energy from waste; Reform regulations to drive reduction of waste while reducing costs to participating businesses and regulators; Target action on feedstocks to improve economic outcomes; Stimulate investment in collection and markets for recovered materials; and Improve national and local governance with a clearer performance and institutional framework.

Kit Strange is editor of Warmer BuI- letin, which provides a worldwide information service on sustainable management of postconsumer wastes. He can be contacted at Warmer Bulletin, The British School, Otley Street, Sipton. North Yorkshire, BD23 IEP, UK. Email is bulletin@residua.com.

Judge promises ruling on Coyotes' relocation issue

The issue of how much Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie should pay the NHL to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton, Ontario, will not be the subject of another hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Judge Redfield T. Baum said Thursday that he will deal with the fee issue as part of his ruling resulting from a 6 1/2-hour relocation hearing held Tuesday.

Baum made the comment during a brief hearing Thursday requested by the Salt River Project utility for assurances that it would be paid for future electric service to the franchise.

Baum had indicated he might hold a separate hearing on the fee issue. The judge said Tuesday that he believes the NHL is entitled to a fee, leading to widespread speculation of how big it might be.

The league has indicated it would seek a relocation fee as well as an indemnity fee to pay the franchises in Toronto and Buffalo for lost territory, a number that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, the court would have to determine any fee as fair.

Hamilton is just down the road from Toronto, where the Maples Leafs are considered the most valuable franchise in the NHL. Forbes magazine estimated the Maple Leafs' worth at $448 million. The magazine said the Coyotes are the league's least-valuable franchise at about $142 million.

Baum has made it clear that a franchise in Hamilton is more valuable than a franchise in Arizona.

Balsillie is offering $212.5 million for the Coyotes, contingent on moving the team. Any fee to the league would be separate from that offer.

Just when Baum will rule on the crucial relocation issue was uncertain. Attorneys for Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes filed an emergency motion Thursday seeking a hearing on the assumption of the contracts of 50 Phoenix players.

"It is absolutely imperative that the proposed sale, or a transaction with another party, close as soon as possible," the motion said.

Moyes want the contract assumption hearing to be held June 22, the same day Balsillie wants to get an order from the judge allowing him to purchase the team. Baum said Tuesday he might go along with the June 22 purchase date to force the NHL to come up with a figure for the relocation fee.

Under Moyes' proposal, Balsillie's company, PSE Sports, would assume the player contracts when it takes over ownership. The team currently is being funded by the NHL.

If the fee is too big, Balsillie might balk and the NHL will get its way in court. The league says it has four prospective buyers who would keep the bankrupt team in Arizona, where it has lost more than $300 million since moving from Winnipeg in 1996.

The league says it will fund the Coyotes in Arizona for the coming season while the ownership issue is worked out.

The NHL has said that any new owner in Arizona would need to rework the lease agreement with the city of Glendale. That could be a politically difficult goal, since the city council would have to approve any changes.

The conservative Goldwater Institute, which strongly opposes government subsidies for private enterprise, has indicated it is closely watching the Glendale situation.

Balsillie says the sale must be completed by the end of June or he will withdraw his offer.

Old school masterclass

GYMNASTICS Youngsters from St Philips School were given an oldschool gymnastics masterclass by Culverhay deputy headteacher SeanTurner last week.

The 28 Year 6 pupils benefited from Turner's 20 years ofexperience in a one-hour session that consisted of balancing andvaulting, together with work on other apparatus, including thehorse.

"As a trainee teacher you only get about two hours of gymtraining throughout the four-year course, so seeing Sean teach thislesson was invaluable for me," said Year 6 class teacher Jo Coppins.

"I can now go back to school and give them some useful tips andadvice.

The Year 6 pupils loved the session, it was a real eye-opener forthem."

Culverhay hope to put on more sessions for St Philips and itsother partner primary schools in the future.

A Fool's Paradise

A Fool's Paradise

By Nancy Flowers Wilson

Flowers in Bloom Publishing, March 2001, $14.00, ISBN 0-970-81910-2

Images of sea-salt air and a sky with many moods takes us to Jamaica in Nancy Flowers Wilson's debut novel, A Fool's Paradise. It opens with Anne-Marie Saunders, a premed student at the University of the West Indies, struggling to balance the desires of her heart. "I have three passions: My boyfriend, Donovan...the second is school...the last is my desire to travel to America. As it turned out, one of my passions would be my downfall. The other would do me the most harm, and the third would be my salvation."

Anne-Marie has spent her entire life in Jamaica and is eager to depart from her native land by way of education. It will not be easy to leave her family, especially her beloved father, Trevor, who named her "Star" the day she was born. However, her greatest hold to the island may be her boyfriend, Donovan Miller, a "beautifully bronzed man with his Chinese mother's eyes." The two have known each other since childhood and, though it's been assumed they would marry, it seems inevitable once Anne-Marie becomes pregnant. But it's not just the pregnancy that may put a glitch into Anne-Marie's plans.

At the same time, Anne-Marie's best friend, Colleen, is experiencing her own angst as she struggles to find herself in Montego Bay away from her friends and family.

A Fool's Paradise is an engrossing tale that will keep you turning the pages.

Though it is littered with cliches, and many parts of the story are told through the narration, which does not allow the reader to learn about the characters through their voices, this is still an enjoyable read by a promising new author.

Iraq's roadside bombs cause most US troop deaths

MORE than twice as many American soldiers have been killed inIraq by roadside booby-traps than by sniper fire, mortars, carbombs, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide attackers combined,according to figures obtained by The Herald.

Of the 3003 US military deaths recorded as of December 30, 1080died from wounds inflicted by blast and shrapnel from "improvisedexplosive devices", while 524 were victims of the other fiveconfirmed forms of direct attack.

A further 203 died in road acidents and 81 in helicopter crashes.The casualty list classifies 618 deaths as "other causes", 50 inambushes where there were more than one possible cause of death, and447 as victims of unspecified "general hostile fire".

Despite a research budget of almost GBP3bn, the Pentagon hasstill to find failsafe methods of locating and neutralising roadsidebombs as attacks on coalition vehicles continue at a rate of 1000 amonth.

The booby-traps are also becoming more lethal, inflicting 67 outof the past 100 recorded kills of patrolling troops in Baghdad andthe Sunni Triangle.

About half of the 23,000 US troops wounded since 2003 are alsovictims of what General Richard Cody, the US Army's vice-chief ofstaff, descibes as "the poor man's cruise missile".

British sources say insurgents looted enough explosives from armydepots as Saddam's regime collapsed to maintain current levels ofbomb-making "almost indefinitely".

In an attempt to reduce casualties, the Pentagon has recruitedwounded veterans whose experience can be used in training tactics.

Although improved body armour and new frontline medicaltechniques have cut the number of potential fatalities by up to 50-per cent, the downside of the blast effect of large explosions isthat many survivors sustain brain damage or lose one or more limbs.More than 400 amputees are receiving specialist treatment.

Two British soldiers were injured when their patrol came underattack in southern Iraq.

A roadside bomb hit their convoy as they carried out a securitypatrol along the banks of a river in the Al Ashshar area of Basraprovince.

Violence continued in Iraq yesterday after a suicide car bombstruck a market in the Shi'ite district of Sadr City and police said17 people died.

The attack occurred a day after a blast targeting students killed70 in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgentviolence.

Yesterday's explosion near the outdoor Mereidi market alsowounded 33 people.

Another suicide car bomb exploded earlier at a checkpoint in thenorthern oil city of Kirkuk, killing 10 people and injuring dozens.

Northern Iraq also has seen an increase in violence as Iraqitroops prepare for a crackdown in Baghdad.

Iraq's roadside bombs cause most US troop deaths

MORE than twice as many American soldiers have been killed inIraq by roadside booby-traps than by sniper fire, mortars, carbombs, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide attackers combined,according to figures obtained by The Herald.

Of the 3003 US military deaths recorded as of December 30, 1080died from wounds inflicted by blast and shrapnel from "improvisedexplosive devices", while 524 were victims of the other fiveconfirmed forms of direct attack.

A further 203 died in road acidents and 81 in helicopter crashes.The casualty list classifies 618 deaths as "other causes", 50 inambushes where there were more than one possible cause of death, and447 as victims of unspecified "general hostile fire".

Despite a research budget of almost GBP3bn, the Pentagon hasstill to find failsafe methods of locating and neutralising roadsidebombs as attacks on coalition vehicles continue at a rate of 1000 amonth.

The booby-traps are also becoming more lethal, inflicting 67 outof the past 100 recorded kills of patrolling troops in Baghdad andthe Sunni Triangle.

About half of the 23,000 US troops wounded since 2003 are alsovictims of what General Richard Cody, the US Army's vice-chief ofstaff, descibes as "the poor man's cruise missile".

British sources say insurgents looted enough explosives from armydepots as Saddam's regime collapsed to maintain current levels ofbomb-making "almost indefinitely".

In an attempt to reduce casualties, the Pentagon has recruitedwounded veterans whose experience can be used in training tactics.

Although improved body armour and new frontline medicaltechniques have cut the number of potential fatalities by up to 50-per cent, the downside of the blast effect of large explosions isthat many survivors sustain brain damage or lose one or more limbs.More than 400 amputees are receiving specialist treatment.

Two British soldiers were injured when their patrol came underattack in southern Iraq.

A roadside bomb hit their convoy as they carried out a securitypatrol along the banks of a river in the Al Ashshar area of Basraprovince.

Violence continued in Iraq yesterday after a suicide car bombstruck a market in the Shi'ite district of Sadr City and police said17 people died.

The attack occurred a day after a blast targeting students killed70 in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgentviolence.

Yesterday's explosion near the outdoor Mereidi market alsowounded 33 people.

Another suicide car bomb exploded earlier at a checkpoint in thenorthern oil city of Kirkuk, killing 10 people and injuring dozens.

Northern Iraq also has seen an increase in violence as Iraqitroops prepare for a crackdown in Baghdad.

Iraq's roadside bombs cause most US troop deaths

MORE than twice as many American soldiers have been killed inIraq by roadside booby-traps than by sniper fire, mortars, carbombs, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide attackers combined,according to figures obtained by The Herald.

Of the 3003 US military deaths recorded as of December 30, 1080died from wounds inflicted by blast and shrapnel from "improvisedexplosive devices", while 524 were victims of the other fiveconfirmed forms of direct attack.

A further 203 died in road acidents and 81 in helicopter crashes.The casualty list classifies 618 deaths as "other causes", 50 inambushes where there were more than one possible cause of death, and447 as victims of unspecified "general hostile fire".

Despite a research budget of almost GBP3bn, the Pentagon hasstill to find failsafe methods of locating and neutralising roadsidebombs as attacks on coalition vehicles continue at a rate of 1000 amonth.

The booby-traps are also becoming more lethal, inflicting 67 outof the past 100 recorded kills of patrolling troops in Baghdad andthe Sunni Triangle.

About half of the 23,000 US troops wounded since 2003 are alsovictims of what General Richard Cody, the US Army's vice-chief ofstaff, descibes as "the poor man's cruise missile".

British sources say insurgents looted enough explosives from armydepots as Saddam's regime collapsed to maintain current levels ofbomb-making "almost indefinitely".

In an attempt to reduce casualties, the Pentagon has recruitedwounded veterans whose experience can be used in training tactics.

Although improved body armour and new frontline medicaltechniques have cut the number of potential fatalities by up to 50-per cent, the downside of the blast effect of large explosions isthat many survivors sustain brain damage or lose one or more limbs.More than 400 amputees are receiving specialist treatment.

Two British soldiers were injured when their patrol came underattack in southern Iraq.

A roadside bomb hit their convoy as they carried out a securitypatrol along the banks of a river in the Al Ashshar area of Basraprovince.

Violence continued in Iraq yesterday after a suicide car bombstruck a market in the Shi'ite district of Sadr City and police said17 people died.

The attack occurred a day after a blast targeting students killed70 in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgentviolence.

Yesterday's explosion near the outdoor Mereidi market alsowounded 33 people.

Another suicide car bomb exploded earlier at a checkpoint in thenorthern oil city of Kirkuk, killing 10 people and injuring dozens.

Northern Iraq also has seen an increase in violence as Iraqitroops prepare for a crackdown in Baghdad.

THE TRIALS OF LAS MUJERES PENSANTES: JUANA INÉS AND MARÍA LUISA FIND A ROOM OF THEIR OWN

...after making Sor Juana, after telling the dramatic story of this extraordinary woman-I don't think in the world there's been a woman with the competence and richness of mind of Sor Juana-I said to my own sex, to my beloved sisters, here are five films each with questioning women. Here are examples by which to model your own identities. Maria Luisa Bemberg, qtd. in Caleb Bach 27.

Mar�a Luisa Bemberg is one of the more significant among the handful of women filmmakers working in contemporary Latin American cinema (recognizing her death in 1995). During her brief career, she made films that are not only examples of quality cinematographic production in the Latin American context, but also important feminist interventions into filmmaking. Even she noted her unique position, describing herself and her positive reception as "the first successful grandmother filmmaker in [Argentina]" (qtd. in Bach 23). Her exceptional status in male-dominated spheres-be they artistic, intellectual or social-is distantly parallel to another "avis rara," the woman considered by many to be the first feminist of America,1 Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz. It is therefore significant that one of her last projects is a film on the life of Sor Juana, Yo, Ia peor de todas (1990). True to the life and work of her subject, the director identified the project as part of her continued efforts to break with traditional stereotypes of women: "Para m� era imperativo contar Ia historia de esta mujer, porque uno de los compromises �ticos y morales que asum� cuando decid� hacer cine era tratar de romper el clich� tradicional que tiene el cine sobre la mujer, estereotipo con el cual es dificil que las mujeres pensantes puedan identificarse" (Burton-Carvajal 78, my emphasis).

The basis of the film is the monumental literary psycho-biography of Sor Juana, Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz, o las trompas de la fe (1982), by Octavio Paz. Stephanie Merrim contends in her introduction to Feminist perspectives on Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz (1991) that Paz's work has widened the parameters for feminist study on this notable woman:

Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz at once represents a milestone and a watershed in the critical reception of the Baroque writer's works: as it rounds off both Paz's own intellectual endeavors and the critical tradition surrounding Sor Juana, the study also paves the way for a more enlightened feminist understanding of its subject.... [T]he work avoids the ideological blunders regarding its female subject, be they overt or implicit, so rife in other critical studies. (16)

Merrim takes the necessary steps of problematizing his analysis, yet she also acknowledges its success in dispelling earlier psychologistic readings that were overtly negative and sexist in their assessment of Sor Juana.2

Merrim's largely favorable treatment of Paz provides an unintentional apology for Bemberg's sole reliance on his work, a fact that may otherwise be unpalatable to many feminists to the extent that her feminist film does not utilize in anyway work by feminist scholars such as Dorothy Schons, Rosario Castellanos, Anita Arroyo, or Marie-C�cile B�nassy-Berling, all of whom, between 1925 (Schons) and 1982 (B�nassy-Berling)-i.e. before the screenplay for the film was written-have contributed greatly to a biographical, cultural, literary and historical understanding of Sor Juana from a feminist critical perspective. Despite this deficiency, Bemberg uses the work of Paz to insert a clear and direct feminist message into her film, explicitly highlighting Sor Juana's struggles as a woman in a restricted patriarchal environment. Consequently, his recognition of Sor Juana as a revolutionary and singular figure, most notably for her position as a woman intellectual in a male-centered and male-dominated universe, becomes the motive and driving force of Bemberg's feminist recovery.

Denise Miller discusses Paz's explanation as to why Sor Juana renounced her poetry and ideas, by signing "I, the worst of all," an apparent-although highly conventional for the time-indication of her unworminess. Paz contends that "her final renunciation of learning was the result of having been caught up in an argument between powerful men" (Miller 137), an argument in which she willfully intervened. Conversely, and in line with my interpretation of the film, Bemberg, " sees Sor Juana as a pawn in their game of intrigue and specifically as a woman pitted against men" (Miller 137). That is, the film is overtly and deliberately a feminist reading of Sor Juana's circumstance. Miller recognizes Merrim's contention that Paz suggests a feminist reading of his subject, although ultimately, Miller's reading of the Mexican intellectual turns out more favorably than that of Merrim. Indeed, she suggests that Paz comes off as more feminist than Bemberg, despite the director's intentions. The "emblematic title, the last words of her confession" (Miller 137), is indicative of where the weight falls for Bemberg: Sor Juana, the ultimate female victim of the patriarchy.

Miller's analysis of the scene where Sor Juana (Assumpta Serna) and the vicereine, Mar�a Luisa Manrique de Lara (Dominique Sanda), first meet underscores the pseudo-romantic aspects of the relationship between the two women, thus complicating the film's representation of the nun and her transgressions. Through her intellectual and literary pursuits she transgresses norms for female behavior, and in turn, distinguishes herself from other women (be they nuns or married women) of her day; through her intense emotional relationship with Mar�a Luisa, romantic love is presented as a further transgression of women's behavior of the time. Of course, Paz's work rather successfully (although not altogether convincingly) explains away the attachment between the two women, particularly as this was expressed in Juana's poetry, as merely a reflection of the poetic and philosophical conventions of the period, and believes that ultimately it is impossible to know the true nature of their relationship as it is buried by history and the highly codified social protocols of colonial Spain. Regardless, it is undeniable that Bemberg inserts more than a hint of sensuality and eroticism in the interactions of the two women. Moreover, Miller provocatively notes that "Assumpta Sema starred in earlier lesbian roles and Dominique Sanda in roles that can at least be described as sexually ambiguous" (137), and later, she observes how the former brings an '"always already'. . . vitality (as well as ambiguous sexuality) to the role" (140). These observations further reinforce the rather overt codification of the two women as lesbians, perhaps an attempt to "hook" the audience, who might expect a popular film to have some sort of spicy details (we will return to these issues later on in the discussion).

If the material for the film is grounded in history, Bemberg's feminist interpretation of Sor Juana's life and times is decidedly contemporary,3 yet not unhindered by certain contradictions and ambiguities, some of which have already been alluded to above. There is also the fact that the film was made and released in the early 1990s when Peronism had returned to power in Argentine politics. To speak of Per�n and his politics is to also evoke the more famous member of the couple, Evita. Thus, the very title of the film is an expression with dual significance: its immediate historical referent and its implied reference to "the worst woman of all" (due to her personal and political illegitimacy in the eyes of the powerful Argentine oligarchy) in contemporary Argentine history, Eva Per�n.4 This double-entendre becomes clearer if one is aware of the relationship between the upper class, of which Bemberg was solidly a member, with the Perons/Peronism during her lifetime. The Peronist movement appealed to and was supported by the working class, and thus was in direct opposition to the goals and values of Argentina's upper class. It is a curious coincidence that young Bemberg married Carlos Miguens (whom she later divorced) on October 17, 1945, the very same day that General Juan Domingo Per�n was released from house arrest and large demonstrations of thousands of workers converged on the Plaza de Mayo to celebrate (King). But not so incidentally, Bemberg's class position figures into all of her films, which concentrate exclusively on female characters who are of a privileged socioeconomic status. As Bemberg's Sor Juana shouts to the men who persecute her at the film's climax, "�Somos distintas!" (here it is women with respect to men), one can also see this phrase has a double significance for Bemberg herself. Not all women are the same, nor does her feminist defense of women categorically apply to all women, but rather, those with whom Bemberg most identifies: women of the bourgeoisie or aristocracy (we must remember that Sor Juana, despite her somewhat humble beginnings, including her illegitimacy, did live quite a privileged existence in the court and convent). In the Sor Juana film, this group of women is further broken down into the intellectuals (las mujeres pensantes) vs. the non-intellectuals, the sexually desirous vs. those lacking desire, divisions that are significant to a feminist reading of Yo, la peor de todas.

One of the most widely recognized and discussed of her films is Camila. In addition to its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film in 1984, "the film, which at the time cost a mere US$370,000, seized the imagination of the Argentine people, especially women" (Bach 23). The focus on a well-recognized event in the Argentine historical consciousness no doubt increased the interest and favorable reception on the part of the Argentine public. The specific popularity of the film among women has two likely motives: 1) its engagement of the melodramatic mode, a category of film often associated with women for its appeal to romance and excessive emotions (again, it is curious to note that Eva Per�n's brief career as an entertainer included her roles in stage, radio and film melodramas in the 1930s and 1940s); and 2) the explicit feminist message it carried. Both of these reasons indicate that her films are definitely directed toward female viewers and intended to challenge or subvert historically dominant film conventions from a decidedly feminist position. But we should also bear in mind that her employment of melodramatic elements is a thorny issue, as the melodrama is a genre more associated with working-class, i.e. lower class, women (much like Evita, the great defender of the descamisados), and in general the genre has been seen as politically conservative rather than liberal in its intent (although this evaluation can also be linked to the class and gender bias attached to the melodrama). A more in-depth analysis will investigate these conflicts, and what they imply for a feminist understanding of the film.

Her revision of the texts and contexts of women-be they literary or historical-is what David William Foster recognizes as Bemberg's "politically feminist" project (16). For Jane Burke, what guides us to a feminist reading of her work is the subversive character of the female protagonists: they are both complicit and contesting (not unlike Bemberg herself). Camila (like Sor Juana) "es un personaje moderna, es la hero�na que se rebela ante el Padre, la Famila, la Ley, la Sociedad, la Religi�n y las Costumbres. Es el sujeto que lucha por la libertad individual, sin constricciones" (Ruffinelli 21). Camila O'Gorman and Juana In�s Ram�rez de Asbaje are women who realize their own destinies despite the threat of punishment: be it the physical death of the former, or the intellectual-spiritual demise of the latter. It is no accident that both women are identified with intellectual activity: Camila reads (some censored) books constantly, albeit romances (yet again, another connection to popular/mass culture); in fiction and real life, Juana In�s read and wrote prolifically. These characters, inspired by history, are decidedly Bemberg's: they inhabit a highly privileged environment, they love with great-and dangerous-passion, and they are "free" thinkers with a passion for knowledge.

The filmmaker herself depicts the tone and style of Yo, Ia pear de todas as "abstract" and "conceptual," as opposed to concrete, realistic and historical. She describes the atmosphere of the film as highly stylized and rarified, aspects that are communicated through the predominance of interior scenes, the Baroque-inspired "cold blue" photography, and the "correspondencia entre imagen y sonido, de una forma muy conceptual, densa, fr�a, geom�trica, distanciada" (Burton-Carvajal 83). Bemberg's Yo, Ia pear de todas can be thus characterized as having both a popular/mass and an elite/abstract sphere of reference, a dynamic that speaks of the director's desire to have both national and international appeal. The former characterization explains the film's reliance on commercial film techniques, including the well-known and quite beautiful lead actors and situations both highly sensual and melodramatic, such as when the panting vicereine begs the kneeling nun to open her bodice during an apparent fit of hyperventilation. These elements are juxtaposed with the abstract and austere (at the level of costume and setting, the chromatic and tonal details associated with the vicereine and the nun-the former light and luminous/warm colors, the latter deep, although not bright/cool colors-are juxtaposed with this austerity) settings, not to mention the choice of a historical subject treated through a feminist-albeit moving toward avant garde/non-mainstream-lens. For Miller, this feminist treatment is not without its problems, although she does acknowledge Bemberg's politically feminist agenda for Paz's work. Miller additionally notes that Bemberg's abstract settings parallel Paz's tendency toward the literary, the intellectual and the abstract in his analysis of the nun's life and work. John King describes the "painterly, chromatic features in a series of tableaux that drew their inspiration from Baroque painting" (27), which serve to create an atmosphere that is more abstract, universal and atemporal, rather than locally specific (i.e. located in Mexico; she in fact rejected plans to film in Mexico using a Mexican crew and actors, thus diverting the nationally specific importance of the writer) or historically truthful. In other words, much like the film Camila, Bemberg sought to dehistoricize her subject matter to give it a contemporary feminist meaning.

With these complexities in mind (as we proceed through the Garden of Forking Paths), one can identify specific strategies utilized by this filmmaker to communicate her feminist viewpoint. These include the spatial relations of characters within and among scenes which explicitly highlight differences between men's power and control and Sor Juana's struggles for the same; the use of masquerade and costume to highlight the constructed nature of gender identity; and the deliberate repositioning and/or subversion of cinema's dominant male gaze. In terms of the feminist message of the film, the aforementioned cinematographic and narrative devices can be split into two areas of emphasis. The first involves the unequal power relationship between men and women, a dynamic often communicated through the separation of male and female social spaces, as well as the attitudes and activities expressed in those spaces. The second explores the ambiguities of Sor Juana's gender and sexual identity, emphasizing the personal suffering that grew out of institutional restrictions on her, as well as her attempts to free herself from these restrictions through her intellectual activities and relationships with other thinking women (specifically the vicereines, Leonor Carreto and Maria Luisa Manrique). These two areas are necessarily interrelated, as they are integral to the inherently difficult task of realizing a feminist repositioning of the cinematographic experience.

Bemberg did not likely consult Jean Franco's discussion of Sor Juana found in her Plaiting Women (1989), as it was published after the writing of the screenplay for the film (i.e. 1987). Furthermore, Franco's emphasis on the literary and the theoretical, rather than the biographical and the personal, did not necessarily lend itself to good story telling in the way that Paz's indepth and lengthy work did. Nonetheless, she makes two key observations in her essay, "Sor Juana Explores Space," which have direct relevance to the discussion of Bemberg's feminist representation of the writer and her life story. Franco engages the theoretical formulations of Michel Foucault, specifically, the term "discursive practices" and the concept of "domains of discourse," which he used to interpret the institutional structuring of power and control. She analyzes the importance of social-institutional spaces (Home/Family, Court/State, Convent/Church), the masquerade and the disguise in the literature and society of New Spain, and how these function in Sor Juana's writing.

Franco uses an example from the play, Los empe�os de una casa, describing how "[t]he house becomes a space of disguise, transvestism, play, and riddles..." (26; my emphasis). Again in specific reference to her dramatic pieces, she asserts that the nun was able to acquire "a symbolic mobility that enabled her to change her gender, class, and race" (Franco 29). She thus purports that Sor Juana used masks (parody, allegory, mimicry) as means of obtaining some sort of (discursive) authority in an otherwise limited social situation. For Franco, the device-dramatic and/or rhetorical-of the mask makes any knowledge of Sor Juana's gender identity (feminine, feminist or otherwise) less than clear. Additionally, the fluid gender identity expressed in her writing was linked to certain spaces of power that were typically occupied by men. So if her secular poetry and theater allowed her to achieve a degree of symbolic power in the eyes of the viceregal court, her theological treatise, the Carta atenagorica, caused a grave conflict with the church fathers because of it's audacity, all the more terrible because she was a woman.

The mobility and mutability of Sor Juana's gender identity that is posited by Franco acquires extremely interesting dimensions when read along with Jacques Derrida's elaborations on the autobiography, this being an essential element in the identification of Sor Juana as a feminist and defender of women's rights (here I refer to the well-known essay she wrote in her self-defense, the Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz). During the round table on "otobiography," an extended group discussion on autobiography that takes place with Derrida, Christie V McDonald refers to an idea of Edmund Husserl that Derrida presents in Speech and Phenomena, in which the former notes that when the word "I" is read, it is most obviously estranged or dislocated from its normal meaning (as a self-referential diegetic shifter in oral expression). Here is where the autobiography becomes otobiography: it is the deciphering ear of the other that ultimately interprets, or signs for, the autobiographical "I." The role of the ear in interpretation is key to understanding the autobiographical subject; this ear may be large (undifferentiating) or small (keen, able to hear). The ear's difference (i.e. differences among ears) is important because "the signature becomes effective...not at the moment it apparently takes place, but only later, when ears have managed to receive the message" (Derrida 50). It is the ear of the other that signs. The "I" of auto/otobiography thus refers to both addresser and addressee: what the addressee hears constitutes the autos of autobiography, when the other comes to sign, and allows this subject to be heard and understood. And so, the signature is only effective when received, when autobiography becomes otobiography. Reception, and the attendant signing of the text that occurs when the text is heard/received, is also an act that has political implications.

Derrida further elucidates the significance of the signature of the individual work. The signature refers to both a proper name and the whole textual operation. Here he takes up McDonald's introduction of gender into the equation, particularly as this relates to the whole "I" question in autobiography. With the subject pronouns "I" and "you" (je/vous in French; yo/t� or usted in Spanish) the grammatico-sexual mark is imperceptible, that is, the grammatical form itself does not bear the mark of gender. The logico-grammatical aspect of the problem concerns the other (the addressee, the one who hears) to whom the signature is entrusted. Derrida asks if the difference of the "other as other" need be marked sexually a priori. He believes that it is difficult to decide, for if this were the case, the sex of the addresser would have to be determined before the other took responsibility for the signature. This leads to the suggestion that the sex of the addresser is mutable, to be decided by the addressee when he or she signs at some later point in time. And quite often, the signature only takes place posthumously. The "I" shifts back and forth among a series of dualities, which in turn become pluralities and ambiguities: it is both male and female, mother and father, life and death, Eros and Thanos. The essential ambiguity of all this is revealed when Derrida states that

The sex of the addresser awaits its determination by or from the other. It is the other who will perhaps decide who I am-man or woman. Nor is this decided once and for all. It may go one way one time and another way another time. What is more, if there is a multitude of sexes (because there are perhaps more than two) which sign differently, then I will have to assume (I-or rather whoever says I-will have to assume) this polysexuality. (52)

Nietzsche wrote of this essential plurality, when he said that he was two-both his mother and his father-two different sexes, "who are also life and death" (53). He-and whoever writes themselves in autobiography-writes for both the dead and the living, and those who will live in the future. In this sense, the proper name is meant to exist without the bearer of this name, and in fact, even in death (and sometimes only in death) the signature is continually performed.

This plurality and mutability are all very key for the Sor Juana debate as it is carried out in Bemberg and Paz's interlinked interpretations of the nun's gender subjectivity, and more importantly, as they both derive from the her autobiographical writing. In the case of Bemberg, the nun's signature is underscored by the title, which is itself a signature that employs the mutable "I" (Yo) along with gender specific markers (la...todas): Yo, la peor de todas. Yet, this signature is not the proper name, but rather an undifferentiated and shifting subject pronoun combined with a string of additional markers, which all together represents a phrase that was commonly used by Catholic nuns at the end of their confessions in the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, Bemberg's interpretation can also been viewed as an indication that Sor Juana's autobiographical signature is still alive and still being performed. Not only that, what Bemberg "hears" from Sor Juana's autobiographical "I" manifests a certain kind of polysexuality that is well worth considering. Beyond those listed above, other relevant (and mutable) dualities for Bemberg's Sor Juana include: hetero and homosexuality, platonic and erotic love, women's roles as nuns and mothers, intellectual and non-intellectual activity/subjectivity. One can even see the film as one version of Bemberg's own autobiography derived from her reading of Sor Juana's biography by Octavio Paz, which in and of itself was somewhat of an autobiography of Paz and his own intellectual and artistic personality.

Curiously enough, Bemberg's film unconsciously engages both Franco's theoretical formulations on Sor Juana's relationship to the patriarchal structures and spaces of power of her time, as well as the Derridian discussion of the gender(s) of the autobiographical "I." In Yo, Ia peor de todas, the unequal relationship between Sor Juana and the male-controlled society is constantly communicated in the film by spatial relations. The film's portrayal of gender inequality is communicated in terms of physical spaces/relationships; both between and within scenes, and further distinguished through elements such as lighting and sound, there is a distinction made between male versus female-dominated spaces versus Sor Juana's own space, an implicit reference to her mutable polysexuality suggested by Bemberg. The three opening scenes of the film exemplify the employment of the space/power dynamic that frames the Sor Juana story.

In a room that is dark and somber, the newly appointed viceroy, the Marqu�s de la Laguna (H�ctor Alterio) and Archbishop Francisco Aguiar y Seixas (Lautaro Mur�a) converse with one another in hushed tones. These two men are representatives of the secular and the spiritual patriarchal powers, i.e. the male-dominated institutions of Church and State, which-as Franco recognizes-aspired to control and dictate the ways of being, knowing and doing in colonial Spanish society. During their terse discussion, the viceroy notes that "[l]as cosas de Dios y las de C�sar han sido un poco mezcladas," to which the archbishop ominously responds, "Confundidas, quiz�s." This exchange exposes the archbishop's aspirations for power and control, while it more generally establishes an atmosphere of danger and conflict, both by-products of men's will to dominate and subjugate. In this scene, and as evidenced throughout the film, the relationship between Church and State is not peaceful or harmonious. The initial focus on men and their aspirations to power over society also indicates that Bemberg's interpretation of Sor Juana-much like Paz's version-revolves around her identity as a woman in a world dominated by men.

The next scene begins with a close-up shot of a fountain in the convent courtyard. An apparent allusion to the baptismal waters, it exemplifies the purity and innocence of a women's Utopia. As a group of nuns laugh and chat in the courtyard of the convent, light and playful Baroque music accompanies their activities. The bright light, the unrestrained laughter and pleasant music immediately define certain aspects of this female-dominated space, most obviously, the expression of freedom and innocence in an otherwise restricted environment. But not all women are created equal, there is a third space that pertains to Sor Juana-the solitary mujer pensante-herself. Viewed alone in her quarters, she spins a globe and contemplates. This act implies that through her study and writing, the entire world is within her reach, but only as a fiction, in her imagination. Through her solitary intellectual pursuits she gains knowledge of the world and also creates her own space. The distinction between this "room of one's own" and the animated, female-dominated space of the convent is made with the noise and chatter of the nuns below in contrast with the atmosphere of silence, deep thought and contemplation when Juana is alone in her quarters.

In the scenes involving interactions between men and women, the uneven power relations between genders is also constantly foregrounded, frequently through the positioning of the male and female characters in relation to one another. The visual aspects of certain scenes serve to highlight the dialogue of these cross-gender interactions, and also Sor Juana's conflict with religious powers over her intellectual and literary activities. One example occurs in a dark and prison-like corridor of what appears to be either a convent or a monastery, where two nuns meet secretly with Archbishop Aguiar y Seixas. In an obvious gesture of submission, they approach him kneeling and in a lowered position (a detail that is likely not historically inaccurate); a further testament to his overt and overemphasized misogyny, he also demands they cover their faces to address him. He speaks of the need to control spiritual laxity in the convents, to which the two nuns agree and promise their support. The corrupt nature of the Church is highlighted when one of the nuns-significantly, the future Mother Abbess-asks the archbishop if there will be any (economic) benefits for those who support him, specifically the protection of their "investments" (las rentas). He revealingly replies that secrecy is one of the pillars of the Church, and then proceeds to ask for a list of "good" and "bad" nuns. The future abbess responds that she will give him three lists: the pious, the lukewarm and the shameless. The archbishop then asks in which list is Sor Juana included. Her answer is silence, as she offers the lists to him without any sort of reply to his question. His overdetermined misogyny resurfaces, as the archbishop gestures to his assistant to take the paper from the nun's hands, of course, as he would not accept anything that has been touched directly by a woman. When the nuns leave these dark quarters, the archbishop's secretary closes the iron gate behind them, locks it with a key and proceeds to purify the space with incense.

The sharp social separation of women and men is conveyed through the visual elements of lighting and the positioning of characters in relation to one another. However, this is not a black and white division, in which the women are categorically opposed to or supportive of Sor Juana. This ambiguity is evident at a further point in the firm, when a group of nuns collect her writing from her cell to pass along to the archbishop, who is concerned about their content. In the darkness, they work in silence under the vigil of the new Mother Abbess (one of the two who met earlier with the archbishop to discuss the behavior of Sor Juana and her sisters). The complicity of the women is thus directly linked to the control of men, and more significantly, the male members of the church who seek to repress and subjugate the women in their charge, an interpretation that is intensified by the religious music that accompanies their work of censorship.

Throughout the film, the binary division of men and women is reinforced; the men are categorically represented as the forces that control and contain (with the possible exception of her friend and intellectual comrade Carlos de Sigiienza y Gongora, played by Gerardo Roman), and the women as those that liberate and promote freedom. For even the nuns who are willing to assist the archbishop in his persecution of Sor Juana are, after all, following his orders to avoid problems of their own, and possibly reap material benefit in return for their compliance. Still, to what extent does this binary pattern complicate the representation of women's gender and sexuality, and specifically that of Sor Juana, throughout the film? The interactions of her and Maria Luisa reveal an effort to represent the complexities of women's roles within the restrictions particular to the time (although ultimately they reveal more about our time than Sor Juana's). The specific strategies of gender representation involve the use of/allusions to masks and disguises (both literal and figurative), and the disruption of the "male gaze" of the cinema. At this point, we should also keep present that while these strategies serve to promote a feminist agenda, and specifically to make a strong statement about the troubles of the woman intellectual under the patriarchy, they are not without their faults. The apparent romance between the nun and the vicereine, as well as the slippery representation of the gender identity of the two women, are two areas that will elucidate the problematic aspects of Bemberg's feminist film.

On the Other Side of the Looking Glass: Is There a Female Gaze?

In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey's classic feminist intervention into film theory, she established traditional, i.e. male-dominated, cinematic practice as gendered. In classic narrative cinema, the camera, and by extension the male spectator, is/are active/looking and the female spectacle is passive/looked at, in other words, the cinematic "gaze" is essentially male. Both the men within the film, as well as those in the audience, are the active consumers of the passive, objectified female body. Informed by Mulvey's theoretical discussion of the gendering of spectatorship, Bruce Williams nuances the contemporary significance of Camila in terms of Bemberg's feminist film aesthetic. Rather than a complete reformulation-or rejection-of preexisting film codes, Williams explains how she

[P]resents a sensorial repositioning of gendered subjectivity, thereby reassessing the traditional visual dynamic of the classical cinema and destabilizing the primacy of the male gaze. This process in particularly subversive in that in never completely redefines cinematic discourse. Rather, Bemberg questions film practice from a place of disturbingly close proximity to traditional canons. (62)

Bemberg's efforts to capture the varied facets of women's experiences-albeit exclusively women of privilege-in the patriarchy are concentrated in her repeated rupture of the male gaze (both within the filmic narrative and between the spectators and the film). Throughout the film, Camila's active gaze defines her as a subject who looks and expresses desire and agency. The "power of the look" is placed in her control, granting her the voyeuristic privilege of the gaze that in most films is the domain of the male characters and spectators. Foster has determined that "Camila's exercise of a personal choice in sentimental love is given contemporary feminist dimensions in her key role as the assertive partner-a role epitomized by the fact that, in a key scene, it is Ladislao's derriere that is showcased in the obligatory but now wryly ironic gesture of sex-symbolization" (22). These examples thereby confirm Barbara Morris's assessment of Bemberg's cinema, as one that "da voz e imagen no sexistas a la mujer, pues reconstruye la fuerza de la mirada y de la voz femeninas... como un intento de crear un aut�ntico cine femenino en temas y discurso" (255). Thus within an apparently conventional and familiar framework (romantic melodrama/women's film), this filmmaker offers subversive moments that thwart traditional forms of gender representation within established narrative and visual codes of cinematic discourse.

Yo, la peor de todas also highlights and problematizes the male gaze in ways that break with traditional gender representation in film. The gaze "comes into focus" in a flashback scene to Sor Juana's preconvent days as a lady-in-waiting in the viceregal court, in which she is subjected by a group of men to an difficult oral examination to verify her already notable erudition. The room is large and dark, emphasizing the serious nature of the situation, further intensified by the black clothing and very somber faces of the group that surrounds a young, beautiful and demure Juana seated at the head of the long table. Notably, her benefactress, the Vicereine Leonor Carreto (the Marquise de Mancera), is seated opposite Juana at the table, dressed in masculine attire. Juana's appearance is elegant: she is adorned with makeup and jewels, and according to most film conventions would be another example of the beautiful woman as object of the male gaze. However, through the verbal content of the scene, Bemberg subverts the traditional relationships between male and female characters, and (male) spectator and visual image: this woman speaks and is quite intelligent! Contrary to the expectations of her examiners, she answers all questions correctly, demonstrating both erudition and grace. This scene thus dramatizes Bemberg's specific challenge to the stereotype of beautiful women that has typically conditioned the representation of women in art, literature, and film. Beauty and the active assertion of knowledge are no longer incompatible. Moreover, the use of chiaroscuro lighting establishes an overt and purposeful visual contrast between the young scholar and her audience that obviously functions to highlight gender differences and conflicts: Juana's luminosity-both internal and external-is in stark contrast to her dark and somber surroundings, be they the dour looks of her examiners or the physical atmosphere of the room itself.

In Yo, Ia pear de todas, the binary opposition of men versus women is intensified through the play of light and darkness, illumination and enigma, and even beauty and erudition. These dichotomies serve to enhance-and at times subvert-the dynamic of look and desire, as is further demonstrated in a continuation of the flashback to Sor Juana's preconvent days. Here we witness what would appear to be a passionate exchange between the protagonist and another courtier, as they stand alone together on a dark and breezy terrace. The physical beauty of Juana, in most films a necessary component for portraying men's fantasy of woman's desire, is once more apparent. Yet here we see how sexuality, desire and the pursuit of knowledge interact in unconventional ways. As they gaze at one another in the darkness he gives her tender kiss, which she willingly accepts. But for her, sexuality-most particularly, the corporal component of sexual desire-and knowledge are conflated. Immediately following this kiss, Juana appears pensive, reflecting aloud on the moment by saying, "Ahora se Io que es un beso." Contrary to conventions, love is viewed by Juana In�s as an intellectual or mental exercise. Nevertheless, she also returns his kiss, with force, confidence and passion.

If this scene supports the idea of the intellectual and knowledge-hungry Juana, it also implies the existence of another woman, hitherto buried by history, but who, despite her long status as a nun might have experienced more "human" emotions, such as sexual or romantic desire for others. As a group, these scenes also seem to provide the necessary hint of sexuality and femininity (with the visual and narrative emphasis on Juana's [Assumpta Serna's] beauty, grace, and sensuality) necessary for a commercially successful (melo)dramatic film. There are also parallels between Bemberg's treatment of the gaze in a film like Camila, and its use in Yo, la peor de todas. The examples from both films reveal how Bemberg constantly skirts the line between traditional representations of gender-seen in the deliberate physical beauty of protagonists, the emphasis on the look and desire to develop gender identity, the open use of the melodramatic formula-and the conscientious subversion of these patterns, all the more provocative for their proximity to the norms.

In both films, passion and desire-which include romantic intrigue and sexual innuendo-are central elements of the narrative; similar to Camila, Bemberg's Sor Juana also exudes passion, as the director explains, "Ia pasion forma parte del ser de Juana. Todo, todo Io que la roza, todo lo que ella vive es de una manera pasional" (Burton-Carvajal 81). But unlike Camila's transgressive sexual passion, Sor Juana's passion-and therefore agency and subjectivity-emanates from the mind and not the body. This refers to a distinction between passions and desires of the mind versus those of the body, a concern in the artistic and intellectual culture of the Spanish Baroque. Infused by the neo-Platonic currents of the time, Catholic doctrine emphasized the mind/body split: the rejection of earthly corporal existence, marred by sin and the confines of mortality, and the elevation of the mind and spirit as the more noble and heavenly path for humanity. A number of scholars, including Octavio Paz and Jean Franco, have certainly recognized the importance of this distinction in Sor Juana's work (El primera sue�o serves as a prime example), a concern she shared with other Baroque writers. Thus Bemberg's portrayal of the nun's "true passion" has a concrete historical basis, certainly gleaned from her and co-scriptwriter Antonio Larreta's reading of Paz's work. But also significant from a contemporary perspective, is that Bemberg has admitted to her desire to respect a Catholic viewpoint by deemphasizing the priest's sexuality in Camila, a move that likely conditioned her desire to do the same in her presentation of Sor Juana's sexual identity.

On more than one occasion Sor Juana purported that her status as a nun and a virgin neutralized her gender.3 Franco views Sor Juana's rejection of a strictly feminine identity, and her frequent adoption of a neutral or masculine persona, as a strategy designed to reject the accepted conventions of women's writing, namely that of "mystical nuns whose goal was ultimate silence" (23). The frequent and deliberate destabilization of her feminine identity allowed her voice to emanate from a position that was neither male nor female. Franco's observations on the symbolic mobility of Sor Juana's gender find a parallel in Paz's discussion of mirrors in the nun's work. Often contemplated through the dialectic between portrait and model, in Baroque literature, mirrors are devices that serve to question and elaborate the distinction between reality and imagination, essence and appearance (dichotomies that evidence the continued influence of Platonic thought). In Paz's view, Sor Juana's apparent obsession with mirrors and portraits also encompasses speculations on her gender. In the film as well, and very likely the result of Paz's influence, Sor Juana's gender identity is fluid and multiple, and, not very clear. This is a deliberate move that serves to destabilize the notion of a singular and homogenous feminine identity for women, but also obfuscates the "true" nature of Sor Juana's gender, and Bemberg's representation of it.

Paz identifies the essence versus appearance dichotomy as a speculative device that is employed by Sor Juana in her poetry through "the dialectic between the portrait and the model, the image in the mirror and the original, appearance and reality" (Paz 84). According to Paz, this dialectic is a key element of her literary (and according to both Bemberg and Paz, personal) transgressions of the norms of feminine identity. He explains that if her taking up the pen (in all its phallic connotations) made her more masculine-as writing was the near exclusive domain of men-then her nunhood neutralized her gender. Real and symbolic, Sor Juana wore/wears many masks, and thus, Paz's reference to this Baroque problematic also functions nicely to underscore the constructed nature of (gender) identity. Throughout Bemberg's film, Sor Juana's habit and veil-or in her pre-convent days in the court, the young Juana's outward beauty and grace-appear as "masks" (recall Franco) that not only highlight the protagonist's struggles with cultural and social restrictions on her intellectual development and activities, but also allow us to question the validity of gender constructs in our own time and space.

"M�s monja que mujer, m�s poeta que monja"

A spatial element, the bars of Sor Juana's locutory accentuate the dynamics of freedom and containment, essence versus appearance, and also influence those aspects of the narrative central to the film's treatment of gender. The presence and absence of the bars intersects with the notion that gender roles are constructs, roles to be acted out, and not essential characteristics of men or women (obviously, the film is more concerned with the latter). In the specific case of the relationship of Sor Juana and the vicereine, Mar�a Luisa, this leads to complications, and the implicit allusion to multiple feminine gender identities-nun, mother, intellectual, poet, virgin, lesbian-which coexist with one another, despite their socially mandated incompatibility. Additionally, the bars of the locutory, in the specific instance of how the friendship between the vicereine and Sor Juana develops throughout the film, also help to convey the rather explicit suggestion that the intense and passionate relationship between the two women had a sexual component. To further complicate matters, the bars-both as a visual element of spatial separation between gendered subjects and as a narrative referent that signifies social restrictions on gender identity-support the melodramatic and romantic aspects of the story, and thus reinforce the covert presentation of Sor Juana and Maria Luisa as the ill-fated lovers who must fulfill their tragic destiny as punishment for their transgressions of the celibate (for Sor Juana the nun) and heterosexual (for Mar�a Luisa the married vicereine) norms of female/feminine sexuality imposed on them by society.

As their first meeting with one another begins, the spatio-visual separation of the bars of the locutory-concretely apparent to the viewers of the film, and certainly a reality of the time-is noted directly by the vicereine when she asks Sor Juana if they can be done away with somehow, to which Juana replies, "Ni los veo." She then begins to explain to Maria Luisa the freedoms offered to her by convent life (quite real freedoms, as historical investigations by scholars like Josefina Muriel, Asunci�n Lavr�n, and Electra Arenal and Stacey Schlau have confirmed6). She tells the vicereine that life in the convent allows her to study, write, teach, and have books. Bemberg's critique of the various social institutions as patriarchal and oppressive is found in Mar�a Luisa's response to Sor Juana's claims. She offers Juana a series of comparisons between their two lives and the limitations placed on them as women: "vos cem's el velo, yo Ia corona; no os dejan salir del convento, �crees que puedo escapar dejar del palacio? Observais la regla, yo el protocolo. A los veinte a�os entrast�is al convento, a m� a esa edad, me casaron. Me pregunto, �para cu�l de las dos es mas peque�o su mundo?" Sor Juana then asks her if she may answer with four of her verses: "para el alma no hay encierro, ni prisiones que le impida, porque solo la aprisiona la que forma ella misma."

Th�se verses seem to be deliberately included to highlight the primacy of neo-Platonic thought to Sor Juana's poetic, spiritual and personal life, which not only reiterates the conclusions of previous studies of her work, it also deflects the "danger" of misinterpretations-resonant in both the context of film, as well as in the body of Sor Juana criticism and interpretation-of the nature of the relationship between the two women. The scene is quite significant for the obvious connections it establishes between the meeting of the two women, which is one of the first signs of their soon-to-be deep and intense friendship, and the threats and restrictions of patriarchal repression-communicated both visually by the bars that separate them, and narratively in the comments of the vicereine. This is precisely one of Emilie Bergmann's criticisms of the film, i.e., the causal relationship that is established between the expression of homoerotic desire and Sor Juana's demise. This fact is curiously overlooked by the filmmaker herself, who continually denies she is representing the women as lesbians, but instead qualifies the passionate and Platonic relationship between the two as a dramatic device, a detail that also supports Bemberg's cozy relationship with commercial film conventions.7

In many ways Bergmann's criticism is valid, for Bemberg repeatedly links Sor Juana's troubles with the patriarchal powers to her "passionate" and "erotic" relationship with the vice-reine, a move that has damaging connotations for the film's (apparently unintentional) attempts at representation of the lesbian subject. Still, we are troubled here by our own historical blindness, for despite the obvious prospect that lesbianism is not exclusive to the twentieth century, the experiences and attitudes of contemporary lesbians are not necessarily the same as those of the past. Coupled with the highly the codified social protocols and literary conventions of Sor Juana's day, which viewed artifice and camouflage as the pinnacle of artistic and intellectual talent, it is difficult to determine-and most particularly in the poems actually written to /for the vicereine-that what is expressed is lesbian desire as we know it.

If one wants to argue that the erotic content of Sor Juana's poems to the vicereine, Mar�a Luisa, is a transparent reflection of her deep affection (in the sexual and romantic sense) for this woman, and thus discount Paz's explanation that the poems are merely reflecting the poetic, philosophical and social conventions of the time, then what is one to do with the poems written in a feminine voice to a masculine subject? Bergmann, who vehemently denounces the homophobic interpretation of Paz and Bemberg regarding Sor Juana's sexuality and the relationship she had with the vicereine, provides an example of such a poem that is used in the film (inaccurately, in that the vicereine's character reads it as if it were written to her, which in reality was not the case): "Baste ya de rigores, mi bien, baste; ...pues ya en Hquido humor viste y tocaste / mi coraz�n deshecho entre tus manos" (240). This is one example of many, and one that certainly deserves to be considered as an "authentic" (i.e. truthful and accurate) expression of erotic passion as much as any of the poems written expressly for Mar�a Luisa, her benefactress.

Bemberg explains that her own interpretation of the "true nature" of the friendship between the women was conditioned by Paz's explanations of the poetic conventions of the time. He provides an example from an unidentified glosa written to Mar�a Luisa: "There is no obstacle to love /in gender or in absence, /for souls, as you are well aware, /transcend both sex and distance" (219). Paz further reminds us that the relationship between the two women was, after all, that of superior /patroness to inferior /commissioned artist, maintaining that "[w]ith no sense of embarrassment she calls herself the servant, even the slave, of the Viceroy and Vicereine. She knew perfectly well that she was neither; in identifying herself in this way she was merely following a social and political convention" (Paz 197). According to Paz, the complex poetic and cultural protocols for the expression of love, dedication, and even desire, trace a trajectory-philosophical, religious, poetic-from Platonism into Arabic Sufi mysticism into the Troubadour poetry of Provence, and then into Renaissance and Spanish Golden Age literature and culture (Electra Arenal and Amanda Powell also consider the influence of Troubadour poetic conventions that likely conditioned the overt eroticism in Sor Juana poems to the vicereine). Sor Juana's location in these traditions allowed her to "manifest in her poems to the Countess of Paredes the rhetoric of lovers combined with legal and familial language . . . the faithfulness of the lover, the loyalty of the servant, and the affection of the son were synonyms that designated an identical devotion" (198). While it is certainly possible that a lesbian relationship existed between the two women, it is less likely that her affections would have been transparently communicated in the poems she wrote to the vicereine.8 Bemberg's-and Paz's as well-representation of Sor Juana's lesbian subjectivity says more about her than it does about the person she has chosen as her subject matter.

Furthermore, we should also bear in mind the distinction between the real Sor Juana and the one that writes, especially since Bemberg's (and Paz's) understanding of the poet and her complex-and certainly at times, ambiguous-gender identity is gleaned from her writing, most particularly her autobiographical treatise, La respuesta. What is more, even the figure of Sor Filotea de la Cruz exemplifies "the confusion between the notion of the author and that of the person" (46-47) discussed by McDonald in the round table with Derrida, and moreover, the slippage between the gender of the person and that of the author. Sor Filotea was in fact not a nun at all, but rather Bishop Santa Cruz of Puebla, the one who first urged Sor Juana to write her Carta qtenag�rica, in which she refuted a sermon delivered by Brazilian Jesuit Ant�nio Vieira in 1650. He subsequently published it prefaced by a strong admonition of the nun and her intellectual activities, signed with the name "Sor Filotea de la Cruz." Evidently, gender mutability is not the exclusive terrain of Sor Juana: be she real person, writer or twentieth-century feminist icon.

Still, in Bemberg's rendition, the relationship between Mar�a Luisa and Juana In�s is rife with highly romantic and sexual connotations that ultimately work in the direct service of melodrama, and also reinforce the "conventionality" of Bemberg's narrative technique-despite the abstract and artful fa�ade. Yet, if we indeed interpret it as a "romance" between two women, the fact that it is represented by a woman and directed toward women, in and of itself undermines the typical conventions of popular melodramatic cinema. While it is imperative that one not loose sight of the decidedly problematic aspects of Bemberg's representation of the desiring lesbian subject (consider Bergmann), it is equally important to recognize the great ambiguity surrounding this representation. Not only does Bemberg explicitly deny that what she is doing is portraying the relationship between the two women as lesbian, the details of the film itself frustrate any definitive answer in this regard. Most likely cognizant of Paz's explanation that the apparent intensity of the friendship was the product of conventions of the time, Bemberg probably wanted to accept Paz's interpretation of the friendship between the young Juana and Vicereine Leonor Carreto, observations which seem equally applicable to that of Sor Juana and Maria Luisa:

There have been celebrated masculine friendships based on the shared passion for ideas, the arts, or the sciences. But this experience, one of the highest we can aspire to, is not exclusively male: the relationship, tinged with mutual admiration, that joined these two women was such as friendship of the spirit. (90)

This would of course reinforce the director's focus on women who engage in intellectual activity, as opposed to women in general. The fact that she ends up sexualizing and romanticizing the relationship between the Mar�a Luisa and Juana In�s seems to detract from this purpose, and because of this, the gender identity and sexuality of Bemberg's Sor Juana is both mobile and multiple, but also essentially ambiguous. The commercial filmmaker inside Bemberg seems to say: women-intellectuals or not-must have something 'sexy' to offer the spectators; if these women think, they must also desire.

The scenes involving the development of a friendship between Mar�a Luisa and Juana In�s also reveal key aspects of the director's treatment of gender in the film, most particularly in relation to the central female protagonists. Sor Juana is found in the confines of her private cell, appropriately engaged in intellectual activity, consulting some texts that lay open in front of her. This visual image qualifies Sor Juana as the solitary woman intellectual, always hard at work, yet also alone. The presence of the vicereine is "announced" by the off-screen sounds of a mandolin, at first discordant and disconcerting, then rising to achieve harmony. This detail seems to reflect the nature of the relationship between the two women, and the ultimate positive effect that the vicereine had-in reality-on Sor Juana's life and work (it was she who took the nun's works back to Spain and had them published, a historical fact that is deliberately included in the film). Notably, the vicereine first mentions the bars of the locutory to explain her transgression of protocol, which would prohibit outside visitors in private quarters.

The beginning of this scene appears to thwart the possible categorization of their friendship as primarily sexual/romantic, for the subject of their conversation immediately reveals their intellectual camaraderie. Mar�a Luisa speaks of the nun's voluminous library, having heard from others that it is one of the biggest and the best in New Spain. However, she is quick to warn Sor Juana of the danger of her intellectual pursuits, for she makes a point to mention that some of the books-those of Descartes, Gassendi, Kirscher, specifically-found in the nun's collection are dangerous and have been prohibited in Spain under the Inquisition. Sor Juana defends herself, explaining to her friend that here (in New Spain) they are far from Rome (i.e. the Pope) and that her confessor is the one who censors her, thus acknowledging the control of Church and State over cultural and intellectual production. Regardless, Mar�a Luisa is still very concerned by her friend's audacity in these matters, and reiterates the threat of the Inquisition by describing the horrors of an auto de fe she had witnessed in Spain, in which she saw "m�s de cien personas quemadas vivas-vagabundos, prostitutas, lun�ticos, alg�n jud�o."

By this time she is visibly shaken by her own words, and apparently truly afraid of the consequences of Juana's daring in her scholarly pursuits. Her emotions have taken over, and she exclaims to the nun, "�Te Io ruego, Juana, no desafies a Ia Iglesia!" Completely overcome by her emotional distress, she begins to hyperventilate, and is on the verge of fainting. Halfway between a gasp and a whisper-and only augmenting the (sexual? emotional?) tension between the two women, she begs for Juana -to open her bodice. Juana immediately-and obediently-falls to her knees at the feet of her friend to carry out this imperative request, all the while gazing at her distressed companion with a look of deep compassion. The delicate movement of her hands only augments the pseudo sensual/romantic connotations of their interaction as she opens the vicereine's bodice.

Although this scene initially accentuates the intellectual ties between the two women, as well as Sor Juana's tenacity with regards to her scholarly activities (the trials of "la mujer pensante"), the ending is undeniably emotional and sensual. This reinforces the ambiguity of Bemberg's treatment of the relationship between the women, and her resistance to making a definitive claim as to Sor Juana's sexual identity. But the scene also goes on to assert the impossibility of a homogenous and monolithic feminine identity that would apply to all women, for upon noting the pregnant state of her friend, Sor Juana exclaims, "No Io sab�a." She then goes onto explain that "Ia matemidad me asusta, no Ia entiendo, el mio es un cueipo abstracto; mis hijos son mi telescopic, mi astrolabio, mi reloj solar, mi lira, mi aut�mata; mi espejo de obsidiana donde leo el pasado y deslumbro el future, mis imanes, mis plumas, mis escritos...". Her words serve as a defense of her intellectual activities, and also assert a feminine identity that is not grounded in psychological or physical submission to men, including the material and social function of woman as childbearer. Both nature and culture are denied.

The dichotomy between the material /physical (represented by Mar�a Luisa, although also apparent in Sor Juana during a later altercation between her and the Archbishop Aguiar y Seixas, to be described below) and the intellectual /mental is constantly reinforced in the film, which in turn functions as a way of problematizing the symbolic /social norms of gender expression for women. Her seemingly total disconnection from her existence as a female is only validated by the fact that she is a nun, who will likely never know the experience of motherhood, and an intellectual, and thus, also removed from the corporal/sensual and given to the mental/rational. As a married woman and mother (obvious signs of her socially sanctioned heterosexuality), the expression of passion and sensuality is totally permissible to the vicereine, as her response to Juana indicates. With feeling she says to her friend, "�qu� bella �res cuando te apasionas!" only to reinforce their difference and the "lesser" status of Juana as a childless woman, "pero... una mujer sin hijos es incompleta, no se puede negar la naturaleza." This moment constitutes the crux of the scene, for Sor Juana retorts that all women are not equal, some-like her-need solitude, a statement that confirms more than one possible personal and social identity for women. Of course, the vicereine's position is still maintained, for she responds to her friend's claim that God did not instill her with the restlessness of knowledge over the desire to love. This rather problematically reiterates the "romantic" aspects of their relationship, as well as the "typical" propensity of some women to strong emotion and their preference for romance, and the accompanying suppression of the rational and the intellectual. The division of the mind and body also separates the two characters into "acceptable" categories: the nun remains pure of mind and spirit, the wife and mother exudes emotion and corporal sensuality.

One must also grapple with the vicereine's more aggressive bisexuality (Miller correctly observes that the vicereine/Sanda occupies the traditional position of the central male character(s), the channel for the male gaze/desire of the spectators), which at one point leads her to assume the role of domineering dominatrix. For some, this presentation is rather questionable, especially to the extent that it is contrasted with Sor Juana's poetically, yet platonically, expressed homoeroticism. There is one particular encounter between the two women that functions in obvious juxtaposition to the flashback of the exchange of a kiss between a young Juana In�s and a male courtier. The vicereine has come to visit Juana to present her with a gift of a miniature portrait of herself. Here in the privacy of Sor Juana's cell, Mar�a Luisa simultaneously acknowledges the ambiguity of Juana's gender (me pregunto, �c�mo es Juana cuando est� sola?: m�s poeta que monja, m�s monja que mujer), as well as her own desire to see the nun stripped of her (socially and culturally conditioned) gender-neutral mask: "�Qu�tate el velo! Es una orden!" She then suggestively exclaims that "esta Juana es mia, solamente m�a." Not surprisingly, as (Sor) Juana is "exposed" in her natural and overtly female state, the infamous "lesbian kiss" occurs. Here, Bergmann correctly protests that Juana's awkward, shy and innocent reaction to the vicereine's "advances" is out of line with the nun's otherwise assertive, take-no-prisoners attitude. Furthermore, the fact that once Mar�a Luisa leaves and before putting her habit back on, Juana lovingly takes the miniature portrait out and caresses it in a somewhat transparent expression of admiration and desire, makes the claim that what is represented is not lesbian desire and/or subjectivity-problematic as its representation may be-difficult to accept.

Bergmann explains how the film is "shaped by a narrative of female abjection, the defeat of a risk-taking, exceptionally gifted, and accomplished woman crushed by the patriarchal social order" (229), all of which are supported to one degree or another by the historical record of Sor Juana's rejection of secular writing in the final years of her life, with the "female abjection" further confirmed by her adoption of the writing conventions of other nuns of the time: the signature, "Yo, la peor de todas." She is troubled by the film's implicit suggestion of an apparent causal relationship between Sor Juana's defeat and the homoeroticism expressed in the nun's poems to the vicereine. Though, as Bergmann herself points out, the majority of the love /erotic poems included in the film were not even the ones written to /in honor of the vicereine. This detail weakens the alleged connections that Bemberg makes between Sor Juana's ultimate defeat (only momentary, as one of the messages that proceed the final credits attests that "Today she [Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz] is considered one of the greatest poets of the Spanish Golden Age") and her (repressed) lesbian desire. Moreover, other scholars who have written on the film, most particularly Nina Scott (whose work is employed by Bergmann as part of her negative critique of the film), have had nothing but praise for the film's portrayal of the nun's erotic life. Scott describes the "erotic elements in the relationship between Sor Juana and Mar�a Luisa" as being "delicately but forthrightly" (153) handled, and sees in Bemberg's film the presentation of "a definite physical attraction" (153) between the two women (despite the denial of such by the filmmaker) that is not at all problematic, and is in fact, praiseworthy.

Another reaction to Bemberg's audacious portrayal of the seventeenth-century nun as a desiring female subject is located on the extreme opposite end of the ideological spectrum as that of Bergmann: conservative Mexican Catholicism. Tarisco Herrera Zapi�n attacks both Paz and Bemberg for their suggestions that Sor Juana was a lesbian, as well as their unkind portrayal of clergy members, such as the archbishop ("La personalidad de los arzobispos es tratada por la guionista en forma a�n m�s grotesca que la de las damas, ofendidas a mansalva por la guionista y por el autor en que ella se inspir�" [Herrera Zapi�n 167, my emphasis]). He takes umbrage at the scene in which Mar�a Luisa breathily reads aloud a love poem by Sor Juana-not originally written for the vicereine, but used in the film as if it were-to her husband. Admittedly problematic, this poem is used in the film as if it were a declaration of Sor Juana's deep feelings for her friend, to which "el marqu�s comenta entonces soezmente 'Seguis haciendo estragos, Mar�a Luisa'" (Herrera Zapi�n 164; emphasis added); and when Juana is more concerned about the condition of Mar�a Luisa following the birth of her son, than about the new baby, Herrera Zapi�n is disgusted that "todas las religiosas est�n felices por el nacimiento del nino, pero Juana In�s est� morbosamente preocupada por la madre" (165; my emphasis).

Shortly before the viceroy receives word that his appointment is up, thus obligating he and his family to return to Spain, a group of Churchmen have a meeting about Sor Juana and her work. The group includes her confessor, Antonio N��ez de Miranda (Alberto Segado), her friend, Carlos de Siguenza y G�ngora, the traitorous (as he made public, after promising otherwise, her polemic refutation of the sermon by the Brazilian Jesuit, Ant�nio Vieira) bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fern�ndez de Santa Cruz (Franklin Caicedo), and the true persecutor of her person and work, the Archbishop Aguiar y Seixas. The scene represents the mounting conflict between the secular and religious that surrounds Sor Juana's work as a writer, and more importantly, a nun /woman writer, which in the final analysis-according to Paz and Bemberg at least-leads her to renounce her secular writing. Even more significant is the underlying conflict between men and women caused by the power and domination of the patriarchy over women's lives. The dark scene begins with the archbishop referring to her verses as lances in the side of Our Lord, to which another scandalously comments that merely touching her poems burns his hands, and yet another proffers that "esta poes�a exhibe la m�s perversa sensualidad." Scenes like this have garnered the criticism of scholars like Herrera Zapi�n, who considers Bemberg's presentation of the religious men as evil and misogynistic as a harsh affront to Catholicism, and Bergmann, who views scenes such as this as indicative of the causal relationship the director establishes between the relationship of Sor Juana and Mar�a Luisa de Manrique and the former's demise, and thus ultimately, an indicator of Bemberg and Paz's homophobic stance with respect to the possible lesbianism of the nun.

Yet the ultimate dramatic event does not occur in the context of the "romance" between Juana In�s and Mar�a Luisa, but rather a violent confrontation between the nun and the Archbishop Aguilar y Seixas, when he learns of her attack against his friend, Vieira. Whether Sor Juana's demise is covertly linked to her relationship with Maria Luisa, or the overt suggestion that she was actually caught up in larger political conflicts and power struggles between men of the Church (a problem that would have only been exacerbated by the return of the viceroys to Spain, and the subsequent absence of their favor and protection), her downfall is shown to be the product of a some sort of conflict with the patriarchal control of the Church fathers. The possibility that she is simply an unwitting pawn in political and /or intellectual rivalries between men is reiterated by references to the controversy surrounding the writing and publication of her refutation of Padre Vieira in her Carta atenagorica. As previously mentioned, the piece was written at the bidding of the bishop of Puebla, and in Paz's interpretation of things, most likely the result of his desire to embarrass or harm his rival, the Archbishop Aguiar y Seixas, who was know to be a supporter of Vieira's ideas. This interpretation significant to the film, and in addition to brief scenes alluding to the archbishop's dangerous conservatism in intellectual matters (he is seen at one point demonically presiding over a book burning ceremony as Sig�enza y G�ngora and N��ez de Miranda look on quite disturbed), the conversation between Sor Juana and bishop Santa Cruz, in which he strongly encourages her to write the refutation, only serves to strengthen its importance. It would seem likely that on one level Bemberg would want to emphasize Sor Juana's persecution for intellectual reasons, although we now know that there is more to it than that.

The spatial configuration of this scene (the position of actors in relation to one another and their surroundings) is once more a key component of this cross-gender interaction. As the scene begins, we encounter the "jailed" Sor Juana, viewed behind the omnipresent bars of the locutory as she reads Vieira's sermon. But it is not only the bars that serve to frame for this infamous-albeit fictionalized-conversation. At one point the nun is viewed close-up with her face next to a flickering candle, an object which clearly symbolizes her identification as an enlightened and rational being in contrast to the paranoid and backbiting behavior of the men that surround her, including her current visitor. The symbolism of the candles, and their role in representing the conflict of reason and knowledge over blind and persecutory religious zeal, is again clarified as the scene closes. Following her reluctant agreement to hand over to Santa Cruz the refutation of Vieira she has written, she places the text on a table located just beyond the bars of the locutory. Here, the camera slowly moves in to a close-up of the table on which the piece now lays, flanked by a statue of a crucified Christ and the lighted candle. The crucifix itself is dually symbolic, as it is a reference to a key event in the founding of the Catholic Church, as well as a foreshadowing of Sor Juana's own "crucifixion" at the hands of her male persecutors. This figure is in contrast to the flaming candle, obvious symbol of the light of reason, and thus, a metonymic reference to Sor Juana herself. Her victimhood now firmly established, from here on out she will only know suffering and persecution.

Naturally, once Archbishop Aguiar y Seixas finds out about the attack on his friend Vieira, deeply offensive because she is female, Sor Juana confronts powers that are far beyond her control as a nun and woman. Significantly, this information is communicated by her old friend, the former Mother Abbess, who now lies sick and dying in a hospital (now another source of support that will soon disappear), where Juana goes to visit her only to learn the terrible news of the forces against her. Not long after this scene, the real confrontation between Sor Juana and the fathers of the Church-naturally headed by the archbishop-occurs. It is not incidental that the scene takes place with her "behind bars," i.e. in the confines of the locutory.

She is at first humble, bowing to the group of men in acknowledgement of their superior status. But this humility is short-lived, as the archbishop cannot control his desire to persecute and debase her (she is a woman, after all). He speaks tauntingly of her alleged persecutors, pointedly asking if she has been able to identify any of them. Making specific reference to the Carta atenag�rica, he admonishes her for the audacity of the work; "�fEste trabajo] no est� un poco lejos de la piedad? �Una obra algo alejada de lo que podr�a esperarse de una religiosa?" Her confessor, N��ez de Miranda, momentarily steps in to defend his spiritual daughter, only to be reprimanded and silenced by the powerful archbishop. When the archbishop dares to suggest that God did not create woman to philosophize, Sor Juana can take it no longer. With words that must have been inspired directly by the Respuesta a Sor Filotea, she breaks her respectful decorum and demands to know where such a thing is written, sarcastically adding, "�Que revelacion divina hab�is tenido? �Si no fuera mujer, nada importar�a, ni siquiera mis atrevimentos teol�gicos!" These words stand in sharp contrast to the silence of N��ez de Miranda and bishop Santa Cruz. The archbishop, however, is not about to passively accept her accusations, and before abruptly turning his back on her to leave (and thereby end the conversation on his terms), he adds the final insult by calling her responses the impertinences of a pathetic bastard (incidentally, Eva Duarte and Juana Ramirez bear similarities in that they were both illegitimate children, and they both left home at an early age to pursue careers as artists in the "big city;" what is more, they both figure into the pantheon of female icons of Latin American history).

Of course Bemberg is not going to have this be the last word. In response to the cruel and misogynistic words and actions of the archbishop, Sor Juana shouts a warning to him and the men who obediently accompany him that directly highlights her identity as a flesh and blood woman: �Esperad! �No os vay�is! Somos distintas, es verdad, tenemos otra forma, otro olor." Her tone turns threatening, as she dares them: "�Venid! �Oledme! �Admitidlo! Somos el di�blo para vos. ��El di�blo lo llev�is en el coraz�n!!" Ultimately, she is more a woman than a nun or a poet (woman, all too woman), and thus subject to the persecution of men for transgressing the accepted expectations for her gender. Sor Juana has lost her mask, the protection and freedom afforded by her nunhood has finally vanished, leaving her weak and vulnerable. Before the men leave for good, her confessor returns to inform her that he can no longer be her spiritual father. Viewed at a long shot in the confines of her locutory, her solitude, abandon and imprisonment are further accentuated by the distant view, which makes her appear all the more alone and weakened by the experience (thus presenting a visual portrait of her overdetermined victimization).

As this climactic scene indicates, and as any Sor Juana scholar knows, she "renounced" her secular writing project in 1693, two years before her untimely death at age 44 (another parallel with Evita, who died at aee 33). The possible reasons for this are many. One could be the pressure exerted on her by the Church fathers (certainly this is the scenario emphasized by Bemberg, as the last scene described confirms), and the absence of the protection and support of the viceroyals, such as she enjoyed during tenure of her friends, the Count and Countess of Paredes; the other could be the general state of chaos in New Spain, most particularly in Mexico City, brought on by famine, plague, and violent Indian uprisings, and which certainly must have combined with the previously mentioned strain of church persecution and a general lack of support for her work (a reason also offered by the film); and yet another could be a religious conversion, as she realized the terrible depths of her sacrilege (some would say "heresy"). In these final scenes, she moves from being a "caged animal;" to a "real woman," i.e. a repentant and humble one; and later holy martyr; and then finally, saint (a move that would seem to constitute an obvious attempt to placate the Argentine church, as was a concern with Camila; Bemberg mentions this in her interview with Karen Jaehne [1986]).

One of the more significant transitions is the move from submissive and self-deprecating (the film is titled, after all, Yo, Ia pear de todas) to saintly nun, which suggests that Sor Juana achieved a sort of religious sanctity at the end of her real/biological life. But lest we assume that Bemberg is privileging a religious interpretation, it should be clear that her sanctity ultimately exists on a literary and political level for this feminist filmmaker. This Sor Juana is represented throughout the film as an early Latin American feminist, and in the end, recognized as one of the greatest poets of the Spanish Golden Age, a claim that is all the more strong, given the reality of her (proto)feminist stance to the restrictions placed upon her.

For Burke it is important to examine how "se revela un discurso femenino, cuya meta m�s b�sica transforma activamente la im�gen de la mujer que tipicamente se ha proyectado. . . . [este] discurso femenino va mas alla de meramente comentar la experiencia femenina y dirigirse al espectador femenino; expone una obvia denunica de la sociedad machista / patriarcal" (1). Bemberg's female protagonists are oppressed and controlled by male authority, both individual and institutional, but they are also women of action: active and acting subjects versus passive and manipulated objects. As we have seen, this stance is often underscored by visual clues in the films, which include the subversion of the male gaze and the related concentration on the female gaze, as well as filmic devices such as the lighting and spatial configurations of scenes, or the wardrobe and make-up of particular characters. It has also been observed how Yo, Ia pear de todas is constantly moving back and forth between the representational strategies of commercial melodrama and avant garde intellectual filmmaking, a dynamic that on a basic formal level is an allusion to deeper complexities apparent in the film.

One of the most significant is the fluid and multifaceted gender identity of its central protagonist, which reveals Bemberg's own confusion between the gender of the real Sor Juana and that of the writer. We must wonder-in the manner of Derrida & Co.-what it is that Bemberg (and Paz for that matter) 'hears' from Sor Juana, how the director reads the autobiographical signature of the person who lived and wrote in terms of her gender indentitzes. After all, this is a feminist film with an agenda, which implies that gender representation is at its core. While this film presents a highly overdetermined representation of gender inequality between the sexes, amongst the female characters as well-and even more significantly-there is a strong distinction made between the women: those who think and desire, versus those who do not. Bemberg evidently realized the great difficultly that Sor Juana had finding a room of her own, as much as we are able to recognize the obstacles the director faced trying to make a feminist film that is not without contradictions.

1 Stephanie Merrim provides bibliographical details on the use of the designation "feminist" in reference to Sor Juana. She observes that this title was officially awarded to Sor Juana in Mexico in 1974, but was also applied as early as 1925 by feminist scholar, Dorothy Schons, in the article, "The First Feminist in the New World," which appeared in the journal Equal Rights. In 1926, Schons published another piece, "Some Obscure Points in the Life of Sor Juana," (reprinted in Merrim's volume) which also furthered a feminist interpretation of the seventeenth-century woman and her work. Here Schons negated the romantic-and sexist-suggestion of biographers like Amado Nervo, who claimed that Sor Juana entered the convent "because of an unfortunate love affair" (Schons 39). Instead, Schons believes that her real motivations were intellectual, her true love learning and the pursuit of knowledge. Shortly thereafter, the label "feminist" was again applied in 1933 by Mexican scholar, Carlos E. Caste�eda, in his aptly titled, "Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz, Primera feminista de Am�rica." Merrim asserts, however, that Caste�eda falls into the same trap as other biographers of the Baroque author-from Father Diego Calleja's work, Vida de Sor Juana, produced shortly after her death, to Alfonso M�ndez Plancarte in his Obras completas de Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz of 1951-when he suggests that her ultimate resignation of secular writing was the result of her religious conversion. Merrim groups this particular interpretation with those that contend she entered the convent because of a "love lost." She believes that these explanations only serve to domesticate and feminize Sor Juana by making her life story conform to a "more conventional feminine mode" (Merrim 17)-either the emotionally distraught Juana, broken by her rejection in love, or the pious and saintly nun, who repented for her egotistical pursuit of fame to find God at the end of her life.

2 A specific example, and point of comparison to the work done by Paz, is Ludwig Pflandl's Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz: La d�cima musa de M�xico (1963). Merrim explains how he "attributes the writer's literary production to the narcissistic displacement onto literature of her 'feminine' maternal instincts" (13). In Jucios sumarios (1966), Rosario Castellanos includes a brief, yet vehement refutation of Pflandl's analysis of Sor Juana, titled, "Y otra vez, Sor Juana." She analyzes the significance of three women in Mexican history: La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Malinche, and Sor Juana. While the differences between the first two, and the implications for women's identity, are fairly obvious (the virgin/model of beneficent and self-denying motherhood vs. the whore/model of irrational and treacherous sexuality), Sor Juana's significance is not as clear. This ambiguity is directly related to her gender, as Castellanos explains, "[t]he initial enigma she poses for us is not her genius (sufficient to worry many doctors) but her femininity. She speaks of it in different passages of her writing, not in terms of a consummated and assumed fact but rather as a hypothesis that perhaps cannot be proven" (328). Castellanos believes that any of the problems Sor Juana encountered because of her writing were specifically related to her status as a woman who also dared to transgress the social expectations for her gender through her pursuit of an intellectual vocation.

3 While Bemberg uses the past-present dynamic in her films to emphasize the struggles of women against the patriarchy-in its various manifestations-throughout history, and most particularly, Latin America history, this connection of past to present, and the particular resonance of a contemporary feminist message, does not only function to expose to issues of gender-based oppression and power. The director has also stated that her emphasis on women's oppression in her films is part of a larger critique of contemporary political violence and repression. This is overt reference to the constellation of oppressive -isms that has plagued Latin America throughout history and, more significantly, during the twentieth century: authoritarianism, fanaticism, fundamentalism and obscurantism. In specific reference to Yo, la peor de todas, she explains how she sought to atemporalize and universalize the general atmosphere of the story to make certain problems-such as intellectual repression and religious fanaticism-relevant and identifiable to contemporary spectators (Burton-Carvajal).

4 That this phrase is meant to have a nationally specific significance is not unlikely. Here we can recall the posters advertising Camila, in which the historical record was resemanticized with a contemporary reference: Camila (Susu Pecoraro) appeared wearing a black blindfold with the words "Nunca jam�s" below her image. That this was a reference to the recently ended dictatorship (1983; the film was released in 1984) is more than obvious. This being the case, one can also extend her use of subtle, yet meaningful, references to the Argentine political climate to the title of the Sor Juana film.

5 On the subject of gender neutrality in relation to Sor Juana's position as a nun, Paz makes reference to her "Romance 48," written "in reply to 'a gentleman from Peru who sent her clay vessels while suggesting that she should become a man'," to which she responded with these verses, "as I will never be a woman/who as wife may serve a man./I only know that my body,/not to either state inclined/is neuter, abstract, guardian/of only what my soul consigns". (Paz 220, 221). In support of Sor Juana's ambiguous gender identity, Rosario Castellanos quotes Sor Juana views on this topic with verses from an unidentified "romance": "I do not understand these things,/I only know that I came here./So that if I be a woman/No one can truly say" (328-29).

6 Lavr�n and Muriel alone have greatly contributed to feminist scholarship on colonial women (as well as contemporary women, in the case of Lavrin). Separately, they have even written on Sor Juana, the role of religion in colonial Spanish women's biography and hagiography, Archbishop Aguiar y Seijas, the Hieronymite Order of which Sor Juana was a member, and women's reading choices in colonial Mexico, as well as the lives of nuns and other religious institutions created to control women's lives (the recogimientos-religious institutions created to reform fallen women-and schools for girls).

7 Although Bemberg seems to want to deny it, throughout the film, the hints -implicit or explicit-that the relationship between Sor Juana and the vicereine, Mar�a Luisa de Manrique, goes beyond the purely and absolutely Platonic have repeatedly been interpreted as overt suggestions of lesbianism. Examples of this interpretation are found in the saucy detail, "Lesbian passion simmers beneath the surface of a 17th century convent," on case of the English-subtitled video version of the film available in the U.S.; the informal observation made by this writer of the film's classification in the Gay/Lesbian sections of some video stores, as well as its inclusion in an online list of lesbian films (lsfh.freeservers.com/custom.html); and in popular reviews of the film written on the occasion of the film's circulation in local film festivals (as in the example of the article, "Life of inspirational feminist depicted in 'Yo, Ia Peor de Todas'" by Jill Schimelpfenig for The Columbia Chronicle, in which she writes, "The Vicereine and Sister de la Cruz share a passionate love for each other that leaves the viewer to question the true extent of their relationship").

8 At the same time, I certainly do not wish to eliminate the possibility that Sor Juana was in fact a lesbian (according to Adrienne Rich's idea of the "lesbian continuum" of female to female intimate relationships, of course she was), or at the very least had a lesbian relationship with her patroness, Mar�a Luisa. And one can also not deny the importance of the figure of Sor Juana for Latino and Latin American gays and lesbians today (Bergmann 232). Chicana writer Alicia Caspar de Alba has engaged the figure of Sor Juana in a poem and a novel (provocatively titled, Sor Juana s second Dream 1999), in terms of the nun's-and her own-lesbian identity. In her poem, "Sor Juana's Litany in the Subjunctive" (published in 1990 as "Leonor Dreams of Sor Juana," and also found in the novel referenced above), she deliberately considers the corporal dimensions of Sor Juana's purported lesbianism. Yet she also expresses the impossibility of establishing actual contact (the distance and doubt expressed by the "subjunctive" verb construction, evoked in the poem's title and employed in the grammar of the poem, "IfI could . . .") with this woman of the past, either physically or spiritually: "if I could lay my cheek /against the tender sinews of your thigh, / smell the damp cotton that Athena / never wore, her blood tracks steaming in the snow;... if I could turn myself / into a bee and free / this soul, those bars / webbed across your window / would be in vain, that black / cloth, that rosary, that crucifix- / nothing could save you / from my sting" (96). These examples show how Sor Juana's sexuality continues to elude us, despite our best intentions.

[Reference]

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[Author Affiliation]

Caryn C. Connelley

University of Minnesota