info
Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
An Artist Finds a Dignified Ending for an Ugly Story
9 views
Skip to first unread message
Matthew Kruk
Feb 14, 2013, 4:14:38 PM2/14/13
to
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/arts/design/julia-pastrana-who-died-in-1860-to-be-buried-in-mexico.html?_r=0
The New York Times
February 11, 2013
An Artist Finds a Dignified Ending for an Ugly Story
By CHARLES WILSON
Her own husband called her a "bear woman." An 1854 advertisement in The New York
Times said she was the "link between mankind and the ourang-outang." She became
known in the popular imagination during the mid-19th century as "the ugliest
woman in the world." After she died from complications of childbirth, her body
and the body of her baby appeared for decades in "freak" exhibitions throughout
Europe.
On Tuesday, more than a century and a half after her death, in 1860, the woman,
Julia Pastrana, will finally be given a proper burial near her birthplace in
Sinaloa, Mexico. Her return home from a locked storage room in an Oslo research
institute would not have been possible without the nearly decade-long efforts of
the New York-based visual artist Laura Anderson Barbata.
In 2003 Ms. Barbata's sister, Kathleen Anderson Culebro, produced a staging of
"The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the
Ugliest Woman in the World," in Texas. That play, by Shaun Prendergast, had its
debut in London in 1998 and is performed almost entirely in the dark. Mr.
Prendergast said in an e-mail that the setting "seemed the perfect marriage - a
woman known for her ugliness, but with a beautiful voice, presented in a way
which would force the audience to conjure her with their imagination."
Pastrana has also been the subject of films, including "The Ape Woman" (1964);
an alternative rock song; and a comic book.
Ms. Barbata, who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Sinaloa, designed
costumes for her sister's production. She was moved by Pastrana's story.
"I felt she deserved the right to regain her dignity and her place in history,
and in the world's memory," Ms. Barbata said by telephone from Oslo last week.
"I hoped to help change her position as a victim to one where she can be seen in
her entirety and complexity."
Pastrana was born in Mexico in 1834. She had two rare diseases, undiagnosed in
her lifetime: generalized hypertrichosis lanuginosa, which covered her face and
body in thick hair, and gingival hyperplasia, which thickened her lips and gums.
A Mexican customs administrator bought Pastrana in 1854 and began showing her
throughout the United States and Canada, part of a growing business of traveling
exhibitions displaying human oddities. (Though slavery had been abolished in
Mexico decades earlier, many circus performers were still sold.) In New York
Pastrana married Theodore Lent, an impresario who became her manager.
"She was definitely in love with Mr. Lent," says Jan Bondeson, a rheumatologist
at Cardiff University in Wales, whose book "A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities"
includes a chapter on Pastrana. "I am certain the reason he married her was that
he could keep control of her and the not unconsiderable earnings."
Lent toured his wife throughout Europe, where some newspapers and books
described her appearance unsparingly: "gorillalike" or "revolting in the
extreme." Some felt her appearance masked other qualities, however. Francis
Buckland, a British natural historian, wrote in an 1868 book that Pastrana had a
sweet singing voice, "great taste in music and dancing, and could speak three
languages." He added, "She was very charitable, and gave largely to local
institutions from her earnings."
In 1859 Pastrana became pregnant by Lent while touring. Her infant inherited her
hypertrichosis and died hours after his birth in Moscow, and Pastrana died from
complications five days later.
Lent soon began exhibiting the embalmed bodies of his wife and son. He later
found a bearded woman in Germany whom he married and billed as Pastrana's
sister, "Zenora Pastrana." The couple traveled, and Zenora performed alongside
the bodies.
After Lent's death, Pastrana's body was exhibited widely, most recently by a
Norwegian fairground operator in the early 1970s. In 1976 thieves broke into a
warehouse owned by the fairground's heir and stole the bodies of Pastrana and
her son.
The Norwegian police later found her remains in a trash-hauling bin, with an arm
dismembered. The child's body was damaged beyond repair, but the police
transferred Pastrana's body to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the
University of Oslo, where she was placed in storage. The body was later moved to
a climate-controlled room of anatomical specimens in the university's Institute
of Basic Medical Sciences.
"By ending up as part of a collection in a basement, she lost any trace of
dignity," Ms. Barbata said. "My ultimate dream goal was that she should go back
to Mexico and be buried."
In 2005, during a residency in Oslo, Ms. Barbata began petitioning the
university for Pastrana's repatriation. "With the initial replies I was getting,
I thought it was going to be very difficult," she said.
But Ms. Barbata, who is 54, continued to apply pressure. In September 2005, she
placed a death notice for Pastrana in an Oslo newspaper and had a Mass said for
her there. (Pastrana was Roman Catholic.) In 2008 Ms. Barbata sent documents
making her case for Pastrana's release to Norway's National Committee for the
Evaluation of Research on Human Remains. Last June that panel offered its
opinion that "it seems quite unlikely that Julia Pastrana would have wanted her
body to remain a specimen in an anatomical collection."
Jan G. Bjaalie, the head of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences in Oslo,
said by Skype that the university had been open to the idea of Pastrana's return
but "we were not in a position simply to send remains to someone who would ask
for them."
A breakthrough came after the current governor of Sinaloa, Mario L�pez Valdez,
joined Ms. Barbata's cause last year and petitioned for Pastrana's repatriation.
The Mexican ambassador to Denmark, Norway and Iceland, Martha B�rcena Coqui,
offered to work with the university to accept the body.
"We understood that she must have suffered enormously during her lifetime and
that her remains did not receive the respect they deserved for many years," Ms.
Coqui said by e-mail.
The institute agreed to begin the process of transferring Ms. Pastrana to
Mexican custody last August.
Last Thursday Ms. Barbata confirmed the identity of Pastrana's body in Oslo
before the coffin was sealed. Ms. Barbata and a University of Oxford forensic
anthropologist, Nicholas M�rquez-Grant, noticed that Pastrana's feet still had
bolts and metal rods that were used for exhibiting her body. The bolts were
removed and placed at the foot of her coffin.
"Her hands were tiny and perfect," Ms. Barbata said.
Pastrana will be buried on Tuesday in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town
near her birthplace. She has become a minor celebrity in the Mexican press.
Maria Luisa Miranda Monrreal, the director of the Sinaloa Cultural Institute,
held a news conference last week and said the burial marked an end to a cycle
"of exploitation."
Governor Valdez, who has criticized the press for scaring away tourists by
focusing on the drug violence in Sinaloa, will attend the service. His letter
last year to Norway's human-remains ethics board appealed for Pastrana's return
out of a "respect for human dignity and a high sense of justice."
For Ms. Barbata and others who have wished for this moment, Tuesday's burial
will offer a sweet though long-overdue resolution.
"Her story has always had a bad ending," said Jonathan Fielding, a New
York-based actor who directed a production of Mr. Prendergast's play about
Pastrana last year at Amphibian Stage Productions in Fort Worth, where Ms.
Culebro is artistic director. "The big difference is that now it has an
appropriate ending."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 12, 2013
An earlier version of this article misidentified the country where Theodore Lent
met the woman who became his second wife. It was Germany, not Mexico.
The New York Times
February 11, 2013
An Artist Finds a Dignified Ending for an Ugly Story
By CHARLES WILSON
Her own husband called her a "bear woman." An 1854 advertisement in The New York
Times said she was the "link between mankind and the ourang-outang." She became
known in the popular imagination during the mid-19th century as "the ugliest
woman in the world." After she died from complications of childbirth, her body
and the body of her baby appeared for decades in "freak" exhibitions throughout
Europe.
On Tuesday, more than a century and a half after her death, in 1860, the woman,
Julia Pastrana, will finally be given a proper burial near her birthplace in
Sinaloa, Mexico. Her return home from a locked storage room in an Oslo research
institute would not have been possible without the nearly decade-long efforts of
the New York-based visual artist Laura Anderson Barbata.
In 2003 Ms. Barbata's sister, Kathleen Anderson Culebro, produced a staging of
"The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the
Ugliest Woman in the World," in Texas. That play, by Shaun Prendergast, had its
debut in London in 1998 and is performed almost entirely in the dark. Mr.
Prendergast said in an e-mail that the setting "seemed the perfect marriage - a
woman known for her ugliness, but with a beautiful voice, presented in a way
which would force the audience to conjure her with their imagination."
Pastrana has also been the subject of films, including "The Ape Woman" (1964);
an alternative rock song; and a comic book.
Ms. Barbata, who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Sinaloa, designed
costumes for her sister's production. She was moved by Pastrana's story.
"I felt she deserved the right to regain her dignity and her place in history,
and in the world's memory," Ms. Barbata said by telephone from Oslo last week.
"I hoped to help change her position as a victim to one where she can be seen in
her entirety and complexity."
Pastrana was born in Mexico in 1834. She had two rare diseases, undiagnosed in
her lifetime: generalized hypertrichosis lanuginosa, which covered her face and
body in thick hair, and gingival hyperplasia, which thickened her lips and gums.
A Mexican customs administrator bought Pastrana in 1854 and began showing her
throughout the United States and Canada, part of a growing business of traveling
exhibitions displaying human oddities. (Though slavery had been abolished in
Mexico decades earlier, many circus performers were still sold.) In New York
Pastrana married Theodore Lent, an impresario who became her manager.
"She was definitely in love with Mr. Lent," says Jan Bondeson, a rheumatologist
at Cardiff University in Wales, whose book "A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities"
includes a chapter on Pastrana. "I am certain the reason he married her was that
he could keep control of her and the not unconsiderable earnings."
Lent toured his wife throughout Europe, where some newspapers and books
described her appearance unsparingly: "gorillalike" or "revolting in the
extreme." Some felt her appearance masked other qualities, however. Francis
Buckland, a British natural historian, wrote in an 1868 book that Pastrana had a
sweet singing voice, "great taste in music and dancing, and could speak three
languages." He added, "She was very charitable, and gave largely to local
institutions from her earnings."
In 1859 Pastrana became pregnant by Lent while touring. Her infant inherited her
hypertrichosis and died hours after his birth in Moscow, and Pastrana died from
complications five days later.
Lent soon began exhibiting the embalmed bodies of his wife and son. He later
found a bearded woman in Germany whom he married and billed as Pastrana's
sister, "Zenora Pastrana." The couple traveled, and Zenora performed alongside
the bodies.
After Lent's death, Pastrana's body was exhibited widely, most recently by a
Norwegian fairground operator in the early 1970s. In 1976 thieves broke into a
warehouse owned by the fairground's heir and stole the bodies of Pastrana and
her son.
The Norwegian police later found her remains in a trash-hauling bin, with an arm
dismembered. The child's body was damaged beyond repair, but the police
transferred Pastrana's body to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the
University of Oslo, where she was placed in storage. The body was later moved to
a climate-controlled room of anatomical specimens in the university's Institute
of Basic Medical Sciences.
"By ending up as part of a collection in a basement, she lost any trace of
dignity," Ms. Barbata said. "My ultimate dream goal was that she should go back
to Mexico and be buried."
In 2005, during a residency in Oslo, Ms. Barbata began petitioning the
university for Pastrana's repatriation. "With the initial replies I was getting,
I thought it was going to be very difficult," she said.
But Ms. Barbata, who is 54, continued to apply pressure. In September 2005, she
placed a death notice for Pastrana in an Oslo newspaper and had a Mass said for
her there. (Pastrana was Roman Catholic.) In 2008 Ms. Barbata sent documents
making her case for Pastrana's release to Norway's National Committee for the
Evaluation of Research on Human Remains. Last June that panel offered its
opinion that "it seems quite unlikely that Julia Pastrana would have wanted her
body to remain a specimen in an anatomical collection."
Jan G. Bjaalie, the head of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences in Oslo,
said by Skype that the university had been open to the idea of Pastrana's return
but "we were not in a position simply to send remains to someone who would ask
for them."
A breakthrough came after the current governor of Sinaloa, Mario L�pez Valdez,
joined Ms. Barbata's cause last year and petitioned for Pastrana's repatriation.
The Mexican ambassador to Denmark, Norway and Iceland, Martha B�rcena Coqui,
offered to work with the university to accept the body.
"We understood that she must have suffered enormously during her lifetime and
that her remains did not receive the respect they deserved for many years," Ms.
Coqui said by e-mail.
The institute agreed to begin the process of transferring Ms. Pastrana to
Mexican custody last August.
Last Thursday Ms. Barbata confirmed the identity of Pastrana's body in Oslo
before the coffin was sealed. Ms. Barbata and a University of Oxford forensic
anthropologist, Nicholas M�rquez-Grant, noticed that Pastrana's feet still had
bolts and metal rods that were used for exhibiting her body. The bolts were
removed and placed at the foot of her coffin.
"Her hands were tiny and perfect," Ms. Barbata said.
Pastrana will be buried on Tuesday in a cemetery in Sinaloa de Leyva, a town
near her birthplace. She has become a minor celebrity in the Mexican press.
Maria Luisa Miranda Monrreal, the director of the Sinaloa Cultural Institute,
held a news conference last week and said the burial marked an end to a cycle
"of exploitation."
Governor Valdez, who has criticized the press for scaring away tourists by
focusing on the drug violence in Sinaloa, will attend the service. His letter
last year to Norway's human-remains ethics board appealed for Pastrana's return
out of a "respect for human dignity and a high sense of justice."
For Ms. Barbata and others who have wished for this moment, Tuesday's burial
will offer a sweet though long-overdue resolution.
"Her story has always had a bad ending," said Jonathan Fielding, a New
York-based actor who directed a production of Mr. Prendergast's play about
Pastrana last year at Amphibian Stage Productions in Fort Worth, where Ms.
Culebro is artistic director. "The big difference is that now it has an
appropriate ending."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 12, 2013
An earlier version of this article misidentified the country where Theodore Lent
met the woman who became his second wife. It was Germany, not Mexico.
Brad Ferguson
Feb 14, 2013, 4:45:26 PM2/14/13
to
In article <SscTs.581164$Rs1.5...@en-nntp-01.dc1.easynews.com>,
forever. Not only does this correct the record, but it supplies a
dignified ending to a terrible story.
BTW Theodore Lent eventually went mad. Zenora had him committed, got
all his money, and eventually married a man twenty years younger than
she. IIRC she lived into her 80s.
Matthew Kruk <nob...@home.com> wrote:
> Lent soon began exhibiting the embalmed bodies of his wife and son.
> He later found a bearded woman in Germany whom he married and billed
> as Pastrana's sister, "Zenora Pastrana." The couple traveled, and
> Zenora performed alongside the bodies.
>
> After Lent's death, Pastrana's body was exhibited widely, most
> recently by a Norwegian fairground operator in the early 1970s. In
> 1976 thieves broke into a warehouse owned by the fairground's heir
> and stole the bodies of Pastrana and her son.
Thanks so much for this. Many thought Julia's body had been lost
> Lent soon began exhibiting the embalmed bodies of his wife and son.
> He later found a bearded woman in Germany whom he married and billed
> as Pastrana's sister, "Zenora Pastrana." The couple traveled, and
> Zenora performed alongside the bodies.
>
> After Lent's death, Pastrana's body was exhibited widely, most
> recently by a Norwegian fairground operator in the early 1970s. In
> 1976 thieves broke into a warehouse owned by the fairground's heir
> and stole the bodies of Pastrana and her son.
forever. Not only does this correct the record, but it supplies a
dignified ending to a terrible story.
BTW Theodore Lent eventually went mad. Zenora had him committed, got
all his money, and eventually married a man twenty years younger than
she. IIRC she lived into her 80s.
0 new messages