ABSTRACT
Julia Pastrana (1834–1860), an Indigenous woman born in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, was a gifted singer, musician, and dancer. Due to severe congenital conditions, Pastrana's face and body were covered with thick hair and her jaw was overdeveloped. Throughout much of her life her manager and husband, Theodore Lent, supervised Pastrana's performance tours across North America and Europe, billing her as “non-descript,” “female hybrid,” and “half woman/half beast,” among other epithets.
After her death, her embalmed body continued to be exhibited for more than a century, until it disappeared from public view into the Schreiner Collection in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Oslo. Julia Pastrana's gender, race, nationality, and congenital conditions were used to justify her exploitation and deny her rights. The commodification of Julia Pastrana's body for 179 years highlights dehumanizing Victorian systems that continue to operate today across various cultural as well as entertainment centers.
In 2003, a decade-long project to repatriate and properly bury Julia Pastrana began, and in 2013 Julia Pastrana was transported from Norway to Mexico and interred in Sinaloa de Leyva, Mexico. She was finally home.
