officials spilled a great deal of ink debating the merits of burying
her versus keeping her body above ground so that scientists
might one day study her conditions. In the end, Norway’s Ministry
of Church, Education and Research decided to keep the remains
above ground, and they were moved to the Institute of Basic
Medical Science at the University of Oslo in 1997.
In 2005, Laura Anderson Barbata,
a Mexico City-born, New Yorkbased visual artist then on a
residency
in
Oslo,
began
petitioning the university for the
repatriation
of
Julia’s
body.
Barbata had become aware of
Julia’s plight two years earlier,
after her sister produced a play
called The True History of the
Tragic Life and Triumphant Death
of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest
Woman in the World, which is
conducted entirely in the dark.
While the initial replies from the university were disappointing,
Barbata persisted, placing a death notice for Julia in an Oslo
newspaper and arranging for a Catholic Mass to be said for her.
In 2008, Barbata was allowed to make her case before Norway’s
National Committee for the Evaluation of Research on Human
Remains, which agreed that “it seems quite unlikely that Julia
Pastrana would have wanted her body to remain a specimen in an
anatomical collection.” The governor of Julia’s home province of
Sinaloa got involved, as did the Mexican ambassador to Norway,
and an official petition for Julia’s return to Mexico was lodged.
In February of 2013, Julia’s body—encased in a white coffin
covered in white roses—was finally buried in a cemetery in
Sinaloa de Leyva, a town near her birthplace. Despite all she
endured, Julia’s story had something of a happy ending. It’s a pity
she wasn’t alive to see it — and to know she was remembered as
more than a monster.
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