An "Ape woman" exhibited in 19th-Century Europe as the "world's ugliest woman" as she had a rare genetic condition that covered her face in thick hair, has been buried in her native Mexico some 150 years after her death.
Julia Pastrana, the "ape woman" who suffered from a genetic condition that covered her face in hair, performed in circuses as a freak of nature. Pastrana, who was born in 1834, suffered from hypertrichosis which covered her face in hair and had a jutting jaw.
At the age of 20, she was taken from the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa in 1854 to the United States by showman Theodore Lent, according to a Norwegian commission that studied her case.
Pastrana would perform for paying audiences and later married Lent and fell pregnant shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, she died during childbirth along with their son. The corpses finally ended up in Norway, where, in a further twist in 1976, they were stolen, dumped and recovered by the police.
Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata began a campaign for Julia Pastrana's body to be returned home in 2005, with Mexican officials subsequently lending their weight to her request.
"I felt she deserved the right to regain her dignity and her place in history, and in the world's memory," Barbata told the New York Times.
Pastrana has now been laid to rest in her country of birth.
"Imagine the aggression and cruelty of humankind she had to face, and how she overcame it. It's a very dignified story," said Sinaloa Governor Mario Lopez.
"A human being should not be the object of anyone," Father Jaime Reyes Retana told mourners.
