And when I die..

“I swear there ain’t no heaven and I pray there ain’t no hell,

But I’ll never know by living, only my dying will tell.”

Laura Nyro "And when I die"

I don't know why I woke up with a foolish thought in my head, and I want to share it because I think it is important. Perhaps after all it is because of a post by @Malak T. Loeb, who made me think and want to refresh my ideas and writings a bit, after all I owe a lot to a woman as great as she is.

I have always said that when I die I want my remains to be donated to those who need the organs they can rescue, and the rest is for scientific research, but recently I began to think about the matter, and I suppose that is why just today the intellectual hangover.

More than a year ago I learned about the life and death of a great Mexican artist who, in addition to being a gifted woman, was praised with her mezzozoprano record, which was recognized in New York and in Europe, being acclaimed all over the world for her image, He played the guitar and referred rather lightly to the score of suitors he had snubbed in America. One might even think that she was so besieged by the media and so hypnotizing her walk through this world almost like Marilyn Monroe, Sarah Bernhardt, Rita Hayworth, Edith Piaf ... and I say almost because there is a difference, Julia Pastrana, she was not a sex symbol of the 19th century, she was a woman who was humiliated in life and in death (Orozco, 2013). What could this woman have done so that the remains of her baby were thrown and eaten by rodents, hers were then taxidermized like an animal-yes, they were not embalmed- and exposed to the public to later be dragged away and dismembered? What could have been wrong for a person to be so outraged even by the one who was her husband?

Fortunately she already rests in peace in her country and I hope that wherever she wants her to be, she enjoys everything that she did not have in this life. The Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata arrived in Oslo on a scholarship in 2005, and in 2008 she managed to get the National Ethics Committee for the Investigation of Human Remains to open a file on the case and acknowledge that during the years that it had been in the Collection, no institution had requested study their remains (Kaplan, 2019).

I once heard people say that Marilyn Monroe dreamed that a mob ripped off her clothes in a temple where she was a priestess, I don't know how true that is but something is clear to me, she or any other human being did not like to be exposed in total vulnerability. (King, 2008)

It is not possible to avoid death, but if human beings have the ethical and vital response to death, its moral quality, its good or its bad: its properly humanized sense. Life acquires its meaning by the good or the bad with which it is lived; and the same for death, since this is but the last act of life. This is the power of ethos, of character or moral value that is imprinted on life and death; In other words, this is the power of human freedom, which, certainly, is not an easy or free gift, it is necessary to acquire it by the work of one's own action and decision.

Julia Pastrana, the Indescribable, arrived in London in 1857 with the businessman Theodore Lent, who would eventually become her husband. She sang in a mezzo-soprano register, played the guitar, and spoke lightly of the score of suitors she had snubbed in America. On tour in Moscow, in 1860 she gave birth to a child who inherited the disease from her and died within hours of being born; she passed away five days after delivery. The businessman made a show of her agony and charged the Russian aristocrats who surrounded her bed.

Lent then devised a macabre way to conserve her source of income. The bodies of Pastrana and her son were taxidermized and she later exhibited them for more than a decade in the main European circuses. After the death of the businessman, the corpses passed from one owner to another, until in 1973 they made their last major tour of Sweden.

Pastrana and her son were kept in a box by their last "owner", the Norwegian Bjorn Lund. In 1979, the Police received the notification that some children had found a mummified arm in a garbage can; Following the trail, Pastrana was finally found, and without notifying Lund, what was left of her was taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine: the parchment face, almost hairless, and a naked body, largely artificial, since at the to process it its extremities were padded so that they did not shrink.

In 1996, the Ministry of Education established that the body of the indigenous woman should be conserved for reasons of scientific interest. Julia thus became part of the Schreiner Collection of the Department of Anatomy of the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences of the University of Oslo, along with eight thousand skeletons and skeletons belonging, most of them, to the time of the Vikings and the Middle Age.(Drafting, 2013).

Human dignity makes it possible to establish that there are rights of the person that transcend their death, which can be called post-mortem rights of the person. These are: the fulfillment of the will of the property's destiny, the dignified treatment of his corpse and remains, respect for honor and legal personality. Since rights correspond to duties, the procuring of post mortems implies specific responsibilities for each person as their subject, for the bereaved, for the State, for religious associations - in the corresponding cases - and for society as a whole. . (Boitelaar, 2017)

The positive foundation of these rights can be made from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various other instruments, such as those of the World Intellectual Property Organization. In the Federal District there is a legal framework that covers almost all the aspects inherent to these rights, both in the General Constitution of the United Mexican States and the Civil Code, with respect to the federal sphere, as well as in the Penal Code and in the Regulation of Cemeteries of the Federal District, at the local level.

I forgot to say that Pastrana is considered the first case reported in the medical literature of a combination of terminal congenital generalized hypertrichosis with gingival hyperplasia. (from Jorge, 2009)

Due to this genetic disorder, she had a body covered in hair and a mouth with enlarged gums that gave her a simian appearance.

But ... where does the morbid and the homage to the dead begin and end?

Ed Gein and his mommy

In November 1957, two police officers arrested Ed Gein, while two others immediately made their way to his farm with the intention of conducting a search. As he passed inside him, the sheriff felt something brush his shoulder, and as he turned he found a headless body of a woman with a deep hole in the stomach that hung from the ceiling. (Grill 2018)

The corpse hung from a hook by the ankle and the other foot had been attached to a pulley with a wire. The body had been ripped from the chest to the base of the abdomen, and the guts gleamed as if they had been washed and cleaned. There was no doubt that the cause of this terrifying spectacle was a sick person. It was hard to believe that a human being could live there. Everywhere you could see mountains of rubbish and rubbish, cardboard boxes, empty cans, rusty tools, excrement, pornographic, horror and human anatomy magazines, gum stuck in cups and teeth on the tablecloth ... (Ibidem , 2018)

There were several skulls around the kitchen, some broken in half and used as bowls. Later, as more patrols arrived, all the horror that was hidden there was discovered inside the house. Several skulls were scattered about the kitchen, some intact and others broken in half and used as bowls. Closer inspection revealed that one of the kitchen chairs was made from human skin, such as lampshades, wastebaskets, knife sheaths, and even an item of clothing, such as a vest or belt made of nipples. humans. Among the most egregious discoveries, boxes were found with the human remains belonging to different unidentified bodies, the heart and the severed head of Bernice Worden in a plastic bag, a collection of nine human skin masks with intact hair, from of which four hung on the wall around Gein's bed, etc. (Ibidem, 2018)

She had decorated the interior of her wooden house with those masks made from strips of skin from real human faces and with the skulls hanging from the columns of her bed. Many of the household objects and furniture that were discovered as a result of the arrest of Gein, came from the desecration of tombs. Sometimes she dragged whole corpses to his house, other times she cut out the most interesting parts and took them as souvenirs (Ibidem, 2018).

On March 30, 1958, Gein's house was arrested, after rumor spread that it was destined to become a tourist attraction like the House of Horrors. Still, his Ford truck survived and was sold at a public auction to be used at local fairs with a sign announcing, “Ed Gein's car! Look at the car that transported the dead from the graves! (Zapata, 2008)

Ed Gein was apparently a harmless man ... but his personality concealed a terrible psychopath who turned his farm into a human slaughterhouse. His grisly crimes provided Hitchcock with the basis for his classic horror film Psycho.

Another case

Known for the humane experiments and vexations carried out by Commander Karl Koch and his wife Ilse, the 'She-Wolf of Buchenwald ', this place was established in July 1937 near Weimar. It was one of the first and largest camps created in Germany, where Jews, Poles, Slovenes, criminals, homosexuals and prisoners of war, among others, were locked up. Around 50,000 people died there, as a result of abuse and forced labor, among other crimes. Around 10,000 were victims of the executions and others of the cruelty of the guards of the SS. (Bauso, 2021)

When the Americans arrived at the same concentration camp, the prisoners warned them that they were convinced that Ilse had killed those with tattoos to make lamps out of her skin. Years later, a young man named Mark Jacobson was given a lamp for about $ 35, his friend called him; he at first he did not know very well what it was about, although he already knew that it was a different object. (Ibidem, 2021)

At first glance, the lamp is small, sober and has a beige and somewhat dry shade. But when looking at it more carefully it is possible to see that it is not a question of marks of a parchment but of the weft of human tissue (Ibidem, 2021)

At first, Mark Jacobson did not give much importance to the lamp that arrived at his house in April 2007. He relates that a few months later, when he began to investigate its origins, he realized that, in addition to being real, no one was aware of it. I wanted to keep the object. Everyone was uncomfortable with his presence, if this word can be used to refer to this piece. After all, the screen, Jacobson defends, was part of a human being. It appears from someone's chest, after consulting with various experts. It's where the largest pieces are sourced. In addition, it is added that for many the skin is what is closest to the soul. But like the lamp there were also other objects made with human skin, some outside the Nazi regime. (Ibidem, 2021)

In Nazi times, it was common knowledge that the skin of many Jews ended up as book covers or even lampshades.

There is also evidence of many voluntary cases, in which the last wish of the deceased was to cover the covers of a specific book with his skin, even a famous writer received at home a package with the skin of a fan as a gift.

Some known examples:

In 1827, William Corden killed his lover, María Martín, six years later a book was published with the history of this famous crime with his skin. (Moyse´s Hall Museum)

In 1818 and 1821, two cases similar to the previous one, the skin of James Johnson was used to bind a copy of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. John Horwood, after murdering Eliza Balsum, also suffered the same fate, in this case, on the spine of the book you can read "Cutis vera Johannis Horwood." (Bristol Record Office)

In 1833, the skin of the famous bandit James Allen, served to bind a magnificent compilation of all his misdeeds.

1958, the bookbinder Dard Hunter, recounted that a widow sent him the skin of her late husband to bind all of her love letters.

In 1831, on the death of Jacques Delille, a famous writer of the time, André Leroy, a fervent admirer, sneaked into the funeral home and ripped off the skin to bind his copies.

In 1890, it is said that Isidore Liseux, a French publisher of erotic books, obtained the skin from the breasts of deceased women at the Clamart hospital (Paris). There is even a copy of In Praise of Women's Breasts, by Mercier de Compiégne, where both on the front and back covers you can see the protrusions of the nipples.

In 1920, the astronomer and writer Camille Flammarion congratulated a countess at a reception on the smoothness of her skin. The countess, dying of tuberculosis years later, had that skin sent to him that he had praised to bind one of her books.

But, after all this macabre journey, I keep thinking… Isn't the exhibition of corpses that Guanajuato residents so proudly exhibit in Mexico with their Guanajuato mummies is the same or more painful?

The mummies of Guanajuato (Wu, 2016)

Located to the south of Cerro Trozado, the Municipal Pantheon of Santa Paula was inaugurated on March 13, 1861 and although it was not finished, it was put into operation as of that date.

The Pantheon of Santa Paula is a place with a magical and mysterious atmosphere, which, due to the beauty of its niches, tombs and mausoleums, transports us through time and space, setting off the imagination of the cautious and incredulous visitor. From its entrails come the mummified bodies that are exhibited in the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato.

On June 9, 1865, to the astonishment of the gravediggers, the mummified body of the French physician, Dr. Remigio Leroy, was exhumed in niche 214 of the first series of the Pantheon.

This is the first and therefore the oldest in the collection of the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato.

In its beginnings, visits to the catacumbas of the Pantheon of Santa Paula to observe the mummified bodies were carried out informally and clandestinely; practice based on the growing interest of tourists who were attracted by curiosity.

Today the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato has an exhibition space in which there are more than 100 mummies that have been found in the Santa Paula Pantheon and are an attraction of the City of Guanajuato. The exhibition has an introductory video of the meaning of death for Mexicans and how to recognize it.

The Mummies Museum is considered a must-see for those who want to know more about the most important attractions of the city. The Mummies have generated great interest worldwide to know them and investigate the reasons for mummification, which unlike others in the world, those of Guanajuato are by a natural process.

111 bodies of mummified women, men and children make up the collection of the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato. Exhumed between 1865 and 1989.

Throughout its existence, the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato has had few modifications to its facilities, but on March 21, 2007 it was reopened after a substantial remodeling. It is important to highlight that the modification and dignification of museum spaces was carried out in less than 60 hours, representing a real challenge for the workers of Guanajuato, who, at the initiative of the Municipal President, Dr. Eduardo Romero Hicks, successfully led this company, to preserve and disseminate the heritage of the Municipality of Guanajuato.

If we consider the intrinsic dignity of the person as the foundation of human rights and recognize that these are the same for each and every one of us because of our ontological equality, that they are immutable and perennial, and that they must be recognized, guaranteed and promoted, it is It is possible to argue and sustain that there are duties of society and the State to all people lasting after their death. The expression rights of the dead would be incorrect if with it we meant that corpses have rights, since only people are subject to them; but it can be valid if the meaning is that people retain rights after their death, since their dignity does not end with their death. Colloquially, the corpse is often called dead, which is incorrect, because the first is a person who has died and the second is only his inanimate body.

Therefore, it is more accurate to say post mortem rights of the deceased person. If we say only post-mortem rights, it can also be understood that the rights of family members, the State or society as a whole or a part of it, are included. For example, one, the public domain of copyright; two, the destination for public welfare of the intestate assets of those who do not have family members; three, the right to public health of a community or population, which bases the obligation to bury or cremate the corpses, or four, the decree to transfer the remains to the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons or to a monument that is part of the historical heritage of the nation.

Although the State is a form of politically constituted society, in this case society is differentiated as the set of inhabitants regardless of their status as citizens of a State or members of a nationality. For the purposes of this article, the State is understood only as the set of laws, legal institutions, law enforcement and social security. 2 Corpse is understood as the lifeless body before the decomposition process is complete, after which it is called arid human remains. The General Health Law, in its article 314, defines a corpse as: “the human body in which the loss of life has been proven”.

The person has rights that remain after his death, which is recognized by society and positive law in various laws and institutions for this purpose. The clearest example is the fulfillment of the will of the destiny of the properties, that is to say, inherit, for which the State must make available to all the possibility of testament. This right is above the will of the blood relatives and their right to receive an inheritance when there is no will, and even above the State, which cannot arbitrarily dispose of the deceased person's property. Understand property not in an economic or legal sense, but as what is proper to the person, such as their material goods (including their body), intellectual (their ideas, inventions and creations) and moral (their honor, personality, recognition of their work or work and belonging to a community). If we recognize the manifest will of a person for the destination of their property
It is after his death, from a humanist line of thought and conviction, we can broaden the criteria to recognize that the corpse and honor are elements of the person that remain after his death over which he maintains lasting rights: the corpse, as it is the inanimate remains of his body, which is not mere matter, but a singular embodiment of his dignity; and the honor, for being the respect that his perennial dignity deserves. Therefore, we can list the post mortem rights of the person in the following:

The fulfillment of the will of the destination of the properties.

The decorous treatment of the corpse and remains.

Respect for honor.

Recognition of legal personality, which allows guaranteeing others.

In addition to the bereaved, the State is responsible for establishing and maintaining the necessary institutions to guarantee the permanence of the legal personality and facilitate the fulfillment of the will of the deceased, the decent treatment of his corpse and remains, and respect for his honor; and it must also be responsible for acting subsidiarily in cases where the deceased do not have relatives or they live in conditions of poverty such that they cannot bear the costs that derive from it, also the religious associations, in the cases that correspond, to guarantee services or rites in accordance with the faith of the deceased and society, in the construction of a culture that promotes conscience, lives respect and guarantees these rights, as well as in solidarity and charitable actions with the bereaved when circumstances so require.

The right to dignified treatment of the corpse and remains refers to the fact that prior to burial or cremation the corpse or remains are treated in a respectful manner, as well as burial or cremation in a dignified manner. The body and remains should not be exhumed without a court order for good. Regarding this right, it should be said that decorum is the set of signifiers in a society by which it deserves or inspires respect and appreciation for something or someone. In contrast, the unseemly is a set of signifiers of the humiliating or shameful.

In each society these signifiers may vary, so that the decorous and the improper may be relative, but in each society they can always be recognized. For example, in our society applause is a way of expressing liking, agreement, admiration or respect for someone or something. With this definition we can say that every person has the right to a decent treatment of the corpse and his remains, as well as his honor. With lightness or reasoning, each one can, eventually, say that once he dies he does not care the fate of his remains, since there is no more suffering or consciousness in an inanimate body. This is true, but it is also true that the individual waiver of the right in question should in no case violate public morals or public health. Therefore, a culture of human rights implies respect for corpses.

Just as respect for artistic expressions or traditions is demanded as a right, it is also possible to demand respect for corpses, skeletal organs and any other human remains as a way that in society respect for all people and the body.

These data allow me to reflect on the number of people who daily face having their post-mortem rights and those of their relatives being taken care of.

It is a matter that is not minor. Although there is an adequate legal framework for human rights, some remain pending: one may be in terms of the insufficiency of perpetual graves available and perhaps the most important the indecent treatment that is frequently given in some communication media - in the printed press and electronics, mainly and on television - which present corpses or human remains as a sensational spectacle, thus violating respect for the right to honor. Although it seems that the authority leaves the decision to expose images offensive to human dignity to the criterion of self-regulation of the media companies and there is a total absence of national and local ombudsmen in this, it seems necessary an energetic call on their part so that definitively Communication companies, while exercising their right to inform, ensure that their images and the way in which they are reported are totally respectful of both the people they refer to as news and the readers. I also reflect on the curiosity that the exhibition of the Guanajuato Mummies represents.

The operational director, Román Miranda, explained that the pretext of extracting again part of the exhibition of these pieces that are exhibited in the Museum of the Mummies in the state of Guanajuato includes two aspects, which are the promotion and tourist and commercial dissemination.

of the state and bring people closer to this event, who due to geographical or economic reasons do not have access, decide to take them as in a traveling circus to Mexico City since 2012. He highlighted that from the collection of little more than a hundred mummies that exhibit In Guanajuato, they extracted 24, which will be in this event and later on a national tour, in addition to another 36 that are traveling through the main cities of the United States. "Here we have seven rooms, with their own appeal, the outstanding thing is that the facial reconstruction of the mummy of Cirilo Rico is exhibited, a very special character because in life he was a criminal and is one of the few records that are preserved of each body" Miranda added. She also explained that "the oldest mummy that we present is that of an old woman who was exhumed 90 years ago, as well as people who were drowned, hanged, or who had a cruel death." He added that “the first mummy that was exhumed was that of Don Remigio Leroy, a French doctor, who died on June 9, 1865 and whose body was exhumed in 1870, since there was little space in the pantheons there was the option of renting the places and it was what happened to him, that at the end of his time he was extracted and found in a state of mummification. He commented that Leroy was not brought in because he is part of the museum's permanent collection. He also expressed that this exhibition is considered a cultural heritage of humanity, "for which Mexicans should feel proud, since man has nothing to do with mummification processes and it is a mystery to understand the cause of why bodies remain in that state, since there are many theories: some say it is water, others soil, some more land, but without a doubt it is a more cultural, social and scientific issue ”. Miranda added that "the conservation of these (mummies) depends only on controlling the temperature from 18 to 26 degrees Celsius and the relative humidity must be kept at a maximum 70 percent to avoid their deterioration." He also said that they have exhibited original photographs of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, in which we will find images in which they portrayed the deceased children with the family, in addition to 7 rooms that include: Audiovisual, Background, Images taken by National Geographic photographers, Catacombs , Angelitos, Great Room and Forensic Room, which can be seen in their entirety in 45 minutes.

The exhibition could be seen in the facilities of the Parque Tezontle basement located east of the city ã Cost: $ 70 adults, $ 60 students and people with disabilities and $ 50 children (from 9 years old).

Is that what human dignity is worth?

References

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Buitelaar, J. C. (2017). Privacidad post mortem y autodeterminación informativa. doi:10.1007/s10676-017-9421-9

de Jorge, J. (2009, May 24). El enigma de la mujer barbuda. Retrieved January 7, 2009, from ABC website: https://www.abc.es/20090522/economia-tecnologia/maldicion-mujer-barbuda-200905221437.html

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Parrilla, J. (2018, April 20). La macabra historia de Ed Gein, el asesino que inspiró “Psicosis” y “La Masacre de Texas.”

Redacción. (2013, February 10). Planean funerales para Julia Pastrana tras repatriación. Retrieved from Zona Franca website: https://zonafranca.mx/cultura-y-entretenimiento/planean-funerales-para-julia-pastrana-tras-repatriacion/

Wu, M. (2016, June 5). La Historia del Asombroso y Macabro Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato. Retrieved from Ancient Origins website: https://www.ancient-origins.es/lugares-antiguos-americas/momias-de-guanajuato-003499

Zapata, H. (2008, November 14). Ed Gein. El asesino que inspiro a Leatherface. Retrieved from Blog de vicios personales website: http://www.hugozapata.com.ar/2008/11/ed-gein-el-asesino-que-inspiro-a-leatherface/