Rita Patiño, the indigenous Mexican who was locked up for 12 years in a psychiatric hospital in the United States because they did not understand her language

The police arrived at the church on June 8, 1983. The woman, with her dirty clothes, her battered feet and confused, uttered some words that the agents were unable to understand. They interrogated her in English, they insisted, but communication was not possible. And since no one knew what she said, she lost her freedom for the next 12 years.

Rita Patiño Quintero was her name, a Rarámuri indigenous woman, originally from the state of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico. That day she was taking refuge in the basement of the Methodist temple in the city of Manter, in western Kansas, USA.

Before the authorities arrived, a shepherd discovered her while Rita was eating raw eggs.

It is presumed that he arrived there walking from Mexican soil. After all, rarámuri means “light runners” and comes from rarafoot, and laterlight.

For this ethnic group, running has an important social and cultural meaning. They inhabit the slopes of the Sierra Tarahumara, whose complicated topography forces them to avoid obstacles, cross streams and climb mountains. You have to be quick and even more resilient to face the conditions of your home.

In Kansas, Rita may have struggled with drier and colder conditions than in the mountains.

She was taken to a police station, where she hit an officer who was trying to clean her up, says the filmmaker Santiago Esteinouwho in April 2024 released the documentary “The Woman of Stars and Mountains”in which, after in-depth archival research and interviews, tells the story of this woman.

“They brought in a translator and he makes a ridiculous report. He concludes that she must be indigenous and that she comes from some Latin American country. But even though he doesn’t understand anything she tells him, he comments that Rita’s words don’t make sense. The They brought her before the court and it was concluded that she was not in her mental capacity, that she was a danger to herself, so they took her to a psychiatric hospital,” Esteinou explains to BBC Mundo.

Rita hardly spoke Spanish, her mother tongue was Rarámuri. In the Kansas court system and in the institution to which she was taken, there were no translators who could collaborate in your case.

The woman did not understand the legal process against her, she did not know where she was or why she was locked up.

The rest of his life was marked by exclusion, medical violence, institutional bureaucracy and loneliness.

But she was also a woman surrounded by myths and mysteries.

Who was Rita Patiño Quintero?

Sheep shepherd, midwife, herbalist, craftswoman, washerwoman.

Rita went and did many things, according to Esteinou’s documentary, in which the woman’s sister-in-law, niece and several neighbors who knew her in her youth participate.

But something that the director reiterates about Rita, who was born in 1930, is that did not follow the parameters of the community where he lived.

Originally from Piedras Verdes, she later lived near the Cerocahui region, in a town in the municipality of Urique.

With a strong character, who ignored any order on how to do things, he had a partner and a son.

She owned a vast flock of sheep, she was “a rich woman in that sense,” says the documentary filmmaker. And she was also charitable: she gave cheese to the community.

But one day everything changed and Rita would soon become a “pestada” among his own.

The neighbors say that they stole her flock and accused her of having murdered her husband, something that could never be proven.

“A good, very good person. And all my life I have said that was the case. What happened is that they treated her badly. It was said that she had fought with her husband and that she won and killed him,” says Procopio Mancinas, a Urique’s neighbor who lived near Rita and participates in the film.

“Rita Patiño did not kill Jerónimo Renterías. They stole Rita Patiño’s goats, they stole her blankets, they stole her sheep,” he adds to the camera.

The belief also spread in the town that it had been “bewitched” in a Tesgüinada, a festival celebrated by the Tarahumara, sometimes around work, such as planting, in which they drink an intoxicating corn-based drink known as tesgüino. .

After this supposed “haunting”, Rita would have been left with speech problems.

“So, I told my husband: ‘I think Rita is stupid. She no longer speaks well, like she used to speak in those days when we were new.’ She talked to herself. That thing doesn’t cure anyone, that’s how you die, stupid.” , comments Soledad Mancinas, wife of a cousin of Procopio, in the film.

The truth is that Rita somehow began to wander with her son. And her community began to view her with fear. Neighbors say that she was not welcomed almost anywhere.

“There were people who didn’t want her, when she arrived they closed the door on her. Then, people said she wanted to kill them. But it was nothing like that, she was hungry, she wanted food,” says Procopio Mancinas.

Esteinou theorizes that in reality, Rita could have been a person with a disability that she was not understood by the people around her.

As a result of everything she experienced and was said about her, the filmmaker says that the authorities took her son, who also appears in the documentary, from her.

Why he left Mexico and how he got to Kansas is a mystery, Esteinou points out in our conversation.

But perhaps it is not so difficult to guess, he adds, especially being aware of the reality he had to live.

The Liberation

The court initially ordered the woman to be committed to Larned State Psychiatric Hospital, also in Kansas, for three months. Her condition would be evaluated again at the end of that period, as well as her stay in the United States.

But the court-appointed lawyer assigned to him never showed up before the judges. And, similarly, he would not have been able to communicate with her due to lack of translators.

At the time, the medical staff alleged not knowing the origin of the patient, something that posed a major problem in contacting any family member.

The months passed and turned into years. Years in which Rita was unable to speak, alone, far from her culture, her land, and being medicated without a concrete diagnosis due to language barriers.

“She became one more,” says Esteinou.

“It was the perfect storm. I see many forms of discrimination and violence in Rita’s case. Many elements come together. She is an indigenous woman who speaks a completely invisible language, who is poor, a migrant, probably with some disability and who is a woman” says the director.

It was not until ten years later that his situation took a turn and, furthermore, that the extent of the institutional failures related to his hospitalization was discovered.

The Kansas Advocacy and Protective Services organization, now known as Disability Rights Center of Kansasdecided in 1994 to review the cases of patients who had been in the hospital for more than five years.

For Rita, the entity assigned the lawyer Toria Mroz.

“One of the first things we did was look at her medical records. At a very early stage of the documentation, there was a reference to the fact that she had indicated that she was from Chihuahua and that she was a Tarahumara indigenous person,” Mroz says in the documentary.

“That had been in her medical record for practically the entire time she was there. Still, 10 years had passed and she was still there. They kept saying, ‘we don’t know where she’s from or what language she speaks,'” he adds.

But it is not only that, there was also evidence that Mexican consulate staff in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Kansas had been informed of Rita’s presence in the hospital by a social worker, but they never made any arrangements to get her out of there.

The organization’s team of lawyers sued the hospital and more than 30 people who were part of its staff. They were asking for US$10 million for damages.

The legal process became a challenge, especially because Rita could not offer testimony in court and because in the US there was only one psychiatrist capable of understanding Tarahumara, Esteinou says.

The woman was discharged and arrived in Mexico in 1995.

But his case extended from 1996 to 2001, and ended resolved through a compensation agreement much less than the original sum that the lawyers requested.

For everything she experienced in those 12 years, the woman would receive US$90.000but from that they would have to allocate the sum of US$32.641.

The rest of the money, which was supposed to help Rita return to her home country, has its own story.

Living in the mountains and lost money

Rita looks at the horizon sitting on a hill. Her hair is all white, her skin wrinkled. In front there are only mountains and around everything is weeds.

Esteinou portrays the contrast with the hospital in his film. The woman, free at last, with her own voice and in the Rarámuri language, is heard.

– How do you feel, Rita?

– I feel good, I haven’t gotten sick.

– Are you happy to live in the mountains?

– I am very happy to be here.

– You are not sad?

– I feel very good about living with nature.

The director began filming in 2016, but the film was not completed until 2022.

During that period she met Rita and her niece, Juanita, who took care of her.

And although he felt comfortable in his homeland, Esteinou testified how after Kansas he had to live a life in poverty, despite the fact that his compensation amounted to a substantial sum in Mexico at that time.

“The court created a trust and appointed a nun named Beatriz Zapata, chosen by the organization, as the administrator of Rita’s assets. For about two years, she started giving him about US$300 a month and then gave him US$6,000 in a lump sum. But then, the nun disappears with the money,” says the filmmaker.

After several years, the court asked the nun to appear, because she had stopped reporting on disbursements to Rita. There it was discovered that most of the money had been spent.

And although a judge ordered him to return double what he used, he only handed over US$10,000.

Two new administrators were appointed, who received US$1,000 every year for managing the trust. Both claimed that they could not find the woman’s whereabouts and after ten years, the money ran out.

During her time in Mexico, although she used to sing and dance, had a good appetite and was lovingly cared for, Rita lived engrossed, very much in her head, says Esteinou.

She died in 2018 and was farewelled with a party in her community.

The Rarámuri believe that celebrating death helps the deceased person move to the next plane of existence, which is found at their origin: the stars that illuminate the mountains of the Sierra Tarahumara.