The True Story Of La Quintrala, Chile's Aristocratic Serial Killer

Publish date: 2024-04-12

Dr. Alicia Muñoz, who studied the life and legacy of Catalina de los Ríos y Lísperguer for her doctoral dissertation at Cornell University, wrote that La Quintrala's story, full of violence, witchcraft, and mystery, has been highly mythologized in Chilean culture, coming to serve as a stand-in stereotype for femininity and the country's violent colonial past. She wrote that "La Quintrala has been positioned as a perverse mother to the nation, constantly evoked in the Chilean imagination only to be overcome/forgotten."

Muñoz followed the various representations of La Quintrala through the popular imagination of Chile. Throughout the country's history, her story has been used to form the basis of several forms of entertainment, from telenovelas (soap operas) to comic books to feminist novels. To this day, the 17th-century serial killer still plays a significant role in the cultural identity of Chile.

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