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Catalina de Erauso was a Basque woman, daughter and sister of soldiers from the city of San Sebastian, 1592. Although she declared her birth year to be 1585, this was probably an attempt to appear older. She was expected to become a nun but abandoned the monastery at the age of fifteen, dressed herself as a man, and started a long travel from San Sebastian to Valladolid. From there she visited Bilbao, where she enrolled in a ship, always through contacts with other Basques, reaching America's colonies and enlisting as a soldier under several captains, including her own brother, who she inadvertedly killed along with many others.She participated in the Arauco war against the natives in South America, currently parts of Chile, Argentina and Peru, but also in commerce, always for Basque businessmen. She killed many men in different rows, many of them soldiers or bureaucrats and officers of the Spanish crown. To escape she took refuge many times in churches, taking sanctuary, which by that time was sacred; soldiers couldn't enter into sanctuary in persecution of anyone.
She wrote an autobiography, the 1838 edition of which can be found is available on-line [1].
Erauso
Erauso
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