Catarina de San Juan

Catarina de San Juan (c. 1607 – 5 January 1688), known as the China Poblana, was an Asian-born woman who was enslaved and brought to New Spain via the Spanish East Indies and later became revered as a saint in Mexico.

She was allegedly kidnapped by Portuguese pirates and sold in the Philippines as a slave, converting to Catholicism and adopting the Christian name Catarina de San Juan.

She was then transported across the Pacific Ocean to Spanish Mexico, where she continued to work as a slave, married, and eventually became a beata – an ascetic woman or anchorite who adheres to personal religious vows without entering a convent – in Puebla de Zaragoza.

But once they disembarked in the port of Acapulco, instead of delivering her to the Marquis, the merchant sold her as a slave to a Pueblan man, Miguel de Sosa, for ten times the price that the viceroy had promised for her.

Catarina de San Juan, or Mirra (or Mira/Meera), followed the style of dress of her birth country, India, completely wrapped in a sari that covered her whole body.