Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer was born into one of the wealthiest families of colonial Santiago and inherited estates at La Ligua and Longotoma. For four decades she was the subject of accusations: that she caused her father's death, that she killed a knight, that deaths occurred among the people held in servitude and the Indigenous workers on her lands, and that she tried to take the life of a man in La Ligua. No court found her guilty of killing anyone. The one sentence on record against her, issued in 1661, concerned the treatment of the Indigenous workers of her encomienda, and it was applied only in part. She died in January 1665 with a second case, over the death of a woman held in servitude, unfinished.
Chile remembers her under a nickname that history gave her, La Quintrala.
Her father was Gonzalo de los Ríos y Encío, a Spaniard, and her mother Catalina Lisperguer Flores, from the Lisperguer family of Santiago. Her maternal grandmother was Águeda Flores. Her birth date and birthplace are not on record. The historian Bernardita Eltit Concha gives 1605 to 1665 as her lifespan, and the historian Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, working in 1884 from the court files, concluded she was probably born in 1606 or 1607, because her parents had already married before 1609. He treated a statement of her age made in 1664 as unreliable. She was about 61 when she died.
At 15 she inherited the Tobalaba farm from her grandmother and later the La Ligua and Longotoma lands that had come down to her father.
In September 1626 she married Alonso Campofrío y Carvajal, a soldier with few resources of his own who was later named a magistrate of Santiago, a post owed to the standing of the Lisperguer family. They had one son, who died at about the age of 10. She was widowed around 1650.
Her father died in 1622 or 1623. His sister accused Catalina of having caused his death. She was not prosecuted, and no court examined the accusation. The cause of his death is not on record.
In 1624 a knight of the Order of San Juan, the Order of Malta, was killed. Catalina was accused of the killing. A man held in servitude was blamed instead and was executed in Santiago. No trial of Catalina followed, and the charge against her remains an accusation.
Francisco de Salcedo, the sixth Bishop of Santiago, who died in 1634, became her chief accuser. Two causes of 1633 survive in the court papers, dated February 14 and March 8, concerning an alleged attempt on the life of a man in La Ligua. In a letter to the Council of the Indies dated May 16, 1633, Salcedo wrote that the attempt had been ordered by Catalina and by her husband. The man survived; no death is attributed to this episode.
The bishop wrote again in March and April 1634. In those letters he complained that she boasted she would come through everything unharmed, and he attributed the lack of any punishment to her ties with local and royal authorities. Salcedo also reported, on an unrecorded date, that she had tried to take the life of a cathedral official. He asked for an inquiry into the events in La Ligua around 1634. Justice took about thirty years to act.
The Real Audiencia of Santiago acted in January 1660. On January 17, 1660 the court sent Francisco Millán, a receptor, or court official, to La Ligua to investigate. Catalina, her administrator and a cousin were taken to Santiago. Vicuña Mackenna wrote in 1884 that the oidor Peña y Salazar brought her to the city from the La Ligua valley.
An auto cabeza de proceso, the order opening the case, is dated April 15, 1660. It rests on testimony from people of the La Ligua encomienda who had gone to Santiago to seek justice. Three of them are recorded as witnesses: an enslaved man, an Indigenous man of about fifty and a girl of sixteen. They asked that the enslaved man be sold to a new owner and that the Indigenous people be freed from the encomienda. On April 18 the court sent the judge Juan de la Huerta Gutiérrez to process the case and to sentence it in first instance.
The indictment speaks of "más de cuarenta muertes que todas están probadas y comprobadas," meaning more than forty deaths, all of them proven and verified. The deaths were placed on the La Ligua estate. Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna placed the same sentence, "Resultan mas de quarenta muertes todas provadas y comprovadas," at the head of his 1884 monograph and attributed it to the prosecutor Manuel Muñoz y Cuéllar in 1664. In 1910 the historian Domingo Amunátegui Solar published Huerta Gutiérrez's 1660 report as an annex to a study of Indigenous encomiendas, and stated that it verified 39 killings.
These are allegations. No list of the people by name, no dates for them and no court finding that any individual death was her act are on record. Vicuña Mackenna himself observed that the figure of forty was tied to the forty years of her alleged offenses.
On June 18, 1661 the judge Antonio Ramírez de la Laguna sentenced her. The sentence ordered her to provide clothing and cattle to the Indigenous workers of her encomienda, placed her estate under embargo and ordered her imprisoned, "con costas y salarios," with costs and salaries. It was delivered to her in person on June 21. The outcome of the 1660 inquiry has been summed up as a finding that she had mistreated her servants, and as one that brought her no real punishment.
Eltit argues that she did not fully comply and that Governor Francisco de Meneses's favors helped her. The embargo was lifted once she had paid the costs. The sentence concerns the treatment of the Indigenous workers. It is not a judgment on the deaths alleged in the indictment, and no sentence for any death is on record.
Meneses was later tried in a judicial review of his term of office, conducted between 1666 and 1676 by Lope Antonio de Munibe, a judge of the Audiencia of Lima, and covering 242 charges. Charge number 133 accused him of being paid by Catalina de los Ríos to release her and lift the embargo. The penalty set for it was 10,500 pesos. Amunátegui Solar added reports of 800 quintales of tallow, seven thousand goats and a gold chain as the payment.
The last case against her concerned the death of a woman named Micaela, who was held in servitude and had been lent to Catalina by her owner, Captain Francisco de Figueroa. Vicuña Mackenna dates her death to July 4, 1664. The oidor Juan de la Peña Salazar opened the case on July 18, 1664, and the Real Audiencia began a summary inquiry. Vicuña Mackenna records that she was examined on July 28.
Her defense recused judges, challenged witnesses and relied on a royal pardon. On October 8, 1664 the court ratified the witnesses, and the surviving file ends there. Vicuña Mackenna described her as left "absuelta o simplemente aplazada," acquitted or simply postponed, and wrote that the proceedings stalled after the governor intervened. On December 13, 1664 Meneses accepted bail, ordered that she be confined within four leagues of Santiago and released her property from embargo. No verdict was issued in this case.
She died on January 15 or 16, 1665, still facing the proceedings.
She had made a will about three years earlier, in 1662. She left nearly all of her fortune for the good of her soul, small gifts to relatives and friends, and money for the annual procession of the Cristo de Mayo on May 13. More than a thousand masses were said after her death, including 500 for the Indigenous people of her lands, and twenty thousand masses were ordered for her soul. The will is known mainly through Vicuña Mackenna's citation of it and of the papers of her executor, Martín de Urquiza.
On December 24, 1668 two oidores, Gaspar de Cuba y Arce and Luis de la Peña Salazar, confirmed the 1661 sentence. They cited a royal pardon and her death, and ordered the embargo lifted so that her executor could act under her will.
The record is limited to court papers, the bishop's letters of 1633 and 1634, the 1668 ruling and the review of the governor. Everything else grew in later centuries. Vicuña Mackenna's book of 1877, Los Lisperguer y la Quintrala, first printed in installments in a newspaper, fixed her story in a form that Chileans have known since. Eltit shows that it drew on earlier writing, including the bishop's letters, and that Vicuña Mackenna was not the first to write the account, as he claimed; Amunátegui had written on her in 1871. She argues that he acted as a "poet-judge" who reopened, on paper, cases he saw as ending in impunity. Vicuña Mackenna called one popular tale, that she hangs by a hair at the gates of hell, a story born of fear and punishment.
Novels, a play and later work have added to the legend. Mercedes Valdivieso's Maldita yo entre las mujeres appeared in 1991, and Magdalena Petit wrote a novel about her. In these books she became a mythic figure. Vicuña Mackenna himself described her as "una suerte de mito de cierta supuesta perversidad femenina," a kind of myth of a supposed female wickedness.
Historians since the nineteenth century have also read her case against the society around her. Amunátegui, Barros Arana and Amunátegui Solar treated her conduct as typical of powerful families of the colony, not as an exception, and Alejandra Araya argues her iconic status obscures the abuse of power by Governor Meneses.
A list of the people the indictment counted is not on record, nor is a court finding that she caused any particular death. The deaths alleged in separate years are three: her father (1622 or 1623), the knight (1624) and the woman held in servitude (July 1664). Each rests on an accusation, and none produced a conviction. The "more than forty" are alleged as a group, on one estate, without dates. Her birth year, the year of her father's death and the day of her own death remain unsettled.
1622 or 1623: Her father dies; a relative accuses her of causing his death; she is not prosecuted.
1624: A knight of a military order is killed; a man held in servitude is executed; she is accused.
September 1626: She marries Alonso Campofrío y Carvajal.
February 14 and March 8, 1633: Two causes over an alleged attempt on the life of a man in La Ligua.
May 16, 1633: Bishop Salcedo writes to the Council of the Indies about the attempt.
1634: Salcedo writes again and dies.
January 17, 1660: The Real Audiencia sends Francisco Millán to La Ligua.
April 15 and 18, 1660: The auto cabeza de proceso is issued; Huerta Gutiérrez is sent to process the case.
June 18, 1661: Sentence in first instance by Ramírez de la Laguna.
July 4 and 18, 1664: A woman held in servitude dies; the Real Audiencia opens a case.
October 8, 1664: Witnesses are ratified; the file ends.
December 13, 1664: Meneses accepts bail and lifts the embargo.
January 15 or 16, 1665: She dies.
December 24, 1668: The Real Audiencia confirms the 1661 sentence, citing a royal pardon and her death.
1877: Vicuña Mackenna publishes Los Lisperguer y la Quintrala.
1884: His monograph on the 1664 case is printed in Santiago.