Rita was a restless, free-spirited woman who did not care to confine herself to the rigid implications of a woman’s role in her society at that time — for this she was ostracized. Eventually she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and arrived at Johnson City, Kansas, in 1983. She was kept in Kansas’s Larned State Hospital from 1983-1995, wrongfully and involuntarily institutionalized, having been deemed “mentally ill” and “a danger to herself,” simply because no one could understand her native language.
