Her obvious delight in pointing out the various instance where no one guesses her gender disguise makes the case that perhaps some exaggeration exists, if only to make the story more exciting. In a moment of dry humor, following an arrest in the city of La Plata wherein she was stripped on a rack, instead of the expected discovery of her gender, Erauso writes that a lawyer instead pointed out that she is a Basquero. Whether or not Erauso is being honest is a question that cannot be answered but if we take this to be true then we must assume that her definition of nudity referred to her being only bare above the waist. Erauso cites a number of specific moments where in her own words she states she was naked. Prime among her accomplishments are her ability in not arousing suspicion of her true gender even when fully exposed. Her autobiography, outlining her life-long masquerade, as man is either an amazing example of a woman's ability to stretch the limits of her social status, or one of history's great practical jokes. Applying this logic to the equally outlandish and seemingly impossible life of Catalina de Erauso one can only assume that if everything in her autobiography is true then she was gifted with miraculous good luck.

Her book thus reveals what happens when the private experience of a transgenderist is shifted to the public sphere and thereby marketed as a hybrid spectacle for the curious gaze of the general audience.In explaining some of his more outlandish exploits Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying that after eliminating all other possibilities, whatever remains, not matter how improbable, is the answer.

Sherry Velasco argues that the ways in which literary, theatrical, iconographic, and cinematic productions have transformed Erauso's life experience into a public spectacle show how transgender narratives expose and manipulate spectators' fears and desires. This theoretically informed study analyzes the many ways in which the 'Lieutenant Nun' has been constructed, interpreted, marketed, and consumed by both the dominant and divergent cultures in Europe, Latin America, and the United States from the seventeenth century to the present. Catalina de Erauso (1592-1650) was a Basque noblewoman who, just before taking final vows to become a nun, escaped from the convent at San Sebastián, dressed as a man, and, in her own words, 'went hither and thither, embarked, went into port, took to roving, slew, wounded, embezzled, and roamed about.' Her long service fighting for the Spanish empire in Peru and Chile won her a soldier's pension and a papal dispensation to continue dressing in men's clothing.

Erauso lieutenant nun