Mummified body of Chicana author found in New Mexico home after she had been dead for a year



Tragic: Chicana author and activist Barbara Salinas-Norman's decomposed body was found last week a year after she died in her New Mexico home

A 70-year-old woman whose mummified body was recently discovered in her Santa Fe apartment has been identified as a Chicana activist, teacher and author.



Santa Fe police said the decomposed remains of Barbara Salinas-Norman - known as Bobbi - were found last week and authorities say she may have been dead for more than a year.

A preliminary autopsy suggested that Ms Salinas-Normal died of natural causes in her apartment after becoming a hoarder and a recluse, cutting off her own sister and brother-in-law.



When she failed to return their calls for two years, Edna and Louis Ponce from East Pasadena , California, returned to New Mexico to find out what had become of her.

After attending a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque where a niece of Salinas was dancing, they set off for Santa Fe.



Louis Ponce told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the door of her condo was unlocked when they arrived so he let himself in. Her decomposing body was lying in a darkened apartment where all the curtains were drawn.



'I ran like hell,' Ponce told the paper. 'If you saw the apartment, you would never walk inside it. I never knew anybody could be that filthy.'

Horror: Salinas' brother-in-law, Louis Ponce, walks through the apartment where he found Salinas-Norman dead last week

Shock: The Chicana activist, teacher and author was said to have been sleeping in her and washing at the library since her electricity and water had been shut off due to unpaid bills

The New Mexican reports that Salinas-Norman founded and ran a publishing company called Pinata Publications in the office of her then-husband, Sam Norman, an Oakland lawyer.



She began writing, illustrating and publishing her own books designed to help Mexican American children identify with their culture. She gave up teaching to write full time in 1983.



She was the author of Los Tres Cerdos: Nacho, Tito and Miguel - her version of The Three Little Pigs. In the book, the third pig, Miguel, builds a home-made of adobe bricks. The illustrations depict New Mexico-style furnishings, Indian pottery, kiva fireplaces, vigas and retablos.

Home: Bobbi Salinas as she was known to many, had moved to Santa Fe in 2005 and lived in the Zia Vista condos

She also was a bilingual teacher in the Oakland, California, public schools in the 1980s.



Stories from friends and family suggested Salinas' life had been unraveling for some time. She often slept in her car and washed up in the bathroom at a local library.



Dedicated: Salinas' version of The Three Little Pigs featured details that incorporated Chicano culture

The gas and electricity had been turned off in her condo because she wasn't paying her bills. She ate at soup kitchens. Her home was in foreclosure.



Salinas earned a bachelor's degree in education from California State University in Los Angeles and a master's degree in public health education from the University of California, Berkeley.



She became involved in the Chicano movement during that time and considered herself a founding mother of MEChA, (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), a student organization promoting higher education among Chicanos.



Peggy Trujillo, a librarian at the New Mexico State Library who had known Salinas since about 2009, said Salinas often came there to try to sort out matters related to her condo and other personal business. She brought crates containing papers scattered with excrement from mice. She told Trujillo that she was being threatened with eviction.



Salinas was very fond of the movie Eat Pray Love, Trujillo said.

