Now 83, she has never revealed who the father of her son is
Yes, this is a true, documented and proven story. In 1938, little Lina Medina was five years old when her parents took her to the doctor on suspicion of a stomach tumor, after trying unsuccessfully to discover to the healers of her village the reason for the “swelling” that the girl suffered. What both parents and doctors discovered, though, was that Lina was 7 months pregnant .
The unbelievable case happened in Peru and was documented in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel for La Presse Medicale . Besides pregnancy, he reported that Lina’s menarche would have occurred at 8 months of age and that her breasts began to develop at 4 years. At the age of 5, Lina had already demonstrated pelvic enlargement and advanced bone maturation.
It was her rare hormonal conditions that allowed Lina Medina to become, at 5 years, 7 months and 21 days, the youngest mother ever documented by medicine in all of humankind’s history. Despite all the risks, she gave birth by cesarean section on May 14, 1939 – no less than Mother’s Day in Peru.
His son, who was born with 2.7 kilograms, was named Gerardo in honor of the doctor responsible for childbirth, Dr. Gerardo Lozada .
Although physically mature, Lina, who was after all a child, preferred to play with dolls to care for the baby. Gerardo was fed by a nurse and was raised by an uncle, believing that Lina was his sister. He only learned of his own story at age 10, from episodes of bullying at school. Gerardo grew up healthy, but at the age of 40 he lost the battle against a disease in the bone marrow. No relationship has ever been confirmed between this disease and the circumstances of its birth. Gerardo died in 1979.
As for Lina, she grew up in the same misery in which she had been born, without any assistance from the Peruvian government. She lives to this day and lives in a poor neighborhood of Lima, the capital of her country. She married in 1972 and had another child at 38 years of age. Now 83, Lina has never revealed the name of her first child ‘s father .
This, incidentally, is the great mystery that surrounds it. Pregnancy can be explained by hormonal imbalance, but the identity of the man who impregnated her at 5 years of age has always been an enigma. Lina’s own father, Tiburcio Medina, was arrested on charges of raping her, but without evidence she was released. The suspicions then fell on a brother of Lina who suffered from mental deficiency. Authorities at the time also raised the hypothesis that the girl had been forced to participate in indigenous rituals in which orgies and rape would be common.
Humiliations and absurdities
As if rape and a trajectory of misery were not enough, Lina faced outrageous humiliations throughout her life.
Shortly after giving birth at age five, it became international news and began to attract unusual attention from various parts of the world. In one of the most striking cases, they even offered $ 1,000 a week and paid the necessary expenses for Lina and her son to be put on display at the New York World’s Fair.
There were also more decent proposals, offering financial help to the girl and her baby, but the Peruvian state banned them on the grounds that Lina and Gerardo were in “moral danger.” The government set up a commission to protect them, but six months later it left them to their fate.
Lina spent eleven months in the hospital after giving birth and was only able to return to her family with the authorization of the Supreme Court.
In 1972, when he married Raul Jurado and had his second child, Lina and her husband suffered another blow: the house where they lived was expropriated and demolished by the government in order to make room for the construction of a highway. They were not compensated.
Several people have offered them help and support over the years. Dr. Gerardo Lozada himself gave him a job as a secretary at his clinic, and another doctor lodged an interlocutory injunction for Lina to receive a pension from the Peruvian state in a long, bureaucratic and painful process.
Even so, Lina lives today, at the age of 83, in the suburb of Chicago Chico, a poor region marked by high crime rates.
Its unique story, like that of so many people on a trajectory suffered, attracted more curiosity than solidarity.
