Tag Archives: fear

La Chupacabra: Legend

Text: 

Me: “Did you grow up hearing any legends?”

DR: “I know about The Chupacabra. Growing up in my Salvadorian household I remember constantly hearing about The Chupacabra. From what I remember, it’s a creature that almost resembles a dog or like a coyote that was dangerous and would only appear at night. Supposably, they would suck the blood of goats until they died”. 

Me: “Why specifically goats?”

DR: “Not quite sure, but it doesn’t only pertain to goats, I often heard different family members saying that it applied to various types of domestic animals…like on farms. I guess it has to do with the idea that at night farm animals are usually left outside in fenced capacities which makes it easier for The Chupacabra to attack them. Actually if someone was out late, they would be taken away and eaten by The Chupacabra, which is why my parents would always warn me about it and kids I grew up with would always be scared of it”.

Translation: “The goat-sucker”

Context (informant’s relationship to the piece, where they heard it, how they interpret it):

-DR’s relationship to this piece stems from her Salvadorian and Mexican culture considering this legend is said to affect those of Mexican, Salvadorian, and other Latin American cultures which is why DR grew up constantly hearing about this legend within her mixed household. DR would hear this legend from her immediate Salvadoran father and from her extended Mexican family. She would also hear it from her extended family from El Salvador who have reportedly seen The Chupacabra in their home country. Not to mention, DR would also hear this legend from other students in elementary school. DR interprets this legend as a scary phenomenon that makes children scared of the dark in hopes to keep them safe from the dangers of kidnapping, drug dealing, and gangs that would be evident at night in many Latin American countries. 

Analysis(what kind of personal, cultural, or historical values might be expressed) YOUR interpretation:

– The overall cultural value within this legend stems from the various origin stories that can be told within Latin American cultures and households; specifically in this case, a Salvadorian home and their overall spiritual beliefs. Not to mention, the personal values that can be expressed within this legend is that it allows the individual to inherit fear of this creature and to be extra cautious at night or within how they care for their farm animals which exemplifies their consciousness beliefs. I see this legend as an overall concept of obedience when it comes to a parent’s emphasis on their motive to scare their children from going out at night in order to avoid danger. Considering that I have heard about this legend myself, I interpret La Chupacabra to be a terror embedded concept that is directed towards children in order to maintain their behavior and as a possible excuse that farmers can use as a way to redirect their mistreatment of farm animals who pass away on their watch. One similar legend that has similar qualities to La Chupacabra is the legend of Bigfoot that I grew up hearing. These two legends are similar in the fact that they are both considered legends regarding creatures that stem from conspiracy theories. Not to mention, the only difference between these two legends is that I grew up hearing about Bigfoot from a social process while DR grew up hearing about La Chupacabra as an individual memorate process, given her families reported encounters in their home country.

The Cat that Got Burned

Do you have any sayings that you would like to share?

“Oh my god, my… my father-in-law always… one time told us that, uhh… something, when something bad happens to you, you get so scared, when you see anything, and then he told us whole… uhh… saying, that when the little cat got burned, just to see anywhere some ashes, he’s run away. He gets all scared. [laughs] Is one of them.”

 

Analysis: This is a short and straightforward proverb that’s supposed to be humorous. It lambasts the tendency of people, in this case represented by a small cat, to be overly cautious and afraid of something that they may have a negative association with, like fire. It seems that the informant’s culture really values wisdom learned through experience and risk-taking, as the proverb would appear to criticize those who are too cautious to the point of paranoia or excessive fear.

Arabic Folk Speech to Handle Fear/Bless

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

I’m from Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia.

Piece and Full Translation Scheme of Folk Speech:

Original Script: 

بسم الله

Transliteration: Bismillah

Translation: In the name of Allah (or God)

Piece Background Information:

I’m from Saudi Arabia and in this country the culture is heavily influenced by religion. For example, we are taught from a very young age to say “bismillah” every time something scares or frightens us. Till this day, I automatically say “bismillah” whenever I get startled. It is also generally used whenever you start something to give it a holy blessing.

My sister taught it to me, she would always remind me about that- she’s my older sister. Whenever I get startled or scared of something, like a dog or something when I was little, I would start screaming and jumping and doing crazy things. She would just say “be calm, you shouldn’t be scared of things”. So it kind of just stuck with me and to this day, it’s kind of just a reflex. Sometimes I’m sitting or hanging out with Americans, and I say that, and they’re just like “what the fuck was that?”

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day, in the informant’s apartment adjacent to USC’s campus in Los Angeles.

Thoughts on Piece: 

This piece emphasizes the Muslim ideal of strengthening their connection with Allah through exercising self control, thereby cleansing their minds, bodies, and spirits and also lends itself to this informant’s other accounts such as not believing in wearing a physical/tangible object for protection against the evil eye and instead focusing on the mind. It fits in with this informant’s overarching theme of this informant’s shared accounts with me (see:The Evil/Bad Eye and Arab Folk Beliefs on Protection Against It and see:see: Ramadan and the Ritual Celebration of Eid Alfutr).

The Devil will pull you under the bed by your feet

Informant (“M”) is a 52 year old woman from Bogota, Colombia. She moved to the United States in 1992, at the age of 30. She has two kids, a boy and a girl, who she raised in the United States. She has four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, she was the second born. She has a 102 year old Grandmother. Collection was over Skype.

 

Transcript:

“M: Cuando nosotros uh… youngers, uh…. younger? Okay and we lied, my mom said to us when you go to sleep tonight… that was scary… the devil is coming and grab you from your feet and taking you with him. Usually we went to sleep and we covered our feet very well, and wore socks, and the next day sometimes we lost one of ours socks. She would say the devil took the socks but didn’t grab us from our feet.

Me: So what this supposed to happen when you were in bed?

Yeah, because we was wearing socks and took our socks instead.

Me: Did he like stay or live under the bed?

M: Yeah! I believe he did, he was under the bed or under old blankets. Later we’d find the socks lost sometimes and believe “oh god the devil was here”. We’d later find the socks sometimes.

Me: So she said that only happened when you lied?

M: It’s only when we lied, ‘’I know you’re lying tonight and the devil will come get you from you feet’’ [imitation of mother].

Me: Was there any way to stop him, like could you confess that you lied or pray to stop the devil?

(Did not address question as I interrupted)

M: That was like 40 something years ago, I believe that was similar in the United States in the 50s. I don’t think it a very funny way to teach to behave.”

 

Analysis:

The monster pulling you under the bed by your feet piece of Folklore appears to exist in the United States, as was noted by “M”, often tied to the boogeyman. There are multiple references to the ‘under the bed monster’ and in American popular studies journals being cited in one article as “…so universal that we no longer stop to think about their origins. “(Shimabukuro, 2014). As identified by “M” at the end of the transcript, it was used as a method to convince her, by her mother, to tell her if she had been lying. This could be used to scare the truth out of a child, or if the child would not tell no matter what, as a way to negatively reinforce such behavior.

“M”s use of socks to protect her from the devil living under the bed appears to be used as a protection charm from the devil, similar to when children hide their heads under the blanket. It was also used as an indicator of the devil’s presence, as the disappearance of the socks may have indicated to “M” that the devil had tried to grab her and grabbed her sock instead.

Work Cited

Shimabukuro, K. (2014). The Bogeyman of Your Nightmares: Freddy Krueger’s Folkloric Roots. STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE.

La Llorona: Kid Killer

The informant is a 18-year-old freshman studying biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. She grew up in Shafter, CA but is now living on campus at USC. She grew up in a family of Mexican descent. I asked her if she had any urban legends she would like to share and she told me her version of La Llorona.

La Llorona was a story used to scare her and the younger members of her family to not go out at night when they were still children. La Llorona means the crying lady. The story behind it is that there was a lady in Mexico, a housewife, with two children and a husband. The husband worked a lot at an unspecified job. My informant had heard versions of the story where the lady was crazy and versions where the lady was just extremely jealous of the attention her kids received from her husband but leaned towards the lady being very jealous of the attention her children received. When either her insanity or her jealousy overwhelmed her, she drowned her children either in the bath or in a river. After she realized what she had done, she killed herself in the same manner. Her ghost/spirit now wanders around wailing for her children and attempting to find other children who happen to be outside. When I asked why she needed to be avoided, the informant said that La Llorona would kill the kids she did find while she was wandering, even though the story was being told in Shafter, CA and was removed geographically from the story’s origin.

This story was first told to her when she was around 6 or 7 years old, when she was old enough to understand the story. Though she did not seem entirely convinced that the tale was true now that she is 18 years old, she was very much scare by it when she was a young child. Though she does not regularly tell the entire legend, she does make references to the story and understand what people are referring to when they mention it. The story places an emphasis on the struggle between loving your children and having to share the love from your husband with them. This type of jealousy is taboo as mothers are “supposed” to give up everything for their children, including the affections of their husbands if need be. Though the children this is meant to scare probably do not immediately pick out this theme, it is certainly understood by the mothers telling the story.

La Llorona is the subject of many authored works, including a 2007 movie called The Cry (directed by Bernadine Santistevan). There is a lot of variation between different versions of La Llorona, but the general idea of a woman drowning children and stealing children that are not their own is pretty consistent throughout the different versions, including both the version I collected from my informant and the version presented in The Cry.