Age 20

Text:

“So there’s this story that my mom would always tell me. It was like when she was growing up in El Salvador in the 90s. And it was this story — I’ve heard it before, but the way she tells it, she actually kind of lived it. People always said that you had to be in bed by, like, 8 or 9, because around that time this cart — a cart with cow skeletons — would come in, and they would take children away if they were out of bed or misbehaving. So it became really prevalent during the war, because there were a bunch of dead people just because of the war.”

Context:

The informant’s mother grew up in El Salvador during the Civil War (1979 – 1992), a conflict that claimed over 75,000 lives and left detrimental social trauma in its wake. The “cart for cow skeletons” closely resembles La Carreta Chillona (The Screaming cart). In the well-known legend across Central America, a ghostly bone-driven cart haunts the night and brings death or punishment to those who encounter it. 

Analysis:

This legend is an example of how folk narrative can absorb historical trauma. The mythic threat is engulfed by real environmental violence: disappearances, death squads, curfews, etc. The cart became an idiom for real danger and genuinely unsafe streets. The legend thus serves as a practical protection function. For the informant, growing up in a post-war period invokes a liminal space for the story to exist in, as both a piece of his mother’s history and a threat that no longer applies to him. This intergenerational quality is a trait of traumatic folklore: that survives the conditions it was generated it and carries emotional residue long after danger has passed.