Boto, the Brazilian Pink Dolphin

Nationality: American/Brazilian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Woodinville, WA
Performance Date: 4/30/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese

Informant: A lot of Brazilian mythology is either trying to scare children, or – trying to scare children from being bad – or trying to scare people away from messing with anything nature related. And there’s also a lot of weird ones that involve sexuality, but we don’t have to go into those, those are just strange. Actually no, I will go into one. There’s one – I don’t know what this animal is called in English, but you know those dolphins that aren’t dolphins, they’re just pink?

Me: I think I know what you’re talking about, yeah.

Informant: In Portugese it’s called Boto, and it’s basically just a pink dolphin. And they have them by the Amazons or whatever. And there’s a myth that one of the – ‘cuz these animals are like dolphins, they’re fun and want to play all the time, and they’re usually seen as tricksters or whatever, like they’ll play with you. Well, for some reason, Brazil was like, “Wow, that means evil.” So they took this poor creature, and they – there’s a myth behind it that one of these animals is, like – at a certain point of time in the night, it’ll transform into, like, a man. A really fancy looking man, who’s good looking and kinda shady, and he’s always wearing a hat, because – you know how dolphins have holes on their heads? The man also technically has a hole in his head, and he has to wear the hat to hide it. And essentially, when he comes out of the water and goes out to mingle out at night, he’ll find some random woman and make her fall in love with him in… one hour, or whatever. And they’ll have sex and she’ll get pregnant and he’ll leave. And then – I don’t know exactly what this says about the culture of Brazil, like, I don’t know I don’t know, but a lot of people use it to be like – if someone doesn’t have a father, they’re like “oh haha your father’s a fuckin’ dolphin.” And I’m like… “Whyyyy? Why a dolphin?” It’s supposed to be spooky. Not really. It’s a dolphin. It’s cute and it’s pink. The concept of a man with a hole in his head? That’s spooky. But not the dolphin.

Background:
My informant is a 19-year-old college student at a small liberal arts college in Washington state. She was born in Brazil, and grew up there, moving to Florida in late elementary school, back to Brazil for a few years, then finally settling outside of Seattle in our last two years of high school. Her father’s American, and her mom’s Brazilian. Portugese was her first language, and she still speaks Portugese at home with her mom. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece was collected via an interview that took place over FaceTime. 

Thoughts:
I think it’s really interesting that in Brazil, the man to stay away from is actually a pink dolphin, because in America, that’s one of the least threatening animals and one of the least threatening colors. I agree with my informant that it’s not particularly spooky. The fears of getting pregnant by someone who’s evil and will leave you is a universal one, but I can’t think of an American comparison to this myth that would involve a character who had the connotations of a pink dolphin. Maybe the fact that he’s a dolphin is trying to emphasize a theme of being afraid of creatures that seem boundlessly joyful, that maybe they aren’t what they seem? I’m not sure, but I find it fascinating. 

The Headless Mule – Brazilian Folklore

Nationality: American/Brazilian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Woodinville
Performance Date: 4/30/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese

Informant: A bizarre creature of Brazilian folklore that for some reason, people, like, actually believe in, is… there’s a tale of a headless mule, and it’s just a mythical creature that’s a mule without a head. And the part without the head is, like, fire. Neck up of the horse thing is just fire. The legend is that it was a woman that was cursed, and then – I don’t remember why she was cursed, but it was a woman who was cursed by God, and then she… turned into a horse. Without a head. And she would just run through empty spaces…. Just… terrorizing people. Like horses do when they don’t have heads. I don’t know man, I grew up with the story. It’s weird, but yeah. I heard my mom talking about it all the time. 

Background:
My informant is a 19-year-old college student at a small liberal arts college in Washington state. She was born in Brazil, and grew up there, moving to Florida in late elementary school, back to Brazil for a few years, then finally settling outside of Seattle in our last two years of high school. Her father’s American, and her mom’s Brazilian. Portugese was her first language, and she still speaks Portugese at home with her mom. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece was collected via an interview that took place over FaceTime. 

Thoughts:
This creature sounds nothing like the creatures in the folklore stories I grew up with, which is fascinating. Part of that may be because mules are much more integrated into the culture in South America than they are in North America, so they wouldn’t be showing up in the most well known Native American myths, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where I’m from. Another thing I found interesting was that she said people actually believe in it. Some of the other creatures she described to me, such as an alligator lady who eats children, seem more plausible to me than this one because this one is missing a head, which should mean it’s not alive anymore. Even though an alligator lady eating children also defies the rules of logic, this one feels a little too out there for me to genuinely believe it exists.

Cuca – The Brazilian Folklore Character (and the Internet’s New Gay Icon)

Nationality: American/Brazilian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Woodinville
Performance Date: 4/30/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese

Informant: Okay. So. This one definitely spooked me when I was… a child? Because there was a – there used to be a – well, there is a popular Brazillian writer who wrote a bunch of stories, and – I don’t remember when or what year, it was a long time ago – but he wrote stories that were really popular like… a Brazilian classic child story, similar with what you guys have here like… Secret Garden or something like that. People were super attached to the characters, and a lot of his characters were based on folklore. I didn’t read these books but everyone knew them, and there was a Brazilian TV show based off them that was really bad. But! For a small child who knew nothing of the world, it was, like, amazing. One of the villains was based off the myth of this, uh… Alligator lady, who was literally an alligator, but stands up, and has hair. And the story behind it, her name was – I can also, when you go back to type this up, tell you how to spell these, because they’re all Brazilian – but her name is Cuca, and she’s literally just an alligator with a wig, essentially. And her thing is – I think she was created to scare children into not being bad with their parents? And it’s basically because – the myth with her is that she would – if you were bad, bad to your parents, disobeyed your parents, went to bed late, something like that – she would get you, straight up snatch you. And she supposedly never slept, so kids who didn’t go to bed at night, she’d still get you. And there was a song that went with it.

Me: What was the song?

Informant: Well, it wasn’t really a song, it was more like a chant thingy. A few phrases that basically translate to “She’ll get you from one side, she’ll get you from the other.” Repeated in Portuguese over and over again. Just to scare kids. And… it worked. I went to bed. It scared me. I have anxiety now. (She laughs)

Background:
My informant is a 19-year-old college student at a small liberal arts college in Washington state. She was born in Brazil, and grew up there, moving to Florida in late elementary school, back to Brazil for a few years, then finally settling outside of Seattle in our last two years of high school. Her father’s American, and her mom’s Brazilian. Portuguese was her first language, and she still speaks Portuguese at home with her mom. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece was collected via an interview that took place over FaceTime. 

Thoughts: 
I’m very unfamiliar with Brazilian folklore, which is why I was so interested in hearing her stories from her childhood. I was still curious after this interview, so I went to look up more information about the character, and found out that the internet has adapted Cuca as a gay icon, along the lines of the Babadook. She has become the subject of many memes, most of which are screenshots from the portrayal of Cuca on a Brazilian children’s show, an adaptation of the children’s books Sítio do Pica-Pau Amarelo, which translates roughly to “Yellow Woodpecker Ranch.” She’s portrayed with an alligator suit in the style of Barney or the Disney characters, with a blonde wig and a cocktail-esque dress with a fake bust added on top. Many have made the connection that in this getup, Cuca looks like a drag queen, and thus the memes began. My informant was not aware of this, and after I forwarded her a few articles (this was after the interview), I believe she is rethinking her entire childhood, as a character that she grew up thinking would literally eat her alive is now a symbol of gay pride. 

Bloody Mary

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Globe, Arizona
Performance Date: 4/29/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: Do you know Bloody Mary?

Me: We have Bloody Mary, but I don’t really know the backstory or anything. What was your version?

Informant: I don’t know the backstory either. It was basically just – you go to the mirror, and you say “Bloody Mary” three times and then she’ll appear. I don’t really know what happens after that, but I know it’s scary, and her eyes and face are all bloody. But also just looking in mirrors can be creepy if you’re there long enough without moving, so that can be enough sometimes. Especially at night. Oh! It has to be at night, I forgot. 

Me: Is it just any old mirror? At any point in the day? Because my Bloody Mary – we had to go into the bathroom, and turn the lights off, spin around three times, and you had to be by yourself… and spin around while saying her name, so every time you spun, you’d say her name, and you’d stumble around in the dark and find the sink, and once you were holding onto the sink, you’d try to find the lightswitch on the wall while still holding on, and once you turned on the lights again she’d appear in the mirror.

Informant: Haha! We never had that. We didn’t have a spinning thing. I also heard it from my sister, not at school or anything, so she may have toned it down for me so she didn’t want to scare me. It was supposed to be dark though, supposed to be at night. I don’t think it’s real, but like… why risk it?  

Background:
My informant is a 19-year-old college student at USC, who grew up in a small town in Arizona. She is the youngest of three sisters, who she thinks may have toned down the story elements of various legends or myths to avoid scaring her. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece was collected via an interview that took place over FaceTime. 

Thoughts:
I think everyone has their own version of Bloody Mary, which is why I really wanted to ask my informant about this. I grew up in Washington state, and she grew up in Arizona; I wanted to know what the differences were between my experiences with Bloody Mary and hers. For some reason, my experience with it growing up was a lot more specific, with a lot more rules to follow to make it work. Hers was really general. I wonder if that’s a reflection of the environments we grew up in: I attended an academically rigorous high school, and the elementary school systems were prepping us for that level of intense education since kindergarten. Her school systems functioned quite differently, were a lot looser, and put more value on effort than following all the rules to a letter. I wonder if that’s why my school’s version of Bloody Mary was so much stricter than hers.

La Llorona

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Globe, Arizona
Performance Date: 4/29/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: I don’t actually know that much about La Llorona, but I heard that she drowns her two children in the river to get back at her husband who left her, and now she regrets it so much that she lurks in the night – well, she wanders in the night, calling out for her children. I don’t remember how she gets you, but I think you just run into her? And she thinks you’re her children? 

Me: Do you think there’s any reason this was less scary to you than the Skinwalkers?

Informant: I don’t feel in active danger from La Llorona like I do the SW’s. They’re supposed to be pure evil, and she’s just not as powerful, ya know?

Me: We read an article for class on La Llorona that had multiple different versions of the story, and, it painted her in various shades of evil, of like, whether she was a tragically misunderstood feminist icon, or if she was – 

Informant: The way I learned it, she was definitely tragic. She wasn’t evil, she’s just – I don’t know, she was angry, and now she regrets what she did and is looking for her children, and when she finds you, it’s… over? I guess? I don’t know. 

Background:
My informant is a 19-year-old college student at USC, who grew up in a small town in Arizona. She is the youngest of three sisters, who she thinks may have toned down the story elements of various legends or myths to avoid scaring her. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this piece was collected via an interview that took place over FaceTime. 

Thoughts:
I thought it was really interesting that La Llorona wasn’t as scary to my informant as another piece of folklore she gave me, which is the legend of the Skinwalkers. Personally, I think I would’ve been more scared of La Llorona, although I hadn’t heard of either of them until I moved to Los Angeles for college. I think a big part of that had to do with La Llorona’s portrayal in the version of the story my informant heard – she was never evil, never intended to cause you harm even if she got you, she just made a mistake and is now regretful of it. This is very different from other versions we read for class, some of which painted her as a cold-hearted killer who hated kids. It’s an interesting variation on the same story, and I’d never stopped to consider how different variations would impact a person’s opinion on a piece of folklore before this.