Tag Archives: chupacabra

Chupacabra

Text:

When asked about the legends that his abuelita would tell him during his family visits to Mexico, MS responded:

“She also told us about the chupacabra. It’s one I actually asked about because my brothers and I played this game called Poptropica when we were younger. It had all these islands you could visit and one of them was the ‘Cryptids Island’ where you had to track down these urban legend creatures, like Nessie and Bigfoot, and one of them was the chupacabra, so I wanted to ask her about it. She said that yeah, her parents had told her about it growing up. So, if people found their goats or livestock with these puncture holes in their necks, they blamed it on the chupacabra.”

When asked what he could recall about the chupacabra’s appearance, MS responded:

“So in the game, it looked like this f*cked up looking, blue dog thing with spikes and sh*t. But, I think abuelita said it was more reptile looking.”

Context:

MS is a sixteen year old who has grown up in Los Angeles, CA. His abuelita immigrated from Mexico to Sacramento, CA in 1961. She then returned to her hometown in Mexico in the ’90s. Here, MS is recalling legends he had heard from his abuelita when his family visited her in her hometown during vacations.

Analysis:

This entry from MS highlights the role of non-native media in shaping perceptions of folk legends. As MS mentions, his initial interest in the chupacabra stemmed from its portrayal in the popular online children’s game, Poptropica. This brings forth the question of what role non-native media plays in shedding light on this folklore and what responsibilities it has while doing so. In this case, exposure to the legend in the context of a video game spurred his curiosity to explore the origins of the chupacabra further. However, from his description, it is clear that Poptropica’s depiction of the chupacabra adheres more to the North American imagination of what kills livestock: wolves. This visual description is distinct from the versions of the legend that tend to be seen in Puerto Rico and Mexico, where the creature is described as more reptilian. The choice to portray the chupacabra as more dog/wolf-like brings up another question of responsibility: How should Poptropica, an online game that claims to be an educational resource for children, balance its commercial interests with its goal to educate?

Chupacabra

Original Text:

Chupacabra

Translation:

Goat-Sucker

Narrative:

It is one of the many legends that are in Mexican culture. The informant states that “many people think that it is a creature more than an animal, but they do not technically know what it is.” In her Mexican culture, it is described to “target more farmer-culture because the creature is said to come in the middle of the night and suck the blood from goats. When the farmers wake up the next day they are described to have seen “puncture wounds on the animals, which they thought was a coyote but the marks don’t match anything.” It has never been seen by the naked eye. They target goats because “they are out in the open, and it can catch them.” It only happens in the “rural areas of [her] family’s farmland” and it even comes from areas in El Salvador and has no evidence such as pictures taken. They have to “put their animals inside before the chupacabras come” because they do not want something to happen. She states that the saying is “take care of your cattle or else you will lose money”

Context:

This is “usually said by everyone, specifically farmers who have stories of their cattle and goat being killed and sucked of blood.” It is most relevant in Mexico and other countries in Latin America that have taken over the thoughts of farmers that constantly fear it. People who live in the more rural areas learn about it at younger ages, especially if their parents are farmers that have to be careful and genuinely fear the legend of the chupacabra. They are known to affect the lives of those that are not fortunate. It has become one of the most well-known myths of Latin America. It is said to be the “vampire of Latin America” and even threatens children saying that if they behave badly then they will turn into livestock and the chupacabra will come to get you”

Analysis:

The myth of the chupacabra has become one of the most well-known stories and may have been fabricated to give a reason as to why some disease or other animal may have attacked the livestock and are not able to find what exactly. Chupacabras are presented as horrific creatures that affect the less fortunate, emphasising the trials that they have to go through in order to continue to live as the livestock are seen as some of their main sources of stability. Without the livestock, they are not able to live in a stable environment and therefore use the chupacabra as reasoning as to why their livestock might be suffering. The children are told the story to also stay safe at night and listen to their parents saying this narrative so that they are not a threat to the chupacabra.

Legend of the Chupacabra

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 76
Occupation: none
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 26, 2020
Primary Language: Spanish

Main piece: 

The following was transcribed from a conversation between the informant and interviewer. 

Informant: The story of the chupacabra originated in a pueblo, I think it was in Hidalgo. Supposedly the cattle and other farm animals were dying. The farmers didn’t know why they’d die because they were in good health the night before but would awaken the next day dead. So they started to get together and investigate because they were losing a lot of money and they found…ehh that the cows had little to no blood left.

Interviewer: Was this real? Or is it part of the story?

Informant: No the cattle dying was real. The news started reporting these deaths and images showed a vampire-like bite on the cows. But the size of the bite and symmetry of it… it was like no other animal and that generated a lot of speculation. The farmers began to guard their farms overnight and after many nights, one farmer claimed to have seen a creature. 

Interviewer: And how does this creature look according to the stories? 

Informant: From far away it looked human but from closer you can see his bottom half was that of a goat. Its legs were that of goat. From the top half, it was muscular y had like hair and scales. Is eyes were shiny and red but they weren’t circular like us. His mouth was like a wolf’s but not that long. But seeing such a beast made people paralyze in fear and the creature would escape in the blink of an eye so no one has actually seen it for more than 2 seconds. 

Background: My grandpa was my informant. He was born and raised in Guadalajara and did not travel to the U.S. until a couple years ago. He has lived in Mexico for about 70 years so he knows of a lot of Mexican traditions and legends. He says that this is one of his favorite legends and that he heard about it in the news when he was in his 40s. It doesn’t terrorize him but he thinks it’s real. 

Context: I was in my bedroom watching tv on the last day and I needed 3 more collections so I asked my grandpa if he knew of one myth or legend like La llorona and he said if the chupacabra counted and I said of course so he told me this legend o the spot. We were in my room and I was typing as he told it in spanish and later translated into english. 

Thoughts: I find myself believing in this one because it’s plausible. I guess that’s what makes it a legend. My grandpa claims to have seen the news about it so as far as the cattle killings, that’s true. The autopsies confirm a lack of blood and some witnesses claim to have seen the beast. So I find it very convincing but without hardcore evidence of the beast we won’t know for sure. Then again, if we were to have hardcore evidence and it was true, then the chupacabra would no longer be a legend.

La Llorona

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/5/2019
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Text

La Llorona is a story about this grieving, um, it’s a grieving mom who lost her children, and that, she goes around taking kids from, from other families, screaming, “¡Ay! Mis niños, ¿donde están?” which translates to, “Oh! My kids, where are they?” You know what, you know he’s just—she’s, they’re looking for them, because. They died or, they were lost.

Background

The subject is a 21-year-old Mexican American in his third year at USC. He recalls first hearing the legend of La Llorona at around the age of four or six. Through childhood, he was frequently told the story of La Llorona by his parents as a form of discipline. If he or his siblings misbehaved, their parents said that La Llorona would come and take them away. The subject mentions that this usage of La Llorona as a form of parental discipline was common in every Mexican-American household, along with corporal punishment via the chancla (a flip-flop) or the belt. In terms of disciplinary severity, the subject as a child would have considered La Llorona to be less of a threat than the chancla and the belt. The subject stopped believing in the literal existence of La Llorona around the age of seven, eight, or nine—around the same time, he says, that most children realize that Santa Claus isn’t real.

Context

Growing up, the subject often discussed the legend of La Llorona with other Mexican American children in his hometown of Van Nuys. The purpose of such discussion was less to ascertain whether La Llorona was real, and more to affirm a shared folk experience of being disciplined by parents in the same manner. He felt that only other Mexican Americans would understand the normalcy of the disciplinary method, rather than reacting judgmentally and mischaracterizing the discipline as a form of child abuse.

Over time, the subject’s childhood fear associated with La Llorona dulled into nostalgia, and he began to view La Llorona as a central part of his cultural history. Based on this current perception, the subject says that he finds it fascinating the legend was even used as a disciplinary tactic to begin with. He characterizes its use as a disciplinary tactic as “negative”—as the opposite of how he believes folklore like La Llorona ought to be used. He thinks folklore like La Llorona should be used as a “positive” way to build a shared sense of cultural identity through the passing down of traditions.

Another “positive” use of La Llorona, the subject argues, is for entertainment. The subject mentions an instance when his Spanish teacher showed the class a cartoon adaptation of La Llorona, to give the class a simple task to occupy their attention on a relatively work-free day. The class, which was majority Latino, was familiar with the legend; as such, the teacher had offer little explanation for what the plot of the story was. The subject especially enjoyed the video retelling of La Llorona because of its “authenticity,” which he defined in terms of aesthetic choices, such as including all the major motifs in the legend (e.g. the river, the ghostly spirit), and casting Mexican voice actors who spoke Spanish with a proper Mexican accent.

Interviewer’s Analysis

When asked to elaborate on what constituted “authenticity” in folklore adaptation, the subject compared the La Llorona video to the Scooby Doo film, The Monster of Mexico, which he felt portrayed both an inauthentic version of the Chupacabra (another legendary Mexican monster), and an inauthentic version of Mexico. The Monster of Mexico made the Chupacabra look like Bigfoot, characterized Mexicans through stereotypical sombreros and maracas iconography, and most condemnably, featured an all-white cast. For the subject, authenticity in Mexican folklore adaptation hinged on the folklore not being whitewashed. Here, the interviewer asked the subject how one might strike a balance between fighting the hegemony of whitewashed folklore, and not establishing a new hegemony by claiming to have a singularly authoritative “authentic” interpretation.

Briefly, hegemony is defined as the total control over the terms of a narrative. The subject replied that he didn’t think ought to be a singularly authoritative authenticator for adaptations of folklore. In the context of Latino folklore, the subject suggested that his concern was less with defining authenticity, than fostering a sense of accountability. He didn’t want people to create adaptations of Latino folklore for a mainstream general audience, without creators being mindful of what portrayals of Latino culture they could potentially misinform non-Latinos with.

While the subject’s answer certainly adds nuance to defining the boundary between artificially authoritative authenticity and hegemony, the question of where that boundary is still remains—and, in the interviewer’s opinion, cannot be answered without defining what precisely “whitewashing” is. Is whitewashing the same as Americanization? Who defines and authenticates what is American, when America houses multiple types of cultures? What counts as “white” culture? Is any insertion of “white” culture into a historically nonwhite folklore adaptation automatically considered whitewashing? For instance, in the La Llorona video, the children are portrayed as trick-or-treaters, to appeal to a broader American audience—does that count as whitewashing?

These questions are complicated, and any definition of “whitewashing” for the purposes of evaluating “authenticity” of folklore will inevitably struggle to cover every scenario. Perhaps a more appropriate starting point, would be to consider folklore adaptation in terms of social power structures. What cultures does one group get a “pass” to freely adapt from? Who authenticates the “pass” under what circumstances? How do dynamics play out when authenticity gets contested?  Who is contesting authenticity, under what definition, and why?

Chupacabra-“Chupee in SoCal”

Nationality: U.S.
Age: 47
Occupation: Outreach Counselor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/3/2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My mom really enjoys telling me about The Chupacabra story- meaning “goat sucker”. Ironically, she wrote a paper about the Chupacabra for her college Folklore class. In her contemporary retelling the Chupacabra, or “Chupee”, it is a defender of powerless Latinos against of white people in positions of authority who abuse their power in California and throughout part of the southwest. It was no coincident that in May of 1996 reports of Chupacabra reached an all time high in terms of sighting in light of heighten social anxieties. Chupee was talked about on the radio and television with spoof interviews. Local issues about undocumented workers, border patrol incidents, Proposition 187, and the potential demise of affirmative action worried the Latino community. Projecting fears onto a blood-sucking creature was a safe way to air concerns. San Bernardino had a massive spike in Chapacabra sighting after an unarmed Latino woman was dragged from her car and beaten. It caused the LA Times to run a front-page story about the Chupacabra and publishing the photo attached.imgres

My mom thought it was awesome that Latinos living in the U.S had appropriated a Mexican legend and had unleashed it on Southern California, Arizona and parts of Texas. Several cattle in Texas were found dead with puncture marks on their necks. For the first time white ranchers were suddenly scared because they were dealing with an unknown entity. My mom was shocked when the LA times ran a front page article with a drawing of the Chupacabra. But it validated what she was thinking about the multiple sightings.

Analysis: I think the Chupacabra in this context sounds very interesting with lots of potential. My mom said while doing research for her paper she discovered that Chupee, “goat sucker” was written about in Mayan texts going back as far as 1400 B.C. This contradicts the contemporary belief that the Chupacabra was first spotted in Puerto Rico in 1995. Many Mexicans familiar with the Mayan legend reputed the origins and insisted that it was in fact part of ancient Mayan Mythology. Apparently it was their Mayan ancestor who were now seeking revenge against the white aggressors that almost wiped out their civilization. Many of the undocumented migrant farm workers at that time in California were of mostly indigenous descent. This perhaps was a way for a group of highly marginalized people to empower themselves with a creature that was mysterious and potentially deadly.