Tag Archives: legend

Santo Toribio Romo

Age: 45

Legend

 

Nationality- Mexico

Primary Language- Spanish

Occupation- Construction Worker

Residence- Los Angeles, CA

Date of Performance- 3/17/16

Santo toribio romo

Before i had crossed the border from Mexico to the United States, I did a lot of preparation and praying for the trip. I also talked to a lot of my friends about relatives that they know who have gone and made it there safely. One of my friends whose name was Rosalba told me a story about the Santo Toribio Romo. Her husband had traveled to the United States with another friend and his son. They traveled day and night only stopping to sleep and the occasional rest. One day, they ended up getting lost and ran out of food and water for two days. They kept marching on but had no idea where to go. The father then said he saw an oasis and a man who looked like a priest standing next to it telling them to come this way. The man was obviously hallucinating since it was in the middle of the desert. He grabbed his son and hoped it was the way to go.  When he went towards the oasis direction, they found out it was the right way to go and made it to the United States. When he arrived and settled down, he called his wife and told her what he saw. She said that it was because she prayed for Santo Toribio Romo to guide them and he was the one who appeared to them. He thanked her for her prayers and said he will work till he can afford to send her safely to the United States. This story gave me hope because if things turned out bad, I can have my family pray for me and hope would keep me alive during my trip.

Francisco is from Mexico and has personally heard this story from one of his friends. His friend had heard the story directly from a man who experienced a legend himself. He liked the story she told him because it gave him hope to keep pushing on his journey to America. Opportunities were thin in Mexico so he did not really have another choice but to cross the border so having his faith lay in a priest made him feel safer about the crossing. Santo Toribio Romo lays on his wall in his living room because even to this day he treasures the faith he received from the saint. It was at a time when crossing the border was at its high so a lot of people in his family or just his friends used the saint to guide them on their journey.

When Francisco told me the story, it made him remember how tough it was to cross the border and how grateful he is to be here. His faith was very high because he later met the man who crossed and he confirmed that it was true. Francisco’s cross was not as vigorous as his but it was still difficult. The story is very uplifting so hearing it whenever wherever is suitable.

I believe this story is very interesting. Santo Toribio Romo was originally a priest from Jalisco, Mexico who died during a Christian uprising in 1928. To many of the Mexicans, after his death, many can recall seeing him on their journey to cross to the United States recognizing him as a patron of migrants. Many come to United States in search of miracles and put their lives in the hands of a saint. They have to overcome countless obstacles such as more patrols, night vision, and armed guards who shoot to kill, not to mention the dangerous environment they have to get through with limited supplies. Hundreds die each year attempting to cross with their faith in the saint and hundreds more continue to cross with the same faith despite the many deaths that have occurred. Francisco is one of the ones who made it with the faith placed in Santo Toribio Romo. The courage instilled upon Francisco was enough to get him to take the risk and make it to the United States. Many of the Mexican people have very little to count on yet end up having countless hope. It is because of folklore like this, legends and saints that allow people to keep on going and obtain a better life for themselves. Francisco worships the saint and lets his son know about his journey and the saint that helped him get there because he wants his son to know the struggle he had to go through and to appreciate how good he has it.  This legend is very strongly exchanged within the citizens of mexico and those who hear the stories of the people who crossed successfully.

 

El Cipitio

Nationality: Salvadoran
Age: 45
Occupation: Statistician
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2016
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

El Cipitio

The informant, EM, grew up in the country of El Salvador, which is in part known for its vast jungles and large amount of volcanoes. Naturally there are many legends surrounding these places, including ones about creatures that may live there. EM shared a story with me about one of these creatures, El Cipitio:

 

“So there are different, interconnecting traditions regarding beings or creatures in El Salvador. El Cipitio is a kind of a duende- or what do you call them, the Irish creature? Like those ones who trick you? A leprechaun! He’s a little bit like a leprechaun.

He always tries to deceive people, specifically young girls, because he wants to take them back to his cave or wherever he lives. So he will do silly things to entice them and deceive them.

But El Cipitio is the bastard son of another legendary figure, La Sihuanaba. Depending on the story, La Sihuanaba was a woman who lived in pre-colonial times- she was the beautiful wife of a famous chief. She was unfaithful- so there is something about that, right? A warning about what will happen to you if you are unfaithful in a very patriarchal society. So, it says, “this is what happens to women who are unfaithful”. A shaman condemned her to forever appear in front of men who wanted to be unfaithful- once they are alone together, she will become this ugly woman. So El Cipitio is her son.

In the story, El Cipitio is always alone, and he dresses like a peasant with a white clothing and a huge, huge hat. So I don’t know how you can’t spot this guy from a mile away! You’d think the hat is so huge you can see him anywhere. But he will hide in the jungle and entice youg girls to go with him, and little girls just disappear.

A statue of El Cipitio in El Savador

If you think about it, it’s a story that tells you what is wrong and what is right- there’s the idea that you will be marked for life if your mom is unfaithful. And people will always label you as something different if you were not born to a married family. There are specific places were it’s said that he lives, a specific cave in a specific town. It’s called San Vincente and its by a volcano called Chinchontepec. So there are caves there and people say he lives in them. It’s so people don’t go to places that are remote and dangerous, so don’t go there because something might happen to you and you will never return. There are stories that gold was hidden in those caves by the Spaniards- there’s a lot of folklore surrounding that region.”

Who told you about him?

“You grow up with those stories. It could be an adult, or you could hear it on the radio. You will find it any book with short stories when you are learning to read. But El Cipitio was so popular that he even had a tv show! And a song. You can see him pretty much anywhere.”

 

My thoughts: There are some very familiar elements in this story that are reminiscent of other Latin American legends, suggesting there is great intertextuality and variation by country. I was intrigued by the description of La Sihuanaba, who reminded me of two different Hispanic legends. She resembles La Descarnada, a legendary figure from Panama that another informant shared with me. Both stories seem to have the same cautionary purpose- to warn men not to womanize because they may end up encountering this monstrous woman. Her origin story also reminds me of La Malinche, another disgraced native woman who was transformed into a ghost legend (in her case, into La Llorona). These legends probably all derive from one story and then evolve as they are spread across Central America.

The legend of El Cipitio is reflective of Latin American views on gender, as discussed briefly by the informant. It warns women about infedility and how they will be punished for cheating or having an illegitimate child. It also depicts the male figure, El Cipitio, as a predatory figure who wants to steal young girls- this also reflects the common advice “don’t talk to strangers”, as well as deterring them from going anywhere dangerous like the jungle or the mountains on their own.

For more on El Cipitio, see this article, “El Cipitio” from El Salvador Mi Pais, a version of the legend in Spanish that expands upon the Nahuatl origins of this story: http://www.elsalvadormipais.com/leyenda-del-cipitio

 

Turtle Man in Turtle Bay

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Illinois
Performance Date: 4/2/16
Primary Language: English
The informant is a 2o year old classmate and friend of mine who was excited to share about her camp’s urban legend.
I went to a camp called Lake of the Woods Camp for girls, I was a camper for 8 years, and went for 8 weeks every summer since I was 7.
So its just kind of a camp legend that we’ve always had. theres this story about Turtle man- the legend of turtle man, and theres this place called turtle bay at camp and its part of our lake at camp and its filled with sulfur and so it smells really really bad. So the urban legend goes that there was a counselor who was really mean to all the campers- he worked at Greenwood’s Camp for Boys, and so um the counselor was really mean, just not a nice person- beat the campers, was awful to them. He would smoke cigarettes in the cabin, and he was just so rude to them and he told them if you tell your parents who i am I’m going to kill you all or something like that because he was an ex military person. And he um one day the boys decided to pull a prank of him because they hated him so much- it was fourth of july and they decide to pull a prank on him. This was back when you could receive a bunch of packages and have packages with fireworks and they were just going to blow them up and the counselor found them and he said he would confiscate them. So he put them under his bed. Since it was fourth of july, all the counselors like to get drunk and so he came home that night and he was really drunk and was smoking a cigarette and he fell asleep with the cigarette in his hand and the fireworks went off and the counselor ran into turtle bay and he was never seen again- and the myth is that he comes back every fourth of july to haunt the campers.
I first heard it my first year at camp from older girl campers, and now even though they don’t allow ghost stories everyone still knows about it.
ANALYSIS:
I like this piece specifically because it really shows how strong a piece of folklore can be. As the informant mentioned, the camp banned ghost stories, presumably because the age range of kids in the camp is quite large. Even so, the informant mentioned that everyone knows the story anyways and it will continue to be passed down.

The Legend of Oniontown

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: New Jersey/California
Performance Date: 4/19/16
Primary Language: English

MR heard about the legend of Oniontown at a summer camp a few hours away, in New Milford, Connecticut. Him and his friends didn’t believe it was real, so they went on a legend quest to see if it was true. It’s a bit of a memorate in that their own personal experience might have been due to other causes, but fit into the legends surrounding the place and and therefore they (at least at first) attributed their experience to what they had heard about inbreeding and meth cookers, despite acknowledgements that the town might just be trying to keep all these dumb kids out.

“Oniontown is a tiny town surrounded by urban legends. People say that it’s a place where people are giant inbred mutants. It’s a lawless society where mutant people will drag strangers out of their car and beat them to death. Police overlook it, though it is only a few miles from civilization.  It supposedly has a giant statue of an onion in the town square.

I was friends with camp owner’s son, and the counselors & them went to go and prove it wrong since we were so close and obsessed with urban legends. We got a van together and went to check it out.

They made a rule that if anyone gets too scared, they would turn back, no questions asked.

As they are driving, it starts getting more woodsy.

Two of the people get freaked out and don’t like way it looks. They decide they’re too scared, and ask to turn back.

Ok, fine, so we turn back, but then we get lost. We have no clue where we are. We got so lost that we ended up right near the main road to Oniontown. We decided we might as well go check it out, so we drop our scared friends off at McDonalds and tell them we’ll go explore and come back for them.

The stories say that first the road will turn to gravel, then get narrower and narrower, then mutants will come.

The first thing we see is a junkyard on right named “Murphy’s autobody,” which we take to be a good sign because Murphy is last name of guy driving car. Which, by the way, is a piece of shit car. It’s a van driven down from Canada, old and decrepit, which was given to the guy to run into the ground since it’s near the end of its life).

Then the asphalt turns to gravel.

The two car road changes to a one car then narrows even more to barely a one car road. We wonder how on gods green earth do people get to this city.

We come around a bend and stop. Headlights turn on in front of us.

Three enormous guys get out in road in front of us, huge ass guys, seven feet tall, and one is holding a cinderblock.

The mood in car turns from laughing to complete horror. One guy throws a rock, and the entire windshield shatters.

On of the other guys throws something else at passenger window, and that shatters too. I was in the backseat so it took a while for this to register.

One friend, who I credit our survival to his fast thinking, decided to drive forward. At the last minute he sees a branching road, spins the wheel and goes down that way and into a field. ACDC was on the radio, and my friend thought it was a good idea to turn it up. It was only funny later.

We go back to the road, spin around, and go back to MacDonald’s.Our friends are still there, eating a happy meal and taking their sweet time. We scream and motion for them to get in the car. They get up, take their time, throw away their stuff, not aware of what’s happening. Just then the truck with the guys pulls in and comes around other side of parking lot and rolls down the window.

A guy says: ‘You think this is a joke? Think this is funny? don’t ever come to our town again.'”

MR thinks that because so many people heard about onion town and started to visit, people got tired of strangers coming to town and now mess with people. He also still thinks there’s something fishy going on, maybe cooking meth or something of the sort. There are weird buff hillbillies, nonetheless.

Man With the Hook

Nationality: American
Age: 66
Occupation: Attorney
Residence: San Jose, California
Performance Date: April 17, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: French

The informant (my grandmother), loves Halloween and all things spooky. I remember that as a child, I could always expect to hear a horrific legend or other form of narrative when visiting her house. I asked the informant if she would be able to hold a video call with me over FaceTime, and during the call I asked her which of these narratives was her favorite to tell. She said it was a legend almost everyone had heard in some fashion, called “The Man With the Hook.”

“We would always tell this story on the way to Clear Lake. We’d stop the car and park on the side of the road when we got close to Napa State Hospital, then start to tell the story to whichever kids were in the car. It goes that some teenagers were parked near the hospital the night before doing something they were not supposed to be doing, listening to music and making out. Suddenly, the music stops and an announcement comes on the radio that a mental patient who had a history of murdering young girls just escaped from Napa State Hospital. We chose this hospital because in those days, it was the closest place where crazy people were put, and there was a prison part to it. He was distinctive because he had lost one hand and had a hook. The girl got scared and said she heard something outside, but the boy dismissed her saying that she was just paranoid. She yelled at him, and he got mad so he peeled out from where they were parked and sped away. Right when the car started moving she asked if he heard something, and he said no. When they got back home and stepped out of the car, there was a bloody hook on the door. They never found the man, though, and rumor has it he is still out searching for his next victim.”

This is a classic scary narrative that most Americans will say they have heard in some form. This particular version was adapted to a particular location that was convenient to the informant, so that the fear of the children who heard it was amplified by the supposed proximity of the man with the hook. The legend functions not only as a way to playfully elicit paranoia in children, but also to warn them against misbehaving. It is implied that the teenagers in the narrative are doing something that they shouldn’t be by kissing in the car at a remote location so as to not get caught by their parents, and as a result of this behavior the man with the hook almost gets them. No part of this narrative must take place in a specific geographic location, so it can easily be told by those who know it wherever they happen to be.