Tag Archives: Mexico

Chuchupate Cures Everything

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student/Library Worker
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is an 18-year-old biomedical engineering student at the University of Southern California. She is currently a freshman and grew up in Shafter, California. Shafter is about 2 hours away from Los Angeles by car. She is not particularly religious but described herself as spiritual. She was born in America, but some of the older members of her family were not.

I asked the informant if she had any remedies for aches or pains. She immediately told me of a remedy that her grandmother uses. Her grandmother is Mexican. The informant says that her grandmother uses a liquid called chuchupate to cure everything “like Windex in the My Big Fat Greek Wedding movie.” She gave several examples of when her grandmother would use chuchupate, including bruises and sprained ankles. Her father had broken his arm when he was younger and applying chuchupate apparently sped up the healing process. Unlike Windex in the movie, chuchupate is made to cure things and does not have another primary use, at least in the eyes of her family. The informant did not seem entirely convinced that the chuchupate actually did anything, but she did not think it did any harm and was subject to her grandmother applying it several times throughout her life. I inquired as to where the chuchupate was acquired and she said that her grandmother goes to Mexico to have the chuchupate liquid made for her at a medicine shop. I asked if she could get it in the United States but just chose to go to Mexico to get it, but my informant says that the compound is not available in the United States.

A quick Google search after I talked to the informant revealed that chuchupate has several other common names, including osha and bear root. In addition to the treatment of injuries as listed by the informant, the root is apparently used for curing viral and bacterial issues like sore throats and bronchitis, though not by Western doctors. I believe some of the healing power of chuchupate is in the belief that it will help. I found it interesting that my informant only listed chuchupate as beneficial to injuries, while the first few search results focused almost entirely on its use for various types of infections.  Additionally, chuchupate grows readily in the United States so theoretically it is available in the US, but perhaps just not in a suitable form made in a medicine shop.

Cihuateotl

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 22
Occupation: student/nanny
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 28 April 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant (L) is a 22 year old film student at California State University Los Angeles. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma before coming to Los Angeles for college after high school. Her family is Mexican and Catholic. At the suggestion of our mutual friend who had heard the story before, she told me the legend of the Cihuateotl. She mentioned prior to telling me that the story was not told often within her family because of how sad it is. She was told the story by her grandmother when L’s fourth cousin died in childbirth, when L was around seven years old. Though L does not tell the story often within her family, L does tell the story when other urban legends are being discussed among her friends in Los Angeles, which is where I heard some of the story prior to beginning to collect folklore for this database.  The story involves the following legendary figures:

In “native ancient Mexico,” the cihuateotl are the spirits of the women who died in childbirth. Their sadness is the reason the sun goes down at night. Once a month, the spirits haunt the streets to hold the children they were never able to hold. After sunset, they try to abduct children. Because ‘good’ children should be inside and safe by the time the sun goes down, the children they were trying to abduct are the bad, misbehaving children. This is also used to scare children into behaving, as the cihuateotl would not give the children back.

This mix of ancient myth and urban legend is an interesting intersection between old and new. Though the spirits make sense in both modern and ancient contexts, the haunting of streets does not make as much sense in ancient Mexico, which probably did not have the sort of streets and highways L referred to in her retelling.

The story also presents some interesting contrasts. The fact that the cihuateotl only abduct bad children seem to say something about how either those children  do not deserve a real mother or the mothers who allow their children to be  bad don’t deserve to have children when there are mothers who died trying to have them. While these ideas are in the background, the practical use of scaring children into behaving probably plays more of a role in why the story is told than the more subtle themes.

La Llorona: Kid Killer

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student/Library Worker
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

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. 

Petting a wet dog = death by car accident

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2014-04-29
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“I don’t understand this one at all: my grandmother always used to say that if you pet a wet dog, you’d get hit by a car. I genuinely do not understand where she got an idea that stupid. But she told it to my dad and all of her children.”

The informant’s grandmother, who received no formal education, was born, lived, and died in Irapuarto, Mexico. The informant is generally mistrusting of all things he has learned from his grandmother, as he refers to most folk belief as “batshit.” Such beliefs hold no weight to him and serve only to be laughed at.

Don’t Comb Wet Hair

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2014-04-29
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant learned from his father, who learned from his mother, not to comb your hair when wet, as doing so would make you more susceptible to being struck and killed by lightning.

This belief is likely rooted in the observation of static electricity, a phenomenon which immediately evokes images of lightning.

The informant’s grandmother, who received no formal education, was born, lived, and died in Irapuarto, Mexico. The informant is generally mistrusting of all things he has learned from his grandmother, as he refers to most folk belief as “batshit.” Such beliefs hold no weight to him and serve only to be laughed at.