spooks and rainbows
Carrie sent me a link to a news story about a British ghost in India that demands cake and tea from the locals, who kindly oblige. It´s quite cute.
And the funny thing is that I have a Peruvian version to tell, though it´s a bit more gruesome and not so sweet. In one area near where PANC works, there are stories about a tall thin white man ghost who kills people by sucking the fat out of them; you can stay safe by being agreesive towards the ghost. Well, one of the guys in the PANC group is exceptionally tall and scrawny. He wanted to go do some survey work in that area, so they had to have a couple of extra workers accompany him because they were afraid the locals would attack him or something, thinking he was the ghost. Luckily nothing happened, but weird, huh?
So I´m heading up to Huacho (a bigger town just south of Barranca and PANC) to meet up with 2 PANC members who are working Fridays at the museum there. They´re going to reintroduce me to the director, and I´ll take some pictures of the place. Hopefully we´ll get some things in the works for starting the grant process. Very cool. I´m coming back to Lima in the evening, though, because it turns out the course for Yachaywasi and the adobe stuff is actually Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. So I´ll miss out on the PANC pachamanca and the partying. And I´ll have to wait until the next weekend to go up and take the GPS points--it´s the last weekend Kit will be there, so I have to do it then since I need her help.
And as promised, here´s asome other pictures of the pretty yarn that Yachaywasi dyed a few weeks ago.
And the funny thing is that I have a Peruvian version to tell, though it´s a bit more gruesome and not so sweet. In one area near where PANC works, there are stories about a tall thin white man ghost who kills people by sucking the fat out of them; you can stay safe by being agreesive towards the ghost. Well, one of the guys in the PANC group is exceptionally tall and scrawny. He wanted to go do some survey work in that area, so they had to have a couple of extra workers accompany him because they were afraid the locals would attack him or something, thinking he was the ghost. Luckily nothing happened, but weird, huh?
So I´m heading up to Huacho (a bigger town just south of Barranca and PANC) to meet up with 2 PANC members who are working Fridays at the museum there. They´re going to reintroduce me to the director, and I´ll take some pictures of the place. Hopefully we´ll get some things in the works for starting the grant process. Very cool. I´m coming back to Lima in the evening, though, because it turns out the course for Yachaywasi and the adobe stuff is actually Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. So I´ll miss out on the PANC pachamanca and the partying. And I´ll have to wait until the next weekend to go up and take the GPS points--it´s the last weekend Kit will be there, so I have to do it then since I need her help.
And as promised, here´s asome other pictures of the pretty yarn that Yachaywasi dyed a few weeks ago.
posted by archaesmd at 5:28 PM
5 Comments:
I knew that sounded familiar. Reporter (now infamous amongst anthropologists) Patrick Tierney may talk about them in his book The Highest Altar. But I knew I had read about them
From the Fortean Times, Issue 138, 2000, which isn't always as careful with sourcing as it can be.
Andean Fat Stealers
The contemporary urban legends of organ theft may tap into some very modern fears, but in South America tales of supernatural creatures that steal fat from their sleeping victims have circulated for centuries.
Central and South America have other explanations for missing body parts, such as the supernatural creatures that swipe body fat. The lik’ichiri are said to haunt the altiplano (highlands) of the Andes mountains; the word means ‘fat stealer’ in the language of the Aymara, one of the indigenous groups of the Andes and it is well known among the Quechua, Aymara, and other native Andean cultures.
While in Bolivia, in 1996, I interviewed Eulogio Chavez, an ethnolinguist at the Ethnology and Folklore museum in La Paz about this tradition. According to Chavez, the lik’ichiri attacks people as they sleep on the altiplano; it cuts long, thin slits in the sides of its victim and removes the fat painlessly. The wound promptly heals and, usually, the victim is none the wiser (Radford 1996). According to legend, unless treatment is given promptly, the victim soon dies.
Although Chavez believed the lik’ichiri to be a very ancient belief – possibly originating before the Spanish Conquest in the 1530s – its urban variant has clearly been modernised. While most reported attacks occur in the mountains, some stories come from the cities as well.
In La Paz, Bolivia’s capital and largest city, hapless bus riders are said to be attacked late at night. To protect himself, the traveller should travel during daylight wherever possible, or in the company of others at night. Eating garlic is supposed to dilute the fat, making it less appealing or unusable to the lik’ichiri. Treatments include a potion called achacachi.
Traditionally, the lik’ichiri is regarded as a spirit or imaginary entity, but most people I interviewed in La Paz, including Mr Chavez, believe the modern lik’ichiri is a person, or group of people, with special powers, including the ability to lull their victims and make painless incisions. The powers of the lik’ichiri seem to many people like hypnosis; ie, the ability to make others fall asleep at will, follow commands, or dull the pain of a cut. “It’s not necessarily evil,” Chavez notes, “but a profession. It’s an economic question.”
The lik’ichiri supposedly sells its collected fat to international corporations – usually American – for indeterminate use in plastic surgery and the development of anæsthetics. According to Chavez, it is widely believed that unscrupulous company representatives buy the fat knowing that it was taken from innocent victims. According to Chavez, this is rationalised as comparable to the history of quinine (1); just as the whites took quinine from the Andes and developed it for profit, he said, the same is happening with the life-preserving fat of the Andean people.
Similar beliefs include the pishtacos and the sacaojos (“eye-stealers”) of Peru. The Peruvian capital Lima, in particular, was gripped by the rumour that the sacaojos were bands of foreigners who roamed the streets, kidnapping children and later throwing them back on the pavement with their eyes gouged out. The eyes were believed to be sold overseas.
The legend may articulate anxiety about the loss of body fat through disease or starvation; in the frigid Andean highlands, such a loss by any means could be fatal. On a cultural level, not only is the very future (the children) of the native peoples being taken but their own bodies are being stolen from them. Inevitably, this fuels xenophobia. According to Shakespeare: “The figure of the pishtaco is first of all that of a foreigner. This tall white – who drinks milk and sleeps by day – goes out at night carrying under his long coat a long knife with which he cuts up Indians. He uses their fat to oil his machines and their blood to sell to blood banks.” (Shakespeare 1989).
Although the traditional lik’ichiri is usually thought of as a native, its modern cousins are ‘foreigners’ and many are accused of being lik’ichiri and even assaulted. One American woman I spoke with in La Paz, who worked on the altiplano, said she had been warned not to be seen out at night; locals, whose attitude is better-safe-than-sorry, might attack first before they ask questions.
Despite its similarity to the vampire legend – the night attacks, the use of garlic, the draining of a bodily substance, an ability to put others to sleep and turn invisible, etc – Chavez sees no parallels between the two traditions: “One is fiction,” he said. “The other occurs right here.”
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:5aChV0WUZQUJ:www.forteantimes.com/articles/138_liki.shtml+peru+fat+spirit&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=10
I am far more familiar with the tlahuelpuchi a bloodsucker in Central Mexico. They are considered ridiculously evil, and if identified, are killed on the spot. I strongly urge anyone interested in Mesoamerican folklore to read Bloodsucking Witchcraft by Nutini and Roberts.
Stacey, if the topic comes up anymore, definitely take note. It might be something you could follow up. You might also want to keep your ears open for stories of Treasure Lights. These are hemisphere-wide, throughout Latin America and beyond. The various details differ, but typically at midnight luminsicent ghost or corpse lights are said to emerge from areas (usually the tops of mounds, pyramids, or other huaca type places) where treasure is supposed to be buried. In one story I heard from Honduras, a cock is supposed to crow when this occurs. The lights fly about, sometimes darting between pyramids. These stories are nothing new, and I imagine they propagated with Spanish colonialism, though I don't know if they are a European import.
There is much more here
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_3_23/ai_54600094/pg_6
Super-cool! Thanks Jeb! Yeah, I will definitely listen in if I hear anything else about it. And this is along the coast, remember, not in the highlands. So the idea has definitely spread.
Gorgous yarn on the clothesline. Makes one want to lick it! But then that probably wouldn't be appreciated by the locals
Eww, it´d taste kind-of gross too, I´d imagine. They use a insect, called a cochinilla, to dye all the pinks and reds; it is really small and lives on a cactus.
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