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The Chupacabra becomes a recurring legend
San Juan (Puerto Rico) Star
6 May 1996,
by Robert Friedman
WASHINGTON -- The goatsucker is on the go -- with new alleged victims reported in other Caribbean countries, Mexico, Central America and Dade County, Florida. Once strictly del pais, the chupacabras, as the supposed vampire-like killer of barnyard animals is known in Spanish, has recently been spotted in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Miami.
The monster -- reptilian body, oval head, bulging red eyes, fanged teeth and long, darting tongue -- has allegedly pulled off one of the more grisly animal slaughters of late: the one-night massacre of 69 goats, chickens, geese and ducks in the heavily Hispanic Sweetwater neighborhood of South Miami. Miami police and the local zoologist say that the killer was a large dog -- but Sweetwater residents insist that the deed was done by the blood-sucking beast first spotted in the central mountains of Puerto Rico [1994].
Whatever, the chupacabras phenomenon seems quick becoming part of Hispanic -- and possibly international -- bestial lore. The goatsucker already has been tagged the Bigfoot of the Caribbean by stateside journalists. The monster made its network TV debut last week via "Unsolved Mysteries." It was the talk of the popular Miami-based gabfest, "El Show de Cristina," which is transmitted throughout Latin America. That show featured Canovanas Mayor Jose "Chemo" Soto, known to townsfolk as "Chemo Jones" for his weekly chupacabra hunts through the surrounding hills, using a caged goat for bait. Soto offered this grim warning: "Whatever it is, it's highly intelligent. Today it is attacking animals, tomorrow it may be attacking people."
Tee shirt sales are said to be booming, a video game reportedly is in the works, songs are sung to Ol' Red Eyes over South Florida radio stations (such as "Chupacabra-fragalisticexpialidotious," as in the song of a similar name from "Mary Poppins.") The beast is on the Internet, courtesy of some Puerto Rican students at Princeton University, who give tongue-in-cheek updates daily on the goatsucker's doings.
So, what have we here? Among other things, a recurring legend, especially prevalent in Latin America, according to anthropologists, Hispanic historians, and others. "There are a certain number of these legends of bloodsucking animals in South and Latin America," said Richard Grinker, an anthropology professor at George Washington University. "They are usually analyzed as anti-capitalist, an unconscious means of rebellion by country people who believe that capitalism is sucking dry the earth and their entire being. Fellow anthropologist Paul Brodwin acknowledged that blood-sucking legends pre-date quasi-Marxist analyses, but said the legends often get reinterpreted "according to social circumstances."
Take, for instance, the legend of the Loup Garou, which Brodwin has studied in the Haitian countryside. This sometime human-sometime animal being is related to the French werewolf legend, said Brodwin. But with a difference. The Loup Garou sucks the blood of its human victims.[???] The Haitian legend has been analyzed as a "collective fantasy," said the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor, of an unconscious suspicion and fear the poorer-than-poor have of their neighbors.
Marvette Perez,curator of Hispanic history at the Smithsonian Institution's American History Museum, sees deja vu once more in the chupacabras tales. Perez, a native of Arecibo, recalled the similarities between the chupacabras and both the Moca vampire and the garadiablo of island lore. A couple of decade ago, the Moca monster was sucking blood of assorted animals around that small mountain town, while the garadiablo was a devilish looking creepy crawly from the lagoon seen in local swamplands. "This seems to be a very Caribbean phenomenon, especially of the Spanish- speaking islands," said Perez. "It's part of our folklore. It's inter- esting that the chupacabras has not been found on the English-speaking islands, but has migrated only in places where people speak Spanish.
Pedro Vidal, professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at American University, remembers hearing childhood tales in his native Venezuela of a beast sucking the blood not only of animals, but also of little children. Vidal, who has done research on vampires, noted that the hemispheric roots of such entities go way back, to the Mayans, who worshipped a "vampire figure deity long before the idea of Dracula."
Bram Stoker's novel of the blood-thirsty count became a big hit in Victorian England in an age of anxiety over a syphilis epidemic, said Vidal. Now, another sexually transmitted epidemic has unsettled the populace. Puerto Rico, he noted, is among the areas in the hemisphere hardest hit by AIDS. It is entirely possible, he said, that the commotion over the chupacabras could be linked to the AIDS fear.
Unbeknownst to many, there is a real live goatsucker in captivity in the Washington, D.C. zoo. In fact, ornithologists know all about goatsuckers -- which is the name given to a family of nocturnal birds. They are described as soft-feathered with long, pointed wings, short, weak legs and feet, a very small bill, but a wide, gaping mouth, and whose eyes reflect light at night. Some goatsuckers of note are night jars, whippoorwills and the Australian frog mouth, which is on display at the D.C. zoo. Could they be...? Most unlikely, said Bob Hoage of National Zoo. The winged Goatsuckers feed almost exclusively on insects, he noted.
The Goatsucker tag comes from the Latin word, Caprimulgus. The birds are often found in the Mediterranean in places where goats graze. In a strange twist, bird-watcher-columnist Don Wilson reports in the Orlando Sun Sentinel that "the harmless whippoorwill was once viewed as a sinister creature. Superstitious country folk once believed the birds sucked the milk from goats' udders, causing them to dry up."
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