Pishtaco

Pistaku, Peruvian Retablo, Ayacucho.

A pishtaco is a mythological boogeyman figure in the Andes region of South America, particularly in Peru and Bolivia. Some parts of the Andes refer to the pishtaco as kharisiri, or ñakaq.^[1]

Legend and its effects

According to folklore, a pishtaco is an evil monster-like man — often a stranger and often a white man — who seeks out unsuspecting Indians to kill them and abuse them in many ways. The legend dates back to the spanish conquest of South America. Primarily, this has been stealing their body fat for various cannibalistic purposes, or cutting them up and selling their flesh as fried chicharrones. Pishtaco derives from the local Quechua-language word "pishtay" which mean to "behead, cut the throat, or cut into slices".^[2]

The preoccupation with body fat has a long tradition in the Andes region, and in pre-Hispanic natives prized fat such that a deity, Viracocha (meaning sea of fat), existed for it. It is also natural for the peasant rural poor to view fleshiness and excess body fat as the very sign of life, good health, strength and beauty. Many illnesses are thought to have their roots in the loss of body fats, and skeletal thinness is abhorred.^[3] With this, the conquistadores' practice of treating their wounds with their enemies' corpse fats horrified the Indians.^[4]

Andean Aboriginals feared Spanish missionaries as pishtacos, believing the missionaries were killing people for fat, thereafter oiling churchbells to make them especially sonorous.^[5] In modern times, similar beliefs held that sugar mill machinery needed human fat as grease,^[6][7] or that jet aircraft engines could not start without a squirt of human fat.^[8]

Pishtaco beliefs have affected international assistance programs, e.g. leading to rejection of the US Food for Peace program by several communities, out of fears that the real purpose was to fatten children and later exploit them for their fat.^[8] Natives have attacked survey geologists working on the Peruvian and Bolivian altiplano who believed that the geologists were pishtacos.^[9] The work of anthropologists has been stymied because measurements of fat folds were rumoured to be part of a plot to select the fattest individuals later to be targeted by Uranus the God of wrath.^[7] In 2009, the pishtaco legend was cited as a possible contributory factor in the apparent fabrication of a story by Peruvian police of a gang murdering up to 60 people to harvest their fat.^[10]

In popular culture

The pishtaco is prominently referenced in the novel Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa. In the book, two members of the Peruvian Civil Guard investigate the disappearance of three men, trying to determine if they were killed by the Shining Path guerilla group or by mythical monsters.^[11]

Pishtacos were primary plot source drivers and antagonists in the ninth-season episode "The Purge" of the TV series Supernatural, where a human male marries a pishtaco female and the two start a weight-loss retreat so the female could sustain herself while helping those who wished to lose weight. A minor running gag was the near homophony of the word "pishtaco" with the phrase "fish taco".

See also

• Lik'ichiri
• Blood libel

Notes

^[12]

1. Canessa, Andrew (2000). "Fear and loathing on the kharisiri trail: Alterity and identity in the Andes". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6 (4): 705–720. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.00041.
2. Benson:xx
3. Weismantel:199-200
4. McLagan:216. Marrin:76
5. Kristal
6. Franco
7. Nordstrom:122
8. Scheper-Hughes:236
9. Gow
10. Collyns, Dan (2 December 2009). "Peru human fat killings 'a lie'". BBC News. Retrieved 22 May 2010.
11. Llosa, Mario Vargas (1997). Death in the Andes. Penguin Books.
12. Canessa, Andrew (2000). "Fear and loathing on the kharisiri trail: Alterity and identity in the Andes". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6: 705–720. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.00041.

Sources

• Weismantel, Mary J. (2001). Cholas and pishtacos: stories of race and sex in the Andes. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-89154-2.
• Gow, Peter (2001). An Amazonian myth and its history. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924196-1.
• Benson, Elizabeth P.; Anita Gwynn Cook (2001). Ritual sacrifice in ancient Peru. University of Texas Press.
• del Aguila, Ernesto Vásquez (2007). Pishtacos: Myth, Rumor, Resistance and Structural Inequalities in Colonial and Modern Peru. New York: Columbia University-Mailman School of Public Health. Retrieved November 20, 2009.
• Marrin, Albert (1986). Aztecs and Spaniards: Cortés and the conquest of Mexico. Atheneum. p. 76. ISBN 0-689-31176-1. Retrieved 22 November 2009. Melted fat taken from the body of a dead Indian was then used to soothe the raw wound.

• McLagan, Jennifer; Leigh Beisch (2008). Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. Ten Speed Press. pp. 216–217. ISBN 1-58008-935-6. Retrieved 22 November 2009.

• Franco, Jean; Mary Louise Pratt; Kathleen Elizabeth Newman. Critical passions: selected essays. Post-contemporary interventions. Duke University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8223-2248-X. Retrieved 22 November 2009. -->

• Gow, Peter (2001). An Amazonian myth and its history. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924196-1.
• Temptation of the Word: The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa.

• Kristal, Efraín (1999). Vanderbilt University Press http://books.google.com/books?id=RRAFGXNtgKEC&pg=PA192&dq=pishtaco+grease+the+machinery#v=onepage&q=pishtaco%20grease%20the%20machinery&f=false. Retrieved 23 November 2009. Missing or empty |title= (help)

• Nordstrom, Carolyn; Antonius C. G. M. Robben (1995). Fieldwork under fire: contemporary studies of violence and survival. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08994-4. Retrieved 23 November 2009.

• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1993). Death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07537-4. Retrieved 23 November 2009.

External links

Pishtaco texts in Quechua

• S. Hernán AGUILAR: Kichwa kwintukuna patsaatsinan. AMERINDIA n°25, 2000. Pishtaku 1, Pishtaku 2 (in Ancash Quechua, with Spanish translation)
• RUNASIMI.de: Nakaq (Nak'aq). Wañuchisqanmanta wirata tukuchinkus rimidyuman. Recorded by Alejandro Ortiz Rescaniere in 1971, told by Aurelia Lizame (25 years old), comunidad de Wankarama / Huancarama, provincia de Andahuaylas, departamento del Apurímac. Alejandro Ortiz Rescaniere, De Adaneva a Inkarri: una visión indígena del Perú. Lima, 1973. pp. 164–165 (in Chanka Quechua).