A (in Northern Quechua "slaughterer, cutthroat"), (in Southern Quechua, similar meaning) or (in Aymara,"slaughterer") is a folkloric boogeyman figure in the Andes region of South America, particularly in Peru and Bolivia, which extracts the fat of its victims.
It is believed to have originated in Spanish conquistadors' practice of using Indigenous Peruvians' corpse fat as treatment for wounds and illnesses.
Nomenclature In central Peru it is called (in Central and Northern Quechua, meaning "slaughterer", from , "behead, cut the throat") and south of the Andes , , (from Southern Quechua: , also meaning "to behead or cut the throat of") or called ("cutter") in the Aymara language, (abstract) and p. 718 (endnote 2). depending on the region.
It is called by the Aymara names (var. "slaughterer") or ("fat-maker") in the Bolivian Altiplano, lik'ichiri in southern Bolivia.
Legend The typical pishtaco in Andean lore is an attacker targeting indigenous victims to extract the human fat ( "ointment") for various commercial purpose.
He is often given a white male racial profile (or mestizo), often said to be armed with a long knife, with which he beheads, disembowels, or dismembers his victims; thus immediately killing the victim. But the pishtaco may also leave no visible wound on the victim, but cause a fatal condition incurring death after a few days. This is possible by stunning the victim with magic powder and extracting the fat from the anus. He could be a nocturnal attacker or more of a marauder of the countryside, waylaying solitary travelers.
His perceived professional status, and consequently his garb and purpose of usage for the obtained fat, has transformed depending on the epoch, but the pishtaco has consistently been seen as a powerful gringo figure. The original pishtaco lore (of the Conquistador era), held that Spanish soldiers collected Indian fat to treat their wounds. Later in the eighteenth century, the nakaq ("butcher") subtype appeared which were conceived of as knife-slashing priests. and at some time came it came to be believed that the pishtaco used the fat to make better church bells, or polish the faces on the saints' statues. Later of his avatars were a man on horseback or driving an automobile, usually plantation owners (hacendado) from the age of slavery onward into most of the 20th century. The fat was for greasing firearms, but also seen as being used to lubricate machinery on sugar processing plants, etc.(cf,). Beside pharmaceuticals, cosmetic usage became part of the lore by the 19th century, where the fat was allegedly used for both medicine and soap-making, and this sort of talk about the kharisiri fat used for has persisted into the 1990s. Additional lore about the kharisiri is that they engage in cannibalism: they will make chicharrones from human flesh and sell them or eat them, together with eating mote (hominy) made of teeth instead of corn.
On balance, the pishtaco is more of a cannibal than vampire. However, Mary Weismantel (2001) has given the generalization that "pishtaco is nearly always a vampirelike white man..", and wrote that instead of eviscerating or maiming, they would sometimes drain the victim's "body fluids". In conference she has described the Andean pishtaco as "an evil priest who sucked the fat from Indians".
The "white bogeyman" is another characterization.
In the manifestation of the fear during the economic chaos of the Alan García administration (1980s), government ID card-carrying ñakaqs were rumored to be dispatched to collect fat as vital ingredient to some sort of medicine, whose sales were used to defray the foreign debt (cf. Nicario's work under )
Protection and cure The wayruru beans that are brilliantly red and black colored can be made into amulets to ward against kharisiri. Once afflicted with the wasting away condition after fat has been robbed by the kharisiri, the only cure, apart from killing the kharisiri itself, is to administer purchased human fat that needs to be burned using this wayruru bean and a white egg. The only ways to survive a pishtaco attack after the fact are to kill the pishtaco or to purchase human fat and burn it with wayruru beans and an egg, believed somehow to replenish the fat lost.
Note that the foregoing prescribed cure is based on anecdote, and the sick man (bleeding diarrhea and vomiting) recovered after supposed use of human fat, which could be expensively bought (For further discussion as modern commodity, cf. ).
Anthropologist Juan Antonio Manya records the belief that one may gain protection from a kharisiri by chewing chancaca, eating earth, or showing a clove of garlic that has been pierced by a needle.Manya (1969), p. 39 apud (endnote 8).
The targets of kharisiri attacks are usually adults rather than children or the elderly.
Sacaojos Thus the kharisiri which generally avoid bringing children to harm can be distinguished from the (meaning "eye snatchers" or "extractor of eyes", legend from the 1980s) that preys on children, though both beings are equivalents of pishtaco. The sacaojos is a version of the pishtaco or nakaq, as according to the cholo population (during the 1980s economic crisis). The rumors detailed machine gun-toting gringo doctors, accompanied by black men serving as aide or bodyguard, going into shantytowns to harvest children's eyes for export. Other rumors made claims of a special contraption used to extract the eye, or extraction of kidney and suet. And in 1988 young tourists accused of being kidnapping sacaojos were detained and nearly lynched. It is noted that the lore of the sacamanteca ("fat-snatcher") was widespread back in Spain in the early 20th century, appearing in the popular literature.
Other observations According to anthropological researcher Ernesta Vasquez del Aguila, the pishtaco is considered to be "untouchable" because he has "the defence of important institutions", whereas the pishtaco's victims are relatively systemically vulnerable.
Colonial background The legend of the pishtaco dates back at least to the 16th century. Conquistadores were known to treat their wounds with their enemies' corpse fats, citing Stern (1987), pp. 170–171 and contemporaries Cristóbal de Molina (1570s) and Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1601) wrote about the rumors about the unto (human grease ointment) that developed where by the Indigenous Andeans believed the Spaniards were there to collect the fat from them to use in this unto as the only cure for a certain illness, or to treat their sores. Spaniards were also said to have killed natives and boiled their corpses to produce fat to grease their metal muskets and cannons, which rusted quickly in the humid Amazon.
Anthropologist Efraín Morote Best asserted that pishtacos became associated especially with the order of Bethlehemite friars as a malicious rumor that spread at the beginning of the 18th century; in fact the order had cared for the sick and buried the dead, and took up alms collections on remote roads, possibly because the order's founder, Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur, was known to clean wounds with his mouth in an expression of humility. citing Morote Best (1951) pp. 81–85 This order of friars no longer exists, and in modern tellings, the accusations of pishtacos have henceforth fallen on mestizos and Caucasians. citing Morote Best (1951) and Weismantel (1997). Cf. on trying to distinguish mestizos, indio, black or white, etc. racial divides. The name nanaq was first attested in 1723 as a throat-cutter and already identified with the priesthood.Father Joseph García la Concepción (1723), quoted on nacas in
The Asháninka in the Peruvian Amazon believe in the present day believe the pishtaco (and the primordial whites) to be the wayward spawn of the (Incan) viracochas, fished out of the lake by a disobedient son of the shaman Inca, and came to be called "Franciscans" In Andean myth Viracocha is a creation god associated with Lake Titicaca, near where he built the world. The fair-skinned denizens there were also called viracochas.
The present-day pishtacos inherits some colonial traits, but are clearly remade in modern reincarnation. Thus the modern nakaq has three main uses for human fat: remedy (old), making resonant bells, and oiling machinery (new). The use of fat in casting bells for better sound is in-between: it is latter-day lore, but vaguely hails back to old association with the Church (cf. ).
Ecclesiastic pishtaco Morote Best finds that the stereotype of the pishtaco (or rather the ñak'aq) now conformed exactly with the characteristics of the Betlemitas (Bethlehemites), so that they were seen as wearing brown habits (like the Bethlehemites), and waylaying people (in the manner similar to the brothers asking for alms on the highways).
The modern lore of the kharisiri associates him with a whole list of ecclesiastical elements, like the bread (of the sacrament) or the Book of the Tata Cura ("daddy priest" who collects alms), and he is seen as using the human fat in casting bells of superior sound (as with the nakaq above), or turn them into holy oils and candles, or to polish the faces on the plaster busts of saints.
José María Arguedas records a story "Los pishtacos" taken down in Lima. The story is set in the early years of the Peruvian Republic (c. 1820s or after), when certain individuals would kill people and use the harvested grease in the foundry to cast the bell, and the more gifted the voice of the victim, the better sounding the bell turned out to be.
The Bolivian kharisiri had been widely portrayed as dead Franciscan monks wearing broad Franciscan hats until the 1950s, magically removing the kidney fat from the Aymara, and the bishop would make holy oil out of it.Crandon-Malamud, Libbet (1991) From the Fat of Our Souls, p. 121 apud
Artist Nicario Jiménez portrays the pishtaco harvesting fat for their bells in the guise of a Franciscan monks and sets this scene in the colonial period (cf. Nicario's work under ).
Techno-pishtacos The pishtaco, in modern times, has stood as a symbol for the fear of commodification of Indigenous bodies by white and foreign powers, and for the exploitative implementation of capitalism across Latin America and specifically in Peru that puts predominantly Indigenous as well as Black and Mestizo people at a disadvantage.
The modern version pishtaco was regarded as driving fancy cars like a Mercedes-Benz.
In Huacho, around the year 1983, pishtaco imagery was predominantly associated with the Villasol road-building company (or sometimes the Ministry of Public Works). Rumors circulated about murdered Indigenous people's bodies being used to uphold bridges and maintain the surrounding landscape; these rumors were most likely allegorical for the overworking and unworkable conditions of the company.
In the aftermath of the killings and disappearances in Peru, part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (or CVR, Comisión de la verdad y reconciliación) was the Integral Program of Reparations, which involved exhumations to confirm deaths or discover the "disappeared", in which the surviving family of the ascertained victim received a sum of about 3,000 Euros. But rather than the remains being respectfully reinterred, the families complained the remains were lumped together and possibly sold for profit as crushed bone material or "flavor enhancers" to industries or as cadavers to medical facilities.
Though in a different country, powerful white men (or organization) has been rumored in Honduras of kidnapping children for experimental usage, and the U.S. CIA has been accused in the rumor.
Greasing modern machinery The modern pishtaco or ñaktaq was seen as needing human fat oil to run anything from the manufacture of metals and drugs all the way to the US rocket ships.