chullachaqui

"A demon of the jungle, known to almost everyone in the Amazon, frightening and pathetic. He is characterized by having one or both feet deformed — either both turned backwards, or one shaped like that of an animal, such as a deer or jaguar; [..]. The deformed foot is emblematic of his nature: turned backwards, it leaves false tracks; but it cannot be disguised, revealing his identity. He takes on the form of a friend or relative, or of an animal to draw in hunters, and lures people deep into the jungle, where they become hopelessly lost. People thus stolen away he then abandons, makes sick, enslaves, drives mad. The poet César Calvo pictures chullachaquis as zombie-like creatures — creations of great shamans, sculpted out of the air, or formed from kidnapped children. If a kidnapped child is charged with evil powers, the right foot becomes deformed, self-contradictory — an animal foot when the chullachaqui is in human form, a human foot when in animal form. But there is also a second type of chullachaqui — benevolent, a person of the good, “a deceit in the service of the truth,” with no deformity. In either case, the kidnapped one does not return. Yet there is something sad about the chullachaqui. He dwells alone in the inundated forest, where the chullachaquicaspi tree grows, or under lupuna trees, with which, [..], he has an “indissoluble agreement of love.” He keeps a garden in which he cultivates only sachacaimito, and lives on its fruits.