General Info About the Item

• Spirit/Creature
• Language: Spanish
• Country of Origin- Mexico
• Informant- EPV
• Date Collected- Nov 1, 2021

Informant Data:

EPV was born in 2000 in the Los Angeles valley area. While born in LA, he spent a great deal of his childhood in the Lake Tahoe region with his father. His parents have been divorced since he was young, and he is of Mexican descent. EPV studies computer science at Dartmouth College, and is a current Junior. 

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Mexican iconography and entities predate many Christian influences in the region, and are particularly poignant in those of native lineage (such as EPV’s family). Spirits and entities can be either positive, neutral, or negative depending on the intention of the spirit. 

Social Context: ‘El Cucuy’ is a spirit that attacks the disobedient, and therefore is passed down to younger children in Mexican households. EPV remembers hearing it from his aunt after he knocked over her bowl of soup as she was having dinner. Often, the illustrations of the cucuy are paired with an example from another family to build allure, e.g. “Your friend X didn’t go to bed on time, now El Cucuy grabbed him!” 

Item:

 ‘El Cucuy’ is essentially the Latin equivalent of a bogeyman. He is of short stature, hairy, and evil, and supposedly attacks children that are disobeying their elders. A child must go to bed on time, mustn’t steal, and mustn’t horse around or the Cucuy will come and grab them. Cucuy does not visit obedient children who listen to their parents.

Attatched File

Informant Comments:

EPV remembers being quite scared of this as a child.

Collector Comments:

This is really similar to other non-latin conceptions of a boogeyman, and struck me as reminiscent of my own childhood.

Tags:

Demon

Latin

Children

Latin America

Monster