Like last week, this Mythology Monday will cover Latin American urban legends. I enjoy covering them and there’s certainly a variety to cover in this area of supernatural storytelling. Let’s get started!
In this tale, a girl is walking down a random street in Latin America, and she felt like she was being followed. She made the decision to go further into the streets, where she shouldn’t have gone. She encountered some men who asked her what they should do to her. She was allowed to pick between being used by them (you can just read this and know what it means), or them making her smile. She picked for them to make her smile. They grabbed a knife. With that knife they proceeded to give her a Glasgow smile.
The video proceeds to explain that this is a real thing, the Glasgow smile. It’s been made more famous by various urban legends from Japan, and Korea, and it was part of the Joker from The Dark Knight.
This video is a origin story of a Colombian creature which supposedly sought to punish unfaithful men. In this origin story, there was a wife who was unfaithful to her husband. Her infidelity is ultimately discovered, and in his rage, her husband murders both her and her lover. She comes back as a spirit of rage and temptation, who lures men to their deaths, by appearing as a temptress, and then raging once men are far away from civilization. Like an empusa from Greek mythology, these creatures only have one (human) leg. For more on the Patasola, check out this link!
Do you enjoy reading, and or hearing about legends like this? If so, let me know!
I like them.
Me too.
It’s interesting how certain motifs tend to appear independently in unrelated mythologies, in this case a one-legged being, like the Greek Monopods or Brazil’s Saci Pererê. Other beings of this kind I know of include Quetronamún from the Mapuche mythology, whose apparition in person is an extremely bad omen; though on the other hand finding one of its footprints is instead considered a sign of good luck. The footprints are described as similar to those of a child, but with more separate toes. It seems this legend is inspired by a species of streamer duck called quetro, which tends to rest in one foot. Then we’ve got El Patón, Argentina’s own bigfoot from the province of Tucumán. It is not exactly one-footed, but it is forced to walk in one foot because one of its legs is extremely atrophied, being the size of a baby’s. It is tall and covered in coarse, long hair like that of a pig, and it has a pig-like snout as well. Its role is to protect nature and punish hunters who hunt in excess. Finally I’ll mention the legend of Kiésta, a being from the Chorote mythology that, like La Patasola, has a tragic origin. Kiésta was once a man who was a very good singer, but who was very mischievous as well. One day the people from the town he lived in got tired of his pranks and abandoned him asleep in the middle of the forest, in front of a fire. Unfortunately, while he was unconscious one of his legs caught fire. The hungry Kiésta decided to eat the remains of his “cooked” leg, developing a taste for human flesh in the process. He sharpened his leg’s bone to use as a weapon, with which he killed many people to eat them later. He was eventually killed by the god Ahóusa, who burned him whole. However, Kiésta revived from his ashes as a bird (remember the Tawahka tale?) Ahóusa was ready to kill him a second time, but spared him after Kiésta promised not to cause any more trouble ever again, dedicating the rest of his existence to singing at dawn.