Urban Legends: Pishtaco

According to folklores, the Pishtaco is a vampire-like creature indigenous to the Andean region to South America. Unlike the European Vampires, however, pishtaco do not feed on blood but on fat.It is believed that pishtacos often take the form of a stranger and often in the form of a white man, preying on unsuspected natives.

At first thought, fat sucking vampires sound more pretty than scary. However, there is a cultural reason . The preoccupation with  fat has a long tradition in the Andes. So much so that the ancient Incans have a deity called Viracocha (meaning sea of fat) existed for it. Naturally, the rural poor also view excess body fat as a sign of life, health, strength and beauty. In fact, the Incans believed the loss of body fat is the cause of many illnesses.

There are some debates as to when the legend originated. Nonetheless, most scholars generally agreed that the legend's genesis began with the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. It had been suggested that the Spaniards practiced a rather barbaric from of practice to their natives enemies where they killed the natives and boiled their corpses to produce fat to grease their metal equipment. This practice horrified the natives who began all white men as evil fat stealing monster-like men.

While the origin of the legend had been long forgotten. Pishtacos persisted as something like a boogeyman to the very present. Specifically, many  natives associated any foreign white men visiting their homes as being Pishtacos, a trend that proved problematic to many international cooperation. This label had been applied not only on European missionaries, but also scholars and foreign aid workers. The natives thought that the real purpose of any of the aforementioned men in the Andes were not to help them, but to fatten and exploit them for fat. Consequently, many natives not only rejected foreign aid but sometimes even attacked foreigners as they thought they are pishtacos.