In 1995, farmers in the community of Canovanas, Puerto Rico, about twenty miles away from the capital, San Juan, were puzzled by the mysterious deaths of many of their animals. The mystery deepened when a woman by the name of Madelyne Tolentino claimed to have witnessed an extraordinary monster. It leaped like a kangaroo and left behind the stench of sulfur. It wasn’t until the following year, as more cases of animal deaths were reported, that locals made the connection between this terrifying creature and the dead animals. Even after an investigation by the Puerto Rican government assigned natural causes from parasites and feral dogs for all the animal deaths, the stories of the beast continued in local folklore.
This is where the legend of el chupacabras or chupacabra emerged. Its name literally means “goatsucker,” as it is believed to be a blood-sucking vampire that feeds on domestic animals such as goats. This infamous cryptid caused a great deal of panic for much of the late 1990s and the early 2000s in Latin America. Many different theories about the origins of the chupacabra abound among believers of the legend. Some say it was a creation of the U.S. government sent to drain the wealth from Latin American farms; others say it was a genetic experiment gone wrong. Wilder theories speculate that it was an alien pet abandoned during a visit to Earth. The popularity of the chupacabra gave rise to depictions of the creature in films, music, and literature. These stories have given power to the chupacabra as a cultural icon, making it known as “the world’s third best-known monster after Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster” (Radford 2011, 4).
In Puerto Rico and parts of the American Southwest, the legend of chupacabra began to circulate in the mid-1990s. Described as a four-legged, blood-sucking creature, the chupacabra is blamed for killing livestock and terrorizing rural communities. In this 2007 photograph, Phyllis Canion of Cuero, Texas, holds the head of a coyote that locals misidentified as a chupacabra. (AP Photo)
Its origins in Puerto Rico and Mexico arose, as one historian argues, as a product of the sociopolitical environment: the chupacabra was a metaphor for U.S. imperialism. Much like the chupacabra, the economic involvement of the United States in the region was viewed as sucking the blood (wealth) from the local economies. The chupacabra would become especially ingrained in Mexico’s and Puerto Rico’s popular culture and would become an explanation as to why their economies (especially local farming) were in decline. And after it was finished with all the animals, humans would probably be next.
It should come as no surprise, then, that a vampire-like alien or demon like the chupacabra appeared in Latin American folklore at the turn of the twenty-first century. Descriptions of the chupacabra included many incredible details. It was said to be a five-foot-tall bipedal, alien-like creature with a sulfuric odor, red or black glowing eyes, long claws, and long spikes running down its back. Of course, not all testimonies were in agreement as different versions and descriptions began to appear. In Mexico and Texas, for example, the chupacabra had the appearance of a canine-like quadruped. In fact, it seems that any weird-looking animal is purported to be a chupacabra. As one skeptic writes, “any strange remains, especially hairless, canid-type bodies, are often called ‘chupacabra’ as a catch-all because people do not recognize the dead animal” (“Chupacabra Remains?” 2015). Despite all the media attention surrounding this monster, the scientific community has officially laid to rest all claims of chupacabra carcasses. DNA tests conducted on many of the samples all resulted in natural explanations. A MonsterQuest episode in 2008 demonstrated that the famous Cuero chupacabra in Texas was really a coyote or possibly a hybrid species of a coyote and a wolf. Barry O’Conner in 2010 debunked the purported chupacabras as nothing more than coyotes or wild dogs infected with a parasitic disease known as mange.
Benjamin Radford’s authoritative book, Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore (2011) has further debunked this legend. After spending five years researching, interviewing several eyewitnesses, and studying chupacabra carcasses and DNA results throughout the southwestern United States and parts of Latin America, Radford concluded that the chupacabra was nothing but a popular legend rooted in vampire folklore, inspired by science fiction films such as Species (1995). He furthermore attributed its rapid propagation to the combination of the social environment, U.S. imperialism, and advances in Internet communication, allowing for this local legend to be sensationalized by ufologists and tabloid publishers. Consequently, the chupacabra became a global phenomenon.
There will always be people who will explain the unknown with conspiracy theories and paranormal explanations, as was the case with the chupacabra. But that is the power of folklore. While the scientific community agrees that the chupacabra does not exist, there are still others who believe that this goat-sucking vampire continues to lurk in their backyards.
Jonathan Cutler
See also Dwayyo; Jersey Devil; Pope Lick Monster; Rougarou; Vampires; Wendigo
Further Reading
“Chupacabra Remains?” 2015. Doubtful News website. January 20. http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/01/chupacabra-remains-maybe-someone-should-actually-examine-them-first/. Accessed October 28, 2015.
Loxton, Daniel, and Donald R. Prothero. 2012. Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids. New York: Columbia University Press.
Radford, Benjamin. 2011. Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Román, Reinaldo L. 2008. Governing Spirits: Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1898–1956. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.