WEBVTT - ¡El Chupacabras! 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:11.360 Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:14.280 normally about things falling apart and how to put them 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.680 back together again. However, as I think you can tell 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.060 by the opening music, you're listening to a very special 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:34.500 episode today about El Chupacabras. I'm Carlos Barrios Polanco, and 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.450 I'm at an undisclosed location outside somewhere in Puerto Rico 0:00:38.930 --> 0:00:41.410 where my only company are the creatures of the night 0:00:41.590 --> 0:00:44.530 and the sweet music that they make. Also, my dog 0:00:44.570 --> 0:00:48.510 is here with me, and she's pretty chill. The reason 0:00:48.530 --> 0:00:50.229 that I'm out here is that I wanted to set 0:00:50.290 --> 0:00:52.979 the scene for this episode by being in the same 0:00:53.030 --> 0:00:55.820 headspace and meat space as all of those people that 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:59.420 claim to have seen something eating their livestock and draining 0:00:59.460 --> 0:01:03.650 their blood 32 years ago. And so far, I can 0:01:03.710 --> 0:01:07.610 definitely see why a person might see something, probably a 0:01:07.670 --> 0:01:11.169 dog or a mongoose, ripping the throats or biting the 0:01:11.230 --> 0:01:14.070 necks of their cows, then attributing it to something that 0:01:14.110 --> 0:01:17.800 they could not explain. If you spend any time in 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:20.160 the middle of the woods, away from the noise and 0:01:20.220 --> 0:01:22.620 lights of the city, it's easy for your mind to 0:01:22.660 --> 0:01:26.720 play tricks on you. Especially if hundreds of years of 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:31.740 colonialism and societal and economic stress have your mind reeling. 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.170 it would be easy to think that something was stalking 0:01:35.190 --> 0:01:39.309 you out here. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So 0:01:39.870 --> 0:01:43.790 what even is a chupacabras anyway? Well, in Spanish, it's 0:01:43.850 --> 0:01:48.130 called chupacabras, which often gets translated as goat sucker in English, 0:01:48.250 --> 0:01:50.540 which has always rubbed me the wrong way because it's 0:01:50.740 --> 0:01:54.240 cabras as in multiple goats. So it should actually be 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:57.460 goat sucker. That's just a quibble I've had for ages 0:01:57.500 --> 0:02:00.620 that I'm happy to share with you right now. I'm 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:03.400 sure that I must have seen something about the chupacabras 0:02:03.460 --> 0:02:05.830 on the History Channel, but my first interaction with the 0:02:05.850 --> 0:02:11.590 chupacabras as a cultural artifact was probably the 2003 direct-to-DVD 0:02:11.650 --> 0:02:15.460 movie Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico, which is like 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.080 really funny to me because it's actually the monster of 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.040 Puerto Rico and everybody else just ripped us off. I 0:02:22.100 --> 0:02:24.639 should say up front that I'm not a believer. Although 0:02:24.660 --> 0:02:26.620 I think the truth is out there, the truth is 0:02:26.660 --> 0:02:30.200 that the Chupacabra is fake, a shape-shifting creature of the mind, 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.279 not an extraterrestrial creature of the night. However, while it's 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:37.740 not real, the animal attacks and the hysteria they caused, 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.579 as well as the enduring obsession with it in some circles, 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:43.620 I think, is really interesting because it is kind of 0:02:43.660 --> 0:02:46.820 the perfect boogeyman manifestation of a lot of the colonial 0:02:46.860 --> 0:02:50.290 history here and all over the world, honestly. Heard the 0:02:50.310 --> 0:02:53.880 book Tracking the Chupacabra, the Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, 0:02:53.940 --> 0:02:57.180 and Folklore by Benjamin Radford, which was a huge source 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:59.679 for this episode and was way more serious than I 0:02:59.740 --> 0:03:02.960 expected it to be, there's three versions of this blood-sucking beast. 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.440 The first is the original, the Puerto Rican version that 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:08.780 is about three to four feet tall with spines or 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.280 feathers running down its back that also has some kind 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.480 of reptilian look to it that was first quote-unquote seen 0:03:15.180 --> 0:03:18.930 in the small town of Canoanas in 1995. The second 0:03:19.030 --> 0:03:22.550 is more of a dog-slash-coyote-looking thing that's been seen up 0:03:22.610 --> 0:03:25.730 and down the American continent, but mostly on the Mexico-US 0:03:25.770 --> 0:03:30.169 borderlands and Latin America. Several corpses of this type of 0:03:30.210 --> 0:03:33.750 chupacabra have been found in that area, and pretty much 0:03:33.970 --> 0:03:36.150 every single time it ends up being some type of 0:03:36.290 --> 0:03:40.390 animal with mange. Meanwhile, the third version is a catch-all 0:03:40.470 --> 0:03:43.670 for any type of unidentified animal that can carry the 0:03:43.710 --> 0:03:46.830 blame for an unexplained attack pretty much anywhere in the world. 0:03:47.510 --> 0:03:49.610 For this episode, I'm mainly going to be talking about 0:03:49.650 --> 0:03:51.850 the Puerto Rican version with a little bit of context 0:03:51.890 --> 0:03:55.090 here and there about the other versions. So the first 0:03:55.250 --> 0:03:59.450 quote unquote sighting of the Chupacabra occurred in August 1995 0:03:59.450 --> 0:04:02.370 in the small town of Canoanas in the center north 0:04:02.510 --> 0:04:05.750 part of the archipelago. There had previously been attacks on 0:04:05.810 --> 0:04:08.990 livestock that year that had left them with two bite 0:04:09.010 --> 0:04:11.210 marks in the neck and without a single drop of blood. 0:04:11.750 --> 0:04:13.550 But this was the first time that it was seen. 0:04:13.570 --> 0:04:17.650 The woman who saw it, Madeline Torrentino, claimed that she 0:04:17.730 --> 0:04:20.640 saw the beast from a window from her house alongside 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:23.120 her mother. And she didn't get a sighting of a 0:04:23.180 --> 0:04:25.180 piece of it caught in the moonlight as it slipped 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.159 into the darkness. No, she got such a good look 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.060 that she was able to describe it in incredible detail. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.940 Her tracking the chupacabra, quoting the book Chupacabra and Other 0:04:35.980 --> 0:04:39.380 Mysteries by Scott Corrales, which I cannot find an ebook for, 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.450 so I'm trusting Radford on this. It had dark gray 0:04:42.550 --> 0:04:45.810 or black eyes that ran up its temples, and went 0:04:46.010 --> 0:04:49.150 up into its sides. It walked like a human and 0:04:49.210 --> 0:04:52.650 its arms were, quote, drawn back in an attack position 0:04:52.830 --> 0:04:55.839 as though it were a TV monster, end quote. Keep 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.580 that in mind for later, by the way. It had 0:04:58.660 --> 0:05:02.159 long skinny fingers and close cropped hair all over its 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.200 body and skinny legs that had three separate toes like 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.380 a goose. It never opened its mouth and had feathers 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.400 running down its back that were flat. Tolentino even got 0:05:12.420 --> 0:05:14.780 a close enough look to see its genitals, or I 0:05:14.820 --> 0:05:18.940 should say lack thereof. According to Corrales' book, she somehow 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.700 got on the floor from her window and managed to 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.089 see that its genitals were sealed, even having time to 0:05:25.130 --> 0:05:26.950 make a joke to her mom about how it might 0:05:26.970 --> 0:05:30.530 have pooped through its mouth. According to the book, a 0:05:30.610 --> 0:05:33.550 young boy who worked for Tolentino's husband was also in 0:05:33.589 --> 0:05:36.370 the house and he sprinted out to catch the beast, 0:05:36.830 --> 0:05:39.450 even managing to do so and get close enough to 0:05:39.510 --> 0:05:43.510 perform a an impromptu dental inspection, because he opened its 0:05:43.550 --> 0:05:47.850 mouth and saw fangs. However, it eventually got away. From 0:05:47.890 --> 0:05:51.970 seeing the covers of Corrales' books, they are truly wild-looking, 0:05:52.190 --> 0:05:54.230 and from what I can tell, they're pretty much all 0:05:54.270 --> 0:05:57.490 written from the perspective of a person who believes, or 0:05:57.529 --> 0:05:59.990 at least wants you to believe, that the cryptids and 0:06:00.050 --> 0:06:04.910 aliens described in them are real. Meanwhile, Radford's book is 0:06:05.150 --> 0:06:07.630 written by a skeptic, a person who's open to the 0:06:07.710 --> 0:06:10.360 idea and but is actually trying to use a scientific 0:06:10.420 --> 0:06:13.599 method to see if the chupacabra is real. From reading 0:06:13.660 --> 0:06:17.700 Radford's book, he kind of has some serious beef with Corrales. 0:06:18.700 --> 0:06:20.850 And in some instances of the book, you can really 0:06:20.930 --> 0:06:25.549 see the contempt come through. Anyway, tracking the chupacabra points 0:06:25.650 --> 0:06:30.359 out several inconsistencies in Tolentino's statement. First, it moved like 0:06:30.390 --> 0:06:33.280 a robot, but then it ran, then hopped, then seemed 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.970 to float. Also, she was watching from the window but 0:06:37.029 --> 0:06:39.770 was able to get to the floor to see its genitals. 0:06:40.450 --> 0:06:42.849 It's possible that she said window but she meant like 0:06:42.890 --> 0:06:47.130 a sliding door in her house. But yeah, it's improbable. Also, 0:06:47.730 --> 0:06:49.870 the fact that the boy managed to catch the creature 0:06:49.970 --> 0:06:53.550 and inspect it is wild. And when Radford interviewed Tolentino 0:06:53.610 --> 0:06:56.750 in 2010, she said that that never happened. The kid 0:06:56.770 --> 0:06:58.730 went out to find it, but he didn't actually see it. 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:03.150 So it's unclear where that description came from. To let 0:07:03.190 --> 0:07:05.850 the cat out of the bag quickly, per Radford's book, 0:07:06.230 --> 0:07:09.720 the creature that Tolentino saw in the darkness was actually 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:14.000 a half-remembered and more reptilian version of the creature Sil 0:07:14.100 --> 0:07:19.760 from the 1995 Roger Donaldson film Species. Sil was played 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:24.190 by Natasha Henstridge and designed by H.R. Giger. Yeah, the 0:07:24.230 --> 0:07:26.550 guy who designed the xenomorphs is the reason that the 0:07:26.590 --> 0:07:31.900 chupacabra exists. Tolentino quote-unquote saw the chupacabra in August, and 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.000 Species had come out just a month before, in July. 0:07:35.020 --> 0:07:37.560 And if you look at pictures of Syl and the 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:42.080 chupacabra drawn from Tolentino's memories, there's an uncanny resemblance there. 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:44.720 I know that this is an audio medium, but I'll 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.420 publish pictures on Blue Sky whenever this episode drops, and 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.470 you'll see it. Part of the movie had even been 0:07:50.530 --> 0:07:53.010 filmed in Puerto Rico, and one of the first images 0:07:53.090 --> 0:07:56.970 presented in the film is the Arecibo telescope, a gigantic 0:07:57.070 --> 0:08:01.930 radio telescope that was destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017 0:08:01.930 --> 0:08:04.250 that had actually been used to send the first ever 0:08:04.310 --> 0:08:09.290 signals into space in 1974. Tolentino was even asked about 0:08:09.330 --> 0:08:12.550 the film, but her reaction was interesting, to say the least. 0:08:13.670 --> 0:08:17.830 In a 1996 interview with Lucy Pla and José Manuel Rodríguez, 0:08:18.540 --> 0:08:22.960 Highlighted by tracking the Chupacabra, Tolentino said that Sill's resemblance 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:27.200 to the Chupacabra was, quote, really impressive, end quote. And 0:08:27.250 --> 0:08:30.130 she wondered, quote, how can they make a movie like 0:08:30.170 --> 0:08:33.210 that when these things are happening in Puerto Rico, end quote. 0:08:34.030 --> 0:08:35.910 I really do not want this to come off as 0:08:35.950 --> 0:08:38.870 being mean to Tolentino, because we've all seen weird stuff 0:08:38.890 --> 0:08:41.270 in the woods that we can't explain, told a few friends, 0:08:41.350 --> 0:08:44.500 and then forgot about it. But the reason that Tolentino's 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:47.120 tall tale became the myth that it did is because 0:08:47.179 --> 0:08:51.300 the news media absolutely pounced on her story and took 0:08:51.340 --> 0:08:55.730 it to insane heights, attributing any and all mysterious occurrences 0:08:55.870 --> 0:09:00.310 involving cattle mutilation or unexplained attacks or anything along those 0:09:00.390 --> 0:09:06.569 lines to the chupacabra. Before Tolentino saw, quote unquote, the chupacabras, 0:09:06.590 --> 0:09:09.610 there had been other attacks that were retroactively attributed to 0:09:09.630 --> 0:09:13.520 the chupacabras, and it slowly became known. a boogeyman that 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:15.870 was at the scene of everything that could not have 0:09:15.950 --> 0:09:19.850 an easy or normal explanation. I should also say that 0:09:19.890 --> 0:09:24.150 the name Chupacabras was reportedly coined by comedian Silverio Perez, 0:09:24.910 --> 0:09:29.460 although that's disputed by some. Shortly after Tolentino's encounter with 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:33.860 the Chupacabra, she described the Chupacabra to artist Jorge Martín, 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:36.800 whose drawing made the front page of El Nuevo Día 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.290 according to Tracking the Chupacabra. And Noelia is our paper 0:09:40.309 --> 0:09:43.960 of record, so this was a big deal. And although 0:09:44.020 --> 0:09:47.080 I can't find this front page anymore, as a nation, 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.760 we're pretty bad at archiving the past and it's not 0:09:49.820 --> 0:09:54.630 really easily accessible online. From reading the book, their coverage 0:09:54.730 --> 0:09:58.990 seems to have been significantly less sensationalist than other local papers. 0:09:59.809 --> 0:10:03.950 Although I did manage to find an article from 2010 0:10:03.950 --> 0:10:08.330 whose headline reads, quote, two chupacabra attacks reported, end quote. 0:10:08.970 --> 0:10:14.010 So your mileage may vary. However, the chupacabra reached worldwide 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:18.140 fame when talk show host Cristina Saralegui aired a story 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:20.930 about the chupacabra on El Show de Cristina, which aired 0:10:20.970 --> 0:10:25.310 across the Spanish-speaking world. Saralegui even had the mayor of Canobanas, 0:10:25.530 --> 0:10:29.110 José Chemo Soto, who was up for re-election to talk 0:10:29.150 --> 0:10:33.069 about his experience hunting the chupacabra in his municipality, which 0:10:33.130 --> 0:10:35.590 is something that he became super famous for in that 0:10:35.630 --> 0:10:38.840 late 90s period. And it helped him a lot because 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:42.020 he was re-elected all the way to 2004. It was 0:10:42.059 --> 0:10:45.760 a publicity stunt, clear and simple, but it worked. Per 0:10:45.780 --> 0:10:49.300 the book, Governing Spirits, Religion, Miracles, and Spectacles in Cuba 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:55.170 and Puerto Rico, 1898-1956, by Renaldo Román, he eventually came 0:10:55.210 --> 0:10:57.770 to be called Chemo Jones because of his hunt for 0:10:57.790 --> 0:11:01.370 the bloodsucker. It was clear to everyone this was a 0:11:01.410 --> 0:11:04.689 publicity stunt, but everybody went along with it, including more 0:11:04.730 --> 0:11:08.840 than 200 volunteers, scores of journalists, and off-duty police officers 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:16.770 that accompanied him on a hunt on October 29, 1995. Wait, 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:20.939 you hear that? Is that something moving in the woods? Wait, no, no, no. 0:11:21.220 --> 0:11:32.969 It's just ads. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, 0:11:33.660 --> 0:11:38.809 where we're talking about the chupacabra. Even though not all 0:11:38.850 --> 0:11:42.929 Puerto Ricans believed in this blood-sucking beast, urban and international 0:11:42.970 --> 0:11:46.520 media believe almost always portrayed these rural folks as being 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.470 a mass of fools that believed in mysticism and this 0:11:49.610 --> 0:11:53.930 extraterrestrial beast. So there was always a very real class 0:11:54.110 --> 0:11:59.150 aspect to the whole coverage of this Chupacabra. Per the 0:11:59.190 --> 0:12:03.050 book Tracking the Chupacabra, quote, when reading accounts of the 0:12:03.100 --> 0:12:07.800 Chupacabra in Puerto Rico, I often came across phrases like, quote, 0:12:07.860 --> 0:12:11.660 the Chupacabra terrorized the island, end quote, or quote, fear 0:12:11.730 --> 0:12:15.569 gripped Puerto Rico, end quote, or, quote, the island populace 0:12:15.630 --> 0:12:19.030 was near fever pitch, end quote. There is, of course, 0:12:19.090 --> 0:12:23.449 some truth to this description, but mystery-mongering hyperbole aside, it 0:12:23.530 --> 0:12:26.800 is not accurate to suggest that the entire Puerto Rican population, 0:12:27.020 --> 0:12:29.820 or even a majority of it, was gripped in terror 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:33.360 over the goat sucker. Of course, some individuals and groups 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.240 grew very concerned over the mystery, but most Puerto Ricans 0:12:36.700 --> 0:12:40.140 especially city dwellers, went about their daily lives giving little 0:12:40.179 --> 0:12:42.960 thought or concern to the creature that they had heard about, 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:47.280 mostly in backyard gossip and tabloids. If El Nuevo Día 0:12:47.380 --> 0:12:51.120 and Cristina brought the creature to mainstream attention, El Vocero, 0:12:51.540 --> 0:12:54.570 which is now a respectable newspaper but was a lurid 0:12:54.670 --> 0:12:59.270 tabloid back then, is what quote-unquote created the chupacabra in 0:12:59.290 --> 0:13:04.350 the popular imagination. Per Governing Spirits, El Vocero lifted dozens 0:13:04.530 --> 0:13:08.170 and dozens of stories about chupacabra attacks, adding details to 0:13:08.230 --> 0:13:11.210 every single one that in hindsight were clearly just kind 0:13:11.250 --> 0:13:15.150 of made up. One such story highlighted in Tracking the 0:13:15.190 --> 0:13:19.090 Chupacabra is about a five-year-old girl almost being abducted by 0:13:19.130 --> 0:13:21.959 the beast, but then she managed to escape and it 0:13:22.050 --> 0:13:26.140 raised her IQ to a genius level. This story was 0:13:26.179 --> 0:13:29.500 seemingly confirmed by a police officer to El Vocero, which 0:13:29.540 --> 0:13:31.530 saw it fit to print. We're going to talk a 0:13:31.550 --> 0:13:34.470 little bit more later about people in positions of authority 0:13:34.550 --> 0:13:38.209 confirming Chupacabra, but this was the type of thing that 0:13:38.470 --> 0:13:42.800 flooded El Vocero newspapers at the time. When I spoke 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.000 to a friend who was alive at the time this 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.160 was happening, he told me that El Vocero's tabloidness and 0:13:48.220 --> 0:13:51.580 propensity for publishing the most lurid pictures of accidents and 0:13:51.620 --> 0:13:55.480 murders led people to say that if you squeezed the newspaper, 0:13:55.700 --> 0:14:00.130 it would bleed. Ironically enough, per Tracking the Chupacabra, the 0:14:00.170 --> 0:14:03.280 majority of claims that animals were left without blood were 0:14:03.340 --> 0:14:06.579 published by El Bosero, without really any proof or an 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:10.980 autopsy being performed. Quoting from Radford here, It is likely 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:13.689 that if the animal's owners expressed any doubts that their 0:14:13.750 --> 0:14:16.809 animals had been vampirized, the tabloid reporter would have no 0:14:16.850 --> 0:14:20.330 reservations about massaging the facts and selecting the quotes that 0:14:20.350 --> 0:14:23.800 would make for a better story. A farmer or housewife 0:14:23.850 --> 0:14:26.970 who excitedly swears that the goat they found had absolutely 0:14:27.010 --> 0:14:29.990 been drained of every single drop of blood makes for 0:14:30.010 --> 0:14:32.590 a better story than one who isn't sure, or who 0:14:32.630 --> 0:14:36.820 admits he or she didn't really look. End quote. Mass 0:14:36.860 --> 0:14:40.960 hysteria is often caused by mass media covering an event badly, 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.640 essentially a failure to perform journalism. Each instance of the 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.270 chupacabra getting attention made it spread wider and wider until 0:14:49.470 --> 0:14:53.160 it was absolutely inescapable. Yet very little of this coverage 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:57.140 attempted to show that it wasn't real. Any mysterious thing 0:14:57.180 --> 0:14:59.760 was now the result of the Chupacabra because it was 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.790 the new thing that everybody knew about and the creature 0:15:02.830 --> 0:15:06.530 that everybody was telling you to be very, very, very 0:15:06.710 --> 0:15:11.450 afraid about all the time. Actually, the animated 100% real 0:15:11.490 --> 0:15:15.610 documentary Paranoia Agent deals with mass hysteria spreading throughout Japan 0:15:15.730 --> 0:15:18.200 as a result of a mysterious boy attacking people with 0:15:18.220 --> 0:15:22.000 a bat. Highly recommended. El Vocero has a long history 0:15:22.060 --> 0:15:25.650 of making up stuff to sell papers. In fact, El 0:15:25.670 --> 0:15:29.510 Vocero's first year of publication was marked by another vampire 0:15:29.570 --> 0:15:34.730 creature boosting its numbers. In 1975, there were unexplained attacks 0:15:34.830 --> 0:15:38.890 in the western municipality of Moca that also reportedly left 0:15:39.030 --> 0:15:43.800 animals without blood. This creature was called El Vampiro de Moca, 0:15:44.260 --> 0:15:48.140 the Vampire of Moca. El Vocero latched onto this story 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:50.760 like a tick and published dozens of stories that would 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.880 come to foreshadow their coverage of El Chupacabra. Although they 0:15:54.900 --> 0:15:57.520 were admonished for their coverage at the time by editors 0:15:57.580 --> 0:16:00.380 from other newspapers, they said they were just reporting the 0:16:00.420 --> 0:16:05.140 stories out, just effects. Although they later acknowledged it did 0:16:05.260 --> 0:16:08.440 lead them to reach a circulation of nearly 90,000 in 0:16:08.660 --> 0:16:12.310 their first year, according to Governing Spirits. which is a 0:16:12.550 --> 0:16:15.650 fuckton for a small tabloid in an archipelago that at 0:16:15.670 --> 0:16:18.350 the time had a population of less than 3 million people. 0:16:19.130 --> 0:16:22.360 So we see how history kind of repeats itself with 0:16:22.430 --> 0:16:26.820 El Chupacabra by analyzing El Vocero's actions during the time 0:16:26.860 --> 0:16:29.900 of El Vampiro de Moca. Both times, they knew that 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:34.160 by focusing on sensationalism and obscurantism, it could make money, 0:16:35.020 --> 0:16:39.080 which is a lot of the reason that these myths spread. 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.320 By the way, if you speak Spanish, the great podcast 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:44.580 El Hilo did an episode in March of this year 0:16:44.700 --> 0:16:49.320 about El Vampiro de Moca called, quote, El Vampiro Entre Nosotros, 0:16:49.780 --> 0:16:52.420 end quote. That's excellent and was a big source for 0:16:52.460 --> 0:16:56.540 this section of the episode. So, 20 years before the 0:16:56.580 --> 0:17:00.570 Chupacabra struck, Puerto Ricans were already familiar with another bloodsucker. 0:17:01.180 --> 0:17:03.450 And although the natural inclination is to think that the 0:17:03.470 --> 0:17:06.410 Vampiro de Moca is just the Chupacabra, from what I've read, 0:17:06.590 --> 0:17:10.350 people mostly view them as two separate creatures. that show 0:17:10.390 --> 0:17:13.470 there are unexplained things going bump in the night in 0:17:13.540 --> 0:17:18.220 Puerto Rico, and that the government was either mostly powerless 0:17:18.260 --> 0:17:21.740 to do something about it or largely uninterested in doing so. 0:17:22.780 --> 0:17:26.630 Speaking of the government, there's an even older story than 0:17:26.670 --> 0:17:29.350 the Vampiro de Moca that had already created a strong 0:17:29.390 --> 0:17:34.379 association between the government and vampirism on the archipelago. First, 0:17:34.820 --> 0:17:38.450 to set the scene, Puerto Rico has been an important U.S. 0:17:38.510 --> 0:17:42.629 military stronghold since the late 1930s because of its strategic 0:17:42.690 --> 0:17:46.550 location that allows the military to project force towards Latin America. 0:17:47.570 --> 0:17:50.790 The archipelago eventually became an incredibly important part of U.S. 0:17:50.830 --> 0:17:54.030 military strategy in the Atlantic. At its peak, there were 0:17:54.030 --> 0:17:58.310 20 separate installations that occupied roughly 13% of all arable 0:17:58.350 --> 0:18:01.770 land in the archipelago. Per a master's thesis written by 0:18:01.830 --> 0:18:05.080 Robert Jordan in 2008, for the University of Texas at 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.840 Dallas titled El Chupacabra, Icon of Resistance to U.S. Imperialism. 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:13.090 The biggest installation was the Roosevelt Road's Naval Station, which 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.770 was eventually closed in 2004 but was reopened last year. 0:18:17.790 --> 0:18:21.530 The U.S. military also occupied the island municipalities of Vieques 0:18:21.630 --> 0:18:24.970 and Culebra, which they used for all types of training, 0:18:25.109 --> 0:18:28.050 including using it as a bombing range. Per The Guardian, 0:18:28.090 --> 0:18:30.510 they dropped up to 3 million pounds of ordnance in 0:18:30.550 --> 0:18:36.730 Vieques per year. This includes 263 rounds of depleted uranium-tipped 0:18:36.770 --> 0:18:42.450 munitions that were quote-unquote accidentally expended during a training exercise 0:18:42.990 --> 0:18:48.100 on February 19, 1999 per Navy Facilities Command. Today, about 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.060 two-thirds of Vieques are natural reserves that the public can't 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.500 access because of all the unexploited ordnance there, and its 0:18:54.540 --> 0:18:57.280 people have sky-high cancer rates compared to the rest of 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:00.700 the archipelago's population. I talk a little bit more about 0:19:00.740 --> 0:19:03.410 all this in my episodes about U.S. colonies, so check 0:19:03.450 --> 0:19:06.270 that out if you want to learn more. Vieques and 0:19:06.330 --> 0:19:09.689 Culebra were so important to U.S. military strategy that in 0:19:09.710 --> 0:19:13.790 the 1960s, the U.S. government attempted to purchase the entirety 0:19:13.869 --> 0:19:17.990 of the two island municipalities for bombing practice. This would 0:19:18.030 --> 0:19:21.810 have involved moving the nearly 9,000 people that live there 0:19:21.910 --> 0:19:26.070 to another part of the archipelago, as well as exhuming 0:19:26.190 --> 0:19:29.150 all the bodies in the cemeteries, some which had been 0:19:29.190 --> 0:19:34.060 there for over 200 years, and reburying them somewhere else. 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.140 Because of this wild and weird ask, the negotiations were 0:19:39.220 --> 0:19:45.180 codenamed the Dracula Plan, Plan Dracula, by Puerto Rican officials. 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.010 Although the plan never came to pass, for El Chupacabra, 0:19:49.109 --> 0:19:52.720 icon of resistance, this early association between the U.S. government 0:19:52.820 --> 0:19:56.379 with a blood-sucking monster was prophetic for the way it 0:19:56.619 --> 0:20:00.419 viewed the bloodsuckers to come. Before I continue citing all 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:04.659 the ways U.S. presence influenced the Chupacabra, It's worth noting 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:09.250 that the Navy left Culebra in 1975 and Vieques in 0:20:09.250 --> 0:20:13.690 2003 after years of sustained and massive protests. And per 0:20:13.730 --> 0:20:18.649 Jordan's thesis, Chupacabra sightings dropped off massively after Puerto Ricans 0:20:18.690 --> 0:20:21.430 were able to wrestle more control over their land from 0:20:21.470 --> 0:20:25.180 the U.S. But you know what you can't wrestle away 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:30.260 control from? These products and services. And also, I'm sure 0:20:30.300 --> 0:20:32.429 they won't suck your blood out like the Chupacabra did. 0:20:33.460 --> 0:20:44.710 But maybe watch out a little bit. Welcome back to 0:20:44.730 --> 0:20:47.209 It Could Happen Here, where we are diving into the 0:20:47.390 --> 0:20:52.640 origin story of the Chupacabra. Since the Chupacabra came into 0:20:52.660 --> 0:20:56.080 the popular imagination, its origin has always been linked to 0:20:56.100 --> 0:20:59.190 the U.S. government. The most prominent rumor goes that it 0:20:59.210 --> 0:21:03.030 was created for genetic experimentation on extraterrestrial life at a 0:21:03.070 --> 0:21:06.399 secret laboratory in El Junque, which is the largest rainforest 0:21:06.540 --> 0:21:09.939 on our small archipelago. Many people consider it to be 0:21:09.980 --> 0:21:13.660 the last bastion of pristine and untouched Puerto Rico. And 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.379 while that's not really true, it certainly is beautiful, and 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:18.590 hiking the two to three hours or so that it 0:21:18.619 --> 0:21:20.670 takes to reach the top is something I would recommend 0:21:20.730 --> 0:21:25.160 to everyone. While the Chupacabra definitely did not emerge from 0:21:25.180 --> 0:21:28.760 a secret lab in Ajunque, there were definitely strange experiments 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.440 taking place there, but of the man-made horrors beyond my 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:36.630 comprehension variety. There are two big ones. The first was 0:21:36.690 --> 0:21:40.350 related to Project Plowshares, wherein the Atomic Energy Commission was 0:21:40.430 --> 0:21:45.970 attempting to quote-unquote peacefully employ atomic explosions to create canals 0:21:46.030 --> 0:21:49.480 and harbors in Panama. As part of this project, scientists 0:21:49.500 --> 0:21:52.100 from the University of Puerto Rico injected trees and other 0:21:52.140 --> 0:21:56.109 vegetation in El Yunque with radioactive isotopes to see what 0:21:56.150 --> 0:22:00.189 would happen to them. Meanwhile, the second big one is 0:22:00.230 --> 0:22:03.390 the testing of Agent Orange, Agent White, and other tactical 0:22:03.430 --> 0:22:07.760 herbicides there and in six other locations because our vegetation 0:22:07.820 --> 0:22:12.619 resembled that of Southeast Asia. According to a document titled, quote, 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:15.659 the history of the U.S. Department of Defense programs for 0:22:15.700 --> 0:22:19.960 the testing, evaluation, and storage of tactical herbicides, end quote, 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:23.470 written by Alvin L. Young in 2006 and submitted to 0:22:23.490 --> 0:22:27.129 the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense. As far as 0:22:27.190 --> 0:22:30.350 I've been alive, there's always been rumors of creepy things 0:22:30.410 --> 0:22:33.689 going on in Ajunque. It's a popular spot for UFO 0:22:33.730 --> 0:22:36.600 sightings as well, which people often attribute to the presence 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:40.200 of U.S. military installations there. It's worth noting that El 0:22:40.260 --> 0:22:44.040 Junque's facilities were also used as a guided missile operations 0:22:44.100 --> 0:22:46.780 control unit and a joint surveillance site in the latter 0:22:46.820 --> 0:22:49.879 half of the 20th century, which is part of the 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:52.670 reason that people always thought there was some secret spy 0:22:52.710 --> 0:22:56.830 shit going on that was calling the aliens to El Junque. Actually, 0:22:56.850 --> 0:22:59.470 my dad has this story that he's told me and 0:22:59.510 --> 0:23:02.720 my siblings maybe a dozen times over our lives where 0:23:02.780 --> 0:23:05.119 him and his best friend were confused for men in 0:23:05.140 --> 0:23:09.120 black at an El Junque stargazing slash UFO event. Because 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:11.920 he was wearing aviators at night and a bomber jacket? 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:15.960 Just the type of beliefs that can be inspired by 0:23:16.100 --> 0:23:19.720 something you can't quite explain. The Chupacabra being from a 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:22.680 secret facility also ties in well enough with the plot 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:26.639 of Species, which inspired that first sighting. Lauren Derby, in 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:31.100 a paper titled, quote, Imperial Secrets, Vampires, and Nationhood in 0:23:31.140 --> 0:23:36.800 Puerto Rico, end quote, says that, quote, The Chupacabras reflects 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:39.940 a contradiction very peculiar to Puerto Rico, which is a 0:23:39.980 --> 0:23:43.660 very small island with an extraordinarily pervasive array of U.S. 0:23:43.740 --> 0:23:47.680 military installations, most of which are called as top secret 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:53.520 and therefore declared off-limits to locals, end quote. Per Derby's paper, quote, 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:57.270 disproportionate number of Chupacabra narratives have been generated by the 0:23:57.390 --> 0:24:00.690 inside-class outsiders who have some access to the secrets of 0:24:00.790 --> 0:24:14.300 power or police its margins. End quote. These are mostly 0:24:14.359 --> 0:24:17.520 retired army personnel or police. I would wager to guess that, 0:24:17.580 --> 0:24:21.040 like many other cryptids, the tail of the chupacabra was used, 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:24.700 whether consciously or unconsciously, to keep people away from these 0:24:24.790 --> 0:24:29.810 restricted government areas. Essentially, el chupacabra was a psyop. You 0:24:29.830 --> 0:24:34.920 heard it here first. Tales of government experimentation weigh heavy 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:39.070 on the Puerto Rican mind. In 1941, the American doctor 0:24:39.140 --> 0:24:42.470 Cornelius Rhodes, who worked on Puerto Rican patients, wrote a 0:24:42.510 --> 0:24:45.129 letter saying that he had, quote, done his best to 0:24:45.170 --> 0:24:49.530 further the process of extermination by killing eight and transplanting 0:24:49.590 --> 0:24:53.990 cancer into several more. Although an investigation found no evidence 0:24:54.050 --> 0:24:58.439 of unethical human experimentation, The rumor that he did inject 0:24:58.500 --> 0:25:03.920 people with cancer cells remains very permanent in Puerto Rican society. Meanwhile, 0:25:03.980 --> 0:25:07.490