![]() leading to rejection of the US Food for Peace program by several communities, out of fears that the real purpose was to fatten children and later exploit them for their fat. Pishtaco beliefs have affected international assistance programs, e.g. In modern times, similar beliefs held that sugar mill machinery needed human fat as grease, or that jet aircraft engines could not start without a bit of human fat. ![]() Īndean Aboriginals feared Spanish missionaries as pishtacos, believing the missionaries were killing people for fat, thereafter oiling church bells to make them especially sonorous. Spaniards are also said to have killed natives and boiled their corpses to produce fat to grease their metal muskets and cannons, which rusted quickly in the humid Amazon. ![]() With this, the conquistadores' practice of treating their wounds with their enemies' corpse fats horrified the natives. Many illnesses are thought to have their roots in the loss of body fats, and skeletal thinness is abhorred. ![]() It is also natural for the peasant rural poor to view fleshiness and excess body fat as the very sign of life, good health, strength and beauty. Pre-Hispanic natives prized fat so much that a deity, Viracocha (meaning sea of fat), existed for it. The preoccupation with body fat has a long tradition in the Andes region. Pishtaco derives from the local Quechua-language word " pishtay" which means to "behead, cut the throat, or cut into slices". Primarily, his method of killing is stealing his victims' body fat for various cannibalistic purposes, or cutting them up and selling their flesh as fried chicharrones. The legend dates back to the Spanish conquest of South America. Legend and its effects Īccording to folklore, a pishtaco is an evil monster-like creature-often a stranger and often a white man-who seeks out unsuspecting natives to kill them and abuse them in many ways. Some parts of the Andes refer to the pishtaco as kharisiri, or ñakaq, or lik'ichiri in the Aymara language. ![]() Pistaku, Peruvian Retablo, Ayacucho.Ī pishtaco is a mythological boogeyman figure in the Andes region of South America, particularly in Peru and Bolivia. For the hoax about a Peruvian gang suspected of trafficking in human fat, see Pishtacos. This article is about a South American mythological figure. ![]()
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