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Revenants · Spectral creatures and night demons

The “Pishtacos” of Huánuco – the Fat-Stealing Gang

When
November 2009 date from records made at the time
Where
Huánuco Region, Peru
Verdict
Disputed

In 2009 Peru's police said a gang had killed people for their fat and called them pishtacos, after the Andean bogeymen. It soon became clear something was wrong.

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-9.93°, -76.24° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

The pishtaco (Quechua for “slaughterer”) is a figure of Andean folklore: an outsider, usually a white man, who waylays lone travelers and renders their fat. The legend goes back to the Conquest, when the Spanish supposedly treated their wounds with the fat of dead Indians; later it was said the fat was used to cast church bells, grease machinery or pay off the national debt. In mid-November 2009 General Félix Murga, head of the Peruvian police's criminal investigation division, and Colonel Jorge Mejía announced they had broken up a gang that for years had been killing people in the Huánuco region, rendering their fat and selling it to middlemen in Lima, who passed it on to European cosmetics makers for as much as $60,000 a gallon. They displayed two bottles of yellowish liquid and a drawing of bodies hung over candles. Three people were arrested, and more “pishtacos” were sought. Dozens of victims were mentioned. The story went around the world.

Witnesses

The Peruvian police at a press conference (November 2009); Peruvian and foreign journalists, including AP, CNN, “The Guardian” and “Time”; doctors and anthropologists who challenged the police account.

Explanations and hypotheses

The police account quickly fell apart. The plastic surgeon Roni Luna explained that human fat has no commercial value and spoils within half an hour; the anthropologist William Mitchell, who has studied the pishtaco legend, said the story was so implausible that the police had either been fooled or were covering something up. Neither buyers nor bodies were found. Local police in Huánuco learned of the case from the press conference. Journalists noted that the “fat affair” broke just as the press was exposing a police death squad in Trujillo, and that the region was a cocaine-trafficking route. On 1 December 2009 General Murga was placed on leave. The affair showed how alive the old legend is – and how easily it can be manipulated.

Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.

Sources

  1. Time – Peru's Fat-Stealing Gang: Crime or Cover-Up? (2009)
  2. The Guardian – Gang 'killed victims to extract their fat' (2009)
  3. CBC News – Fat-stealing gang story questioned (2009)
  4. José María Arguedas, Los Pishtacos (Lima) – Mitos, leyendas y cuentos peruanos (1970)

More: Wikipedia (en)