The devil is a universal seducer; he made himself at home in all cultures touched by Christianity, usually raking in the features of previous pagan deities. In this article I’ll focus on the unique representation of the Devil by Argentinians, for whom he’s more often an ‘uncle’ than an ‘enemy’.
Cultural background: the spanish devil & aboriginal spirits
The devil that arrived in what was then the Viceroyalty of Perú sailed from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in 1543, near historical Cádiz, in Spain. Sanlúcar de Barrameda has a long, extensive history: the region appears in Greek records as far back as the tenth century BC, under the name Tartessos. The site where the port is now is largely accepted to be the same that Strabo refers to in his Geography with the comment Luciferi Fanum, quod vocant lucem dubiam, “the temple of the morning star, who they call the uncertain light”. In 1980 archaeologists would find, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the place Strabo may have been referring to: an old temple1 dedicated to the cult of the morning star, for whom the Tartessans, influenced by the Phoenicians, would probably have identified with Astarte. If the devil truly did set journey to the southern cone from here, it’s an oddly fitting place.
Mentions of the Morning Star in Spain a thousand years after Strabo and the Tartessians are done in hushed, fearful voices, for everybody calls the Lucero with the names of the devil: Luzbel, Lucibel, el Enemigo, el Demonio, Satanás... It is in that guise he arrives to the flat, muddy banks of the Río de la Plata, where explorer Juan de Garay founds for the last, and final time, the city of Buenos Ayres.
In this new land, we start hearing from him: the first appearances of the Devil are recorded by the Inquisition of Lima2. He’s described as “a man in black”, who can also appear “as a dog, or a goat”; “as a white man of a vara and a half (1.7 mts)3, with long fingernails”. The Jesuit missionaries doting the jungles, the deserts, the highlands and the lowlands of South America see him all over the place; he is, after all, within the very souls of all these natives who had never heard of the word of Jesus Christ. They take a look at the good spirits in each aboriginal mythology and point to God. The ‘bad’ ones, however, are assimilated to the Devil.
Incarnations of the devil, its depiction in art and folk tales.
It is thus that the Devil is baptized with new, older names: Aguara-Túmpa from the chiriguanos, Ajatat from the matacos, Cacaching from the diaguitas, Gualicho and Huekufú from the araucanos, Keenguekón from the tehuelches, Supay from the north-west of Argentina, just to name a few(4).
With these new baptisms also come new personality traits. Unlike the christian dualism in which the world is a battlefield between the forces of evil and good, the natives saw their gods as complementing forces of nature, and their mythologies revolved aroung a fertility/sterility dychotomy, where the gods were capricious but not malignant. One example is Supay, originally a god of death and the underworld for the Incas, also a patron of miners; his name derives its name from upay, which means something approximating ‘shadow’.
This calls to mind the idea of the Jungian shadow, an indeed, in the Chiriguano mythology we see something like it in the figure of Aguara-Tumpa, whose name recalls the ‘good’ god Tumpa. Aguara-Tumpa is the trickster, sometimes malevolent god who causes destruction: Aguara, in his name, means fox(1). He gives corn to men, teaches them agriculture and the arts of war; and he was also the one to initiate kids into adulthood. He’s the cause behind two ends of the world.(2)
Huekufú, a malignant spirit in Mapuche/Araucano mythology, finds a lot of similarities with the semite concept of shaytan, as Huekufu derives from the mapuche concept of wekufe, which applies to anyone who is a liar or a betrayer. These evil entities are the lords of the cold, windy Patagonian desert. Sometimes the Gualicho, another patagonian spirit, would be classified as wekufe; today in Argentina people use the word ‘gualicho’ to refer to a curse or a bad streak of luck; to be ‘engualichado’ is the same as being ‘endemoniado’, that is, being cursed. (3)
Other aspects of the devil as an evil spirit took a different dimension as class struggle emerged: the devil as the ally of the rich landowners, who would make pacts with him. He then takes the form of the Familiar, an evil creature in the form of a giant dog or serpent, which in exchange for human flesh will give riches to the families who ‘own’ it. During the military dictatorship, the owners of sugar factories in the province of Tucumán would spread rumours of the Familiar as the reason unionized workers were disappearing left and right.
Perhaps the best example of the respect and fear that the figure of the devil invokes in Argentina is the myriad of names we’ve given him: you may want to call him friend, or uncle, for the unsaid rule is that he who says his name will undoubtedly invoke him. The familiarity, perhaps, is also a way to avoid his wrath: the imprint of the native and slave cultures in the country has left us with an attitude that it’s not such a bad idea, perhaps, to appease him. Much like the Incas did at one point with Supay, it’s accepted that if you give offerings or make a point to avoid his wrath, you’ll be spared his diabolic plots. The Mapuche, in order to avoid the wrath of the wekufe, would certainly lay out offerings near the ‘trees of the Gualicho’, and try to avoid stomping on their ground.
And Supay can be nice if he wants to! So friendly could he be that miners in the north could count on him to tell them where to find the best spots to dig out their precious metals4, as long as they didn’t reveal who was the source of the information. This more affable character made it all the more easy for Supay to be accepted into the payadas, a sort of gaucho rap-battle where gauchos would have to improvise poems while playing a guitar. Because, not unlike the blues devil of the States, he also has a gift for music down south. Outside of the pulperías, an old timey convenience store, Mandinga, or Supay, was said to appear to show that he knew more ‘for being old, than for being the devil’. The devilish musician defeated the greatest payador of all time; our own Santos Vega, legend goes. (5)
It’s only natural that the south american Carnaval is also the time of the devil. The Carnaval as inherited from Spain is a christian celebration of excess before the harsh penitence of the times of Lent; in South America, it’s held in the dying heat of summer (February) and thus it also coincides with the time of the harvest. In the province of Jujuy, the devil (Pujjllay) lies buried in a hole with offerings, and he’s dug up to start the Carnaval. Once the festival is over, he’s buried again to wait for another year(6).
One legend from the region relays the invention of Carnaval as thus: the devil was quarrelling with God, because all the saints had a day dedicated to them, but he didn’t have one. He wanted a month; God refused. He then went down to 15 days, but God refused again. Then 10 days, a week; finally, it was only three days that God gave him, and thus Carnaval was born(7). It is in those three days that he becomes the Lord of Sensuality, running around the Carnaval tempting people; appearing to men as beautiful women and to women as a handsome man(8). Under his rule the reserved people of the north-west enjoy a free, explosive sexuality. In the city, in Buenos Aires, Carnaval belonged to the slave population; today the city is covered under the heavy beat of the drums, echoing along the tall office buildings, where people dance in the ways of the african ancestors who started the tradition in these lands(9).
As one would do for a friend the way to invoke the devil is by simply calling on him. Muttering any of his names is good enough to attract his attention. The rituals where one communes with him follow the european rule of the inversion: mimicking christian rituals where the rules of sanctity are inversed in order to invoke the power of sacrilege, of the taboo. Sacred animals, like doves, can be sacrificed; unholy animals, like owls, snakes, and bats, can be used to call on to his powers. If one wants to see the devil, one popular saying knows, one needs only to put a dog’s rheum in their own eyes to see him. Or maybe look at one’s reflection in the mirror at midnight, with some luck the devil’s face will appear(8).
The good days for the devil are the unlucky ones: tuesday and friday. August seems to be a good time to be communing with him: some people say he comes around on the first monday of August(8) (10), other traditions hold that on the 24th St. Bartholomew lets him run free on Earth.
If he comes, and one wants to drive him away, one may want to appeal to the Virgin, San Benito, Saint George, or maybe San Santiago (or Santiago Apóstol)(11); a witch doctor (curandero) might sacrifice one of the devil’s sacred animals to make him come out of the possessed ‘to defend his friends’.
An easy exorcism formula is “cruz diablo” (cross devil), meant to make him explode. In some popular folk tale we are taught that for people who make pacts with the Devil and want to get out of them, they need to recite ‘las doce palabras redobladas’ (the twelve double words), a formulaic spell where instead of calling out sacred (christian) names, the spellcaster only makes a numerical reference to them in ascending order (i.e. one is the Virgin Mary, two the tablets of Moses, three are the three Maries, etc)(12).
There’s a myriad of spells associated with the devil – one spell of invisibility has the magician bury a black cat, with a seed of the bean plant stuck in each of its orifices, while chanting to Lucifer. When the seed sprouts, the magician might find that one of the beans will make them invisible. Another variant involves boiling the black cat until the meat separates from the bones. The magician then is tasked with putting each bone in their mouth until they find the one to make them invisible(8).
Salamanca
Of special importance in Argentine diabology is the University of the Devil – the Salamanca. The legend derives from a similar spanish tale of a cave in the city of Salamanca, where the devil would teach students the occult arts. Now identified with a crypt underneath the church of St. Cebrián, another form of St. Cyprian, it is not clear whether the original church, destroyed in the XVth century, was dedicated to St. Cyprian of Carthage or St. Cyprian of Antioch. The latter of which was a former sorceror turned christian convert and martyr, and to whom the grimoire of the Ciprianillo or the Testament of Cyprian the Mage is attributed to(13).
In Argentina, the Salamanca could take place at the top of a mountain, in a cave, or even sometimes in a vizcachera(14). In it, one could appeal to the devil for riches, women, knowledge of the occult or skill in the guitar. Two female natives accused of sorcery by the inquisition in 1761 tell of a gathering of people they came accross one day on their way home; led into the mass of naked bodies by their own ingenuity first, they are made to learn certain magical secrets. This entices them to return a second time, where they observe a big snake towering over the gathering, watching it all. The snake gave then one of the accused a bag with poison powders in it, tied with red hair, and asked for blood in exchange. The woman refused, but promised to bring him blood the next time she was over; and so she did, bringing an offering of meat. (15)
Anyone entering the Salamanca is required to go through certain ordeals of initiation; one is meant to renounce Christ, spit on the virgin, trample on the cross(16). The shedding of blood is also sometimes necessary: one might have to walk barefoot accross a land of broken glass, or injure themselves. Sometimes monstruous sexual acts are committed with other fantastical creatures. However bad the initiations are, at the other end of the excruciating journey the initiate is met with a gathering of jubilant people dancing to or listening to the most beautiful music. The Salamanca then appears as the exotic destination for all artists and sorcerors looking for a faustian bargain.
Don Cali, a curandero from the province of Salta tells the story of how he came to become one in 1976(8): his knowledge of herbal medicine and his healing powers were acquired after Mandinga appeared to him. He’d been taking some cargo on his wagon in a very rainy day when he felt something very heavy suddenly appearing in the back of his cart. He discovered a man sitting on the back, dressed in dark gaucho clothes, who asked him if Don Cali wouldn’t take him to his house, where they could rest away from the rain. He refused several times, until the stranger jumped out; then Don Cali tried to walk back to the front, to get back to his journey. The man, however, would walk around him, in front of him, confusing the distances with almost a dream-like quality.
He found himself following the man to a hole in the ground, and the strange gaucho pushed him in. He felt himself falling endlessly into a pitch black hole, but somehow, at one point he managed to climb out. He ran until he found a mule and a white cock; he took the cock in his arms, and rode the mule to his home. A rabbit tried to follow him, exploding when it came near; he felt little rocks and fruits being thrown at him as he escaped. He managed to get home, and from that day forward, he felt the need to heal. If he didn’t, a burning feeling would start to consume him from the inside.
Eventually Don Cali knew he would be taken by the devil: in 1977, as an old man, he was haunted by delirious visions of a gaucho in black, which prompted him to begin drinking. To his friends he’d begun to prophesize that his end was near; the figure of the Mandinga would randomly appear to him until one day, while he was sitting near his very tame horse, the horse went into a sudden frenzy and kicked him in the head, killing him instantly.
Conclusion
Of argentinian culture a certain rock act once wrote, “somos de un lugar/ santo y profano a la vez/ mixtura de alta combustión” - “we are from a place / sacred and profane at the same time / a volatile mixture”(17), which serves to describe why the devil has such a powerful and ambivalent presence in argentinian imagination. Within the framework of argentinian culture, where contradictions are not only welcomed but celebrated, where the extremes of the divine and the unholy can be enjoyed at the same time without recourse to mental anguish, the devil makes himself at home.
If, as we proudly say, “god is argentinian” then it makes sense as well to proclaim that the devil, in some capacity, is our fellow country man as well.
(1) Link
(2) Historia del Tribunal de Inquisición de Lima (1569-1820). José Toribio Medina. Testimonies cited are those of Ana de Campos (zamba), from Cuzco, Fray Francisco de Alzamora.
(3) This would have been a moderately tall figure for both spaniards of the times and natives.
(4) Here I’m citing Imaginario del Diablo; however the names of the tribes have changed with the years, and the spelling of their spirits/gods might be wrong, reflecting spanish pronunciation. Chiriguanos are also known as ava-guaraní, matacos are now called Wichi, tehuelche is actually the name given by mapuches to a collective of tribes who once lived in the Patagonia, some of which self-identify as Aónikenk. Sadly part of the story of the devil is also the story of cultural erasure of all these great civilizations, and I would encourage anyone to research and familiarize themselves with the amazing diversity of the natives of Argentina and surrounding countries.
(5) Etno-Historias del Isoso; Chané y chiriguanos en el Chaco boliviano siglos XVI a XX). Isabelle Combés.
(6) Imaginario del Diablo, Ricardo Santillán Güemes
(7) Note that in both cases, engualichado and endemoniado imply that the gualicho/devil is inside of the afflicted person. To be cursed then is likened to being posessed by the devil.
(8) Las mil caras del Diablo – José Manuel de Prada Samper
(9) As immortalized by Rafael Obligado in his gaucho epic, Santos Vega. In it, the devil appears as ‘Juan sin Ropa’ (John without clothes).
(10) Link
(11) El Carnaval, el Diablo y la Calificación del Tiempo. Anatilde Idoyaga Molina y Soledad Torres.
(12) In those times gay people didn’t exist and there was only two genders; probably nowadays the devil would likely make the necessary adjustments in order to better appeal to modern diversity.
(13) Carnaval was forbidden a number of times throughout the history of the country, but curiously enough, it was never solely because of religious reasons. The first celebrations of Carnaval were done in private houses; by the end of the three days the celebration ended with a tally of sexual assaults, theft and destruction. The desorderly nature of the celebrations was what prompted the Spanish authorities to try and ban it, to no success. Later, after independence, Juan Manuel de Rosas banned it temporarily due to his fears of the disorder being a good opportunity for unitarian conspirators to try and remove him from power, even if he regularly attended the Carnaval at the heart of the black neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Link
(14) Mondays are the days of the dead for the people in the north-west of Argentina; they may bring bottles of water to their tombs so they can ‘drink’. It also coincides with the time of the celebration of the Pachamama, the mother earth, now a national holiday in Bolivia.
(15) The latter, particularly, has a similar militaristic attribution as one might find in Saint George or Michael; he was a favourite of the Spaniards during the conquest.
(16) Cuentos y Leyendas Populares de Argentina, Berta Elena Vidal de Battini.
(17) Salamanca also had, at one point in its history, a sizeable population of jewish and arab teachers/philosophers, teachers of the arts of Astrology and Kabbalah. It’s worth mentioning that, in the context of post-conquista Spain, after the expulsion of the jews, the anti-semite environment led to widespread persecution of convert jews, as their knowledge of kabbalah was associated with Satan. In the records of the Inquisition both in the americas and in Spain, people were convicted for spreading ‘ideas judaizantes’, or judaizing rethoric; former jews were particularly targeted, especially those with money and a certain degree of influence in society, and any practicing jew was outright exiled from Spanish territory.
(18) The nest of a vizcacha, a rodent similar to a hare that digs nests underground. This one is particular to the flat swamps of the east of Argentina, where the lack of elevations mean that there’s no caves or peaks where the Salamanca can take place.
(19)Expediente 33, legajo 13 de 1761 de los registros de la Santa Inquisición, del Archivo Histórico de Tucumán.
(20) A folk formula to finish the pact with the Devil has one say “no creo en Dios/ yo creo en vos/ me cago en Dios y la puta que lo parió / el dios para mí / sos vos”: I don’t believe in God/I believe in you/ I shit on God and the whore who gave birth to him/ God for me/ is you. Funnily enough, a common interjection for argentinians when faced with a challenge or a troublesome situation is “me cago en Dios” (I shit on God); a tamer version of it is “me cache en Dios”, although one could argue that the feeling conveyed is the same.
(21) La Argentinidad al Palo – Bersuit Vergarabat Go back