Lesson 15

Border Legends, Myth, & Folklore

Objective: Students will understand some of the narrative forms and tales unique to the U.S.-Mexico border.  In addition, they will think critically about the possible sociological meanings of these stories, and then write their own versions to demonstrate that they understand the forms.

NCSS Standards Met By This Lesson: All but IX. 

Introduction: Teachers may be fortunate enough to have some students who grew up hearing stories such as "La Llorona".  Probably a greater number of students will be familiar with urban legends such as "The Missing Organ."  One purpose of this lesson is to make students aware that there is a living folklore tradition on the border that includes legends, tales, proverbs, tall tales, cowboy poetry, etc.  In this lesson, students will read and/or listen to legends and stories, and will then be asked, either as one group or in smaller groups, to think about what these stories are telling us about border life.  Questions for discussion are included at the end of each section.

Materials/Preparation: This lesson draws upon a number of Internet resources.  Teachers may want to download and copy these essays either to read aloud to the class or to have the students read for themselves.

There are hundreds of books of Southwest regional folklore, from books of cuentos (stories) and dichos (proverbs) to tall tales. Here are two that are a little off the beaten path:

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita and La Llorona. illustrated by Christina Gonzalez. San Francisco: Children's Book Press, 1996.

Borderlands Sourcebook: A Guide to The Literature on Northern Mexico and the American Southwest. Ed. Ellwyn Stoddard, Richard Nostrand, and Jonathan West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983.

Paredes, Americo. With His Pistol In His Hand.

Instruction/Practice:

The format for all three parts of this lesson is the same: first the class either reads the material silently to themselves, has it read to them, or reads it aloud as a group. Following that, the teacher leads the class in discussion using the questions provided here.

Teachers may also require students to write individual responses to the readings/discussions.

Part 1 -- Border Legends/Class Discussion

Introduce the topic by acknowledging that for many students (and people of all ages), the word "folklore" is equated with old, dusty books and boring old stories from a long time ago.  But the reality is that we live in a world alive in folklore, and the border is a place where it exists very strongly in the present.

To start, tell the class this story:  In 1997, the El Paso Times published a small news item that said two teenaged El Paso boys went to Ciudad Juárez and drank until they passed out.  The first boy woke up, tried to wake his friend, but his friend was completely unconscious.  So the first friend left him there and went back to El Paso.  The following morning, when the second boy woke up, he discovered that there was a row of crude stitches running down the left side of his back.  He staggered home to El Paso, where his worried father had him x-rayed at a local hospital: sure enough, the boy's kidney had been removed during the night. According to the Times story, authorities suspected the boy had been a victim of "organ stealers," people who illegally take others' organs and sell them for large sums of money in the organ-transplant market.

First of all, it is absolutely true that the El Paso Times printed this story as a real news item in 1997.  There was nothing in its presentation or wording that indicated the story was a hoax.

Questions for the class:

1) Has anyone heard this rumor before?

2) How many people believe this is true?

3) Has anyone ever heard a different version of this rumor?

4) What other rumors have you heard about Ciudad Juárez or other border cities?

For another official news item regarding this legend, check out the October 1999 "Border Health" story from Frontera NorteSur, "Human Organs Are Not Trafficked in Juárez As Rumored." This document can be found at http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/old_1999/oct99/hlth.html

In this item, enraged Juárez doctors denounce an allegation made by an El Paso investigator who accused the border town of involvement in the trafficking of human body parts.

Question for the class:
1) What is going on here?  Is this a hoax?  It sounds like some people really believe it.

2) If the rumor, now an allegation, is still going strong in 2004, doesn't it have to be true?

3) What does the rumor say about El Paso attitudes/fears about Juárez?

4) If this story is not true, why does it keep surfacing?

At this point, it would be useful for the class, either in a large group or in small groups, to come to a consensus about these questions.  Then various conclusions, and perhaps a vote on how many people believe them, can be put on the board.

The answer to these questions can be found in the long essay, "Organ Stealing: Fact, Fantasy, Conspiracy, or Urban Legend?" which can be found at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/biotech/organswatch/pages/theftoflife2.html

From this report, we learn that stories of organ-stealing, in many variations, have been circling the globe since the late 1980s.  Sometimes the organ stealing is supposedly done by medical units or Red Cross vans that roll into African villages in the night, sometimes done by orphanages or "baby farms" in Latin American countries (where babies are grown to supply the U.S. with organs for transplants), or by aliens who abduct their specimens.  There are all kinds of variations on the urban leged. 

A selection from the essay on "Organ Stealing":

"Why, then, is that the "baby parts" story just won't die? (San Francisco Examiner, 1990), despite the appointment of a full-time disinformation specialist, Todd Leventhall, for the U.S. Information Agency in Washington who has led a long campaign to kill it?

What does it mean when a lot of people around the world begin to tell variants of the same bizarre and unlikely story?  In other words, how does one interpret the social imagination of poor and third world peoples?  According to one interpretive strain the rumors indicate a kind of global mass hysteria reflecting characteristic fin-de-siecle anxieties and postmodern malaise, a misplaced new age spirituality focusing on the body and the sanctity of organs in the face of everyday threats to personal security in the form of urban violence, anarchy, theft and loss, fragmentation...

Less dramatically, the world rumors have been interpreted by some oral historians and folklorists (see Dundes 1991; Campion-Vincent 1990, White 1993, 1994) as constituting a genre, an oral literary form: the urban legend.  The stories are circulated and repeated because they are "good to think" and "good to tell."  They entertain by fright, writes Luise White, just like good old fashioned ghost stories."

Questions for the class:
1)  The most common variant of this story is that advanced medical units from advanced modern countries such as the U.S. are either abducting third-world villagers during the night, or stealing organs through orphanages and baby farms.  That is, the most common form of this story is that the rich, modern nations (especially  the U.S.) are preying upon the world's poor for organs.  What is this story saying about the way the third-world peoples view the U.S.?  About technology?  About chaos, loss of control, end-of-the-world times?

2)  How is the El Paso-Juárez variant of this legend different from this common variant?  (e.g., the roles are reversed: the poor nation is preying upon the youth of the rich nation--other differences?)

3)  What does that difference tell us about the relationship between El Paso and Juárez?

4)  If the border version of this legend were told along the same lines as the common variant (rich countries exploiting the poor), how would it be told? (e.g., a U.S. medical van would abduct poor Juarenses from a poor, unlit colonia at 4 a.m., steal their organs, etc.)

For more Urban Legends from Texas, check out this site:

Chickenskin: A Collection of True Ghost Stories and Weird Tales from Texas
http://tstevens.home.texas.net/CS/

For an exhaustive collection of Urban Legends in general:
http://www.urbanlegends.com/

Of course, several popular anthologies of urban legends are in print.

Part 2 -- Border Folklore/Myth: Class Discussion

In the second part of this three-part survey of folklore, we turn to folklore with an Hispanic/Chicano origin.  It would be interesting if class members that know border stories or legends would stand up and tell their stories.  Ideally, there would be at least one or two brave people.  The most common stories might be "La Llorona" or the "Chupacabra."

If no one has any stories to tell, then the teacher at this point can lead students in a discussion about either "La Llorona" or "The Chupacabra." La Llorona tends to be well known and is often taught by junior high school, so for this lesson we will choose the more recent "Chupacabra" phenomenon.

Here are Internet sources for both stories:

La Llorona:
http://www.utep.edu/region19/modules/reanet01/lalloron/framewor/

The Chupacabra:
http://skepdic.com/chupa.html

http://www.oftm.com/chupa.html  (this site isn't great but the images are wild)

Before going ahead with any reading about the Chupacabra, ask students what they think it is or what they may have heard about it. Although "chupacabra" technically means "female goat-sucker," it is always referred to as "El Chupacabra"--the masculine form.

Chupacabras are described various ways, but in general it is a kind of vampire-like creature, usually only three or four feet tall, with fangs and red eyes, that drains livestock of blood. The legend is thought to have started in Puerto Rico around the mid-1990s. There have been recent reports of the Chupacabra in California, Texas, Miami, and Baja California.

The bloodsucking creature is said to have supernatural strength and jumping capabilities, and often leaves a smell of sulphur "not unlike the demonic creatures of folklore." However, it is usually explained as having extraterrestrial origins. People have captured, killed, and photographed chupacabras. Two families in Florida went on TV claiming their farm animals were killed by chupacabras.

(FYI, in the office where this lesson plan is being written, the morning janitor will no longer work in the office bathroom unaccompanied because she saw a chupacabra. So, there has been a chupacabra sighting in Las Cruces, New Mexico.)

A 2003 sighting in Cd. Juárez is recorded at:  http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/jun03/today.html (Scroll down to June 19, 2003). 

In the first example, the legend of the missing organ, the class was told the theories of the folklorists. For this example, put students in small groups to discuss and come up with a theory for why this particular legend is becoming popular now along the border, in Mexico, and Puerto Rico. That is, students are to think like folklorists themselves.

Questions to consider:

1) In the area where the chupacabra legend originated in Puerto Rico, people have also claimed to see UFOs. Some say the chupacabra is extraterrestrial. Others say it is demonic. What difference does it make whether the chupacabra is a demonic or an alien creature?

2) Many, many people are claiming to have seen these creatures. All the sightings are post-1995, mainly among Latin, Hispanic populations. What is going on in the past 5 years that might contribute to these sightings? What is going on in the last 5 years in general in the world that connects to this story?

3) What possible meanings does this legend have?

4) Why would a person tell this kind of story? What kind of person would believe it?

5) How do you explain the more than 70 livestock drained of blood in one night in Florida and the sincere testimony of two families that the act was committed by chupacabras?

6) The X-Files story suggests that the chupacabra story springs up in crowded, difficult conditions where immigrants are struggling to survive. Furthermore, it is reality for the Hispanic community but complete nonsense to the Anglo community. Why might the Chupacabra legend thrive in such conditions? What could it mean?

7) Why do you think folklore stories such as La Llorona and the Chupacabra contrive to thrive in Mexican culture whereas Anglo North Americans generally do not have the same kind of living folklore? Could the prevalence of TV & Movies play any part in that, or are there other reasons?

8) Consider the literal translation of "chupacabra," the vampire-like connections. What do these suggest?

9) What is your own personal reaction and intuitive/gut response to the chupacabra phenomenon?

Part 3 -- Border Folklore/Tall Tale: Class Discussion

For the third and final part of our look at folklore, we turn to the rich tradition of Anglo folklore in the U.S. Southwest, most of it stemming from the pioneer and Wild West days. Tall tales and cowboy poetry stand out as vibrant examples of Southwest folklore. In fact, if one considers that a peculiar brand of Texas humor and storytelling still exists, one can rightly argue that there is an Anglo folklore tradition still alive in the U.S. Southwest.

Books of old Wild West-era Tall Tales are easily found. For this lesson, to stay with the theme of living folklore, we consider a few examples of present-day tall tales:

Texas Tall Tales
http://www.americanfolklore.net/folktales/tx.html

Texas Jokes (NOTE: we can't vouch for the content appropriateness of all these jokes)
http://www.texasrebelradio.com/texas_jokes.htm

Before looking at examples, ask the students: Is there anything that stands out about Texan storytelling or jokes by or about Texans? What seems to be the attitude of Texas toward the rest of the U.S. and vice-versa? Undoubtedly, the consensus will be something along the lines that Texas stories or humor are usually greatly exaggerated. For whatever reason, there is a definite comical tall tale tradition that still lives in Texas today. Some might even say negative things about Texans, although this is a rare occurrence.

From "40 Things A Texan Would Never Say":

1. Honey, did you mail that donation to Greenpeace?

2. I've got two cases of Zima for the Super Bowl.

3. Checkmate.

4. I'll take Shakespeare for $1000, Alex.

Questions: Why don't these jokes work if they are about Californians or Illinoisans or even New Mexicans? What mythic image do Texans carry in the national consciousness? What is the attitude toward Texans in this and similar jokes?

And do Texans tell tall tales? Consider this news items on the Texas-Web, July 2000:

"One Tough Ol' Texas Lady" -- In this news item, from Fort Worth, "it seems that one of the more elderly female residents" did her shopping one day and came back to her car to find 4 men sitting in it.

So, "being a Texas woman, she naturally dropped her shopping bags, drew her handgun, and screamed at them like a mama bear protecting her cubs. She yelled that she knows how to use her gun and she will if she has to."

The four men take off running. As it turns out, when the old lady gets in the car, it isn't hers. It just happened that her car was just like this one. She finds her car 4 spaces away, and "being an honest woman," drives to the police station to report the incident. When she tells her story to the police agent, "he laughed so hard he nearly passed out." When he was finally able to talk, he introduced her to the four trembling young men who had reported a "carjacking by a crazy old lady with a gun." No charges were filed.

Questions: What is uniquely Texan about this story? Why would a modern day Wild West tale like this not have the same effect if it was set in Michigan or New Hampshire?

Finally, there is this observation from Texas writer Jim Hightower: "The only things in the middle of the road in Texas are yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

Questions to consider:

1) Why do you think the tall tale and exaggerated humor of the Wild West have maintained as a tradition in Texas and the U.S. Southwest? Is it important for Texans to see themselves a larger-than-life in some way? Is this connected to their identity?

2) To what extent does the unique humor of & about Texas form an image of The Texan as a mythic figure in U.S. folklore?

Does it give Texans a sense of pride, community? What is it with Texans? Why are they so proud to be so large & so extreme?

3) Is there any connection between the Anglo folklore tradition and the Chicano/Mexican folklore tradition? Compare and contrast. Are urban legends Anglo, Mexicano, both, neither?

4) In what ways do hiphop and rap music share in the tall tale tradition?

Closure: Either as an in-class or take-home assignment, have students write a legend, folk story, or tall tale of their own, using the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a setting. The assignment can be made more specific: Adapt a famous Greek, Roman, or other world myth/story to this region (La Llorona is such a legend). Or, to be more postmodern, have students adapt a TV show or movie to a border setting and rewrite it as a legend or folk story.

For hiphop or rap minded students, have them comb through their collection of CDs and make an anthology of lyrics and songs (written out) which correspond to the either the tall tale, urban legend, or folklore story traditions. In their write-up, they should explain how the selection demonstrates the features of the tradition they are comparing it to.

Extensions: Again, remind students that extended research and writing in borderland folklore traditions can be a good topic for the final Border Project.