Silvestre CuevasApril 12

A chanque is a little guy who lives in the mountains and in wells. He resembles the person that he sees. He doesn’t harm anyone. He comes out at midday.

Myth– Once there was a festival for the cotton harvest. The chaneques arrived, and they enjoyed the curious appearance of the spotted ones [refers to people with skin pigmentation disorders such as vitilgo or albinism]. They brought one of the spotted ones to the mountain where they offered to him one of their daughters. But the spotted one refused the girl, and for this reason was able to return to the “world” (“al mundo”) to tell the other spotted ones that if they slept with a chaneque they would never return.

Leonardo RonquilloApril 19

The chaneque (tchikung ginya) is a way of saying the “owner of the earth” (“dueño de la tierra”). The horses of the chaneques are deer, burros, brocket deer, hens, turkeys and birds.

Silvestre Cuevas

Incense kills chaneques, and for this reason one should not bring incense into the cornfield. If a child goes to the well he or she carries a bit of copal in a pocket, made by twisting and tying their shirt so that the chanegues do not carry them away. When people go into the mountains they carry a bit of incense and a blessed candle. The chaneques live in trees.

Girls at the well

Leonardo Ronquillo, Norberto TorresApril 27

They see everyone as equals. They are unable to tell if we are old or young, woman or man. They have clothes; they have a store. The brocket deer is their mule, the snake their dog, and the armadillo their bank. One should not kill too many birds because it angers the chaneques.

Story – When the posadas [Christmas processions] begin, all of the chaneques visit the birthplace of Christ, abandoning the forest. In those days people come into the woods to hunt because the owners are not around.

But as soon as Christ is baptized the chaneques are in the forest again. An “actual” (“autentico”) encounter – told to Leonardo by a young man of Nazareth. A boy went to the woods to hunt, wounding and killing many birds. Some chaneques appeared and angrily asked him why he had wounded and killed so many birds. “Look at my hens; how their feet are burned!” (“íMire mis gallinas como sus patas están quebradas!”) Then the chaneques detained the boy for two months until one day when he encountered a man in the woods. “He is probably a Saint!” (“íA lo mejor un santo!”) is what he said. The man taught him to gather the feathers of the birds he had killed. He made a fire with these feathers and rubbed the burned feet with the ash. After a while the birds were cured and at that very time the chaneques took him to a place near his house where he awoke.

Silvestre CuevasApril 29

One day a man put a snare in the woods to trap birds. When he returned to inspect the trap he found the chaneques opening up the trap. The man asked the chaneques, ”Why are you sitting free my birds?” The chaneques answered him, “Because your wife is not taking care of the traps and all the birds are dying. Neither is she quite taking care of you. Would you like to see what she is doing now?” In a moment they allowed the man to see, with an apparatus, all the way to his house, where his wife was laying with another man. The cheneques said to the man, “If you would like, we will send a dog!” The man answered, “Yes, send a big dog!”

Then they told him, “No, we will send a medium-size dog, because they are smarter and run faster.” The dog (snake) came to the house, bit both of them, for sure, for sure. And after a little while the two died. They did the man a favor.

Tomás JiménezMay 3

The chaneques wear boots of gold, and all the buttons on their clothing are gold.