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October 31, 2024 24 mins

To celebrate Halloween Maite and Eva sip Vampiros, a blood red Mexican cocktail, while exploring vampire-like characters in Mesoamerican mythology. The ladies dive into history and uncover the connection between chocolate and witchcraft in colonial Latin America. Plus, host of Susto and South Texas native, Ayden Castellanos joins the show to share scary stories from the Texas/Mexico border!

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Brucas and bombiles. I love this topic, I think, I mean,
maybe all Latinos do. But I love scary stories.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, me too. I love like legends like Lord Go Go.
I forgot about that at all. I don't know about
that one. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I like.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
I do like legends. I'm not like a scary movie person.
Neither of my like gory stuff. Now that freaks me out. Yeah,
but I do like like bru cousin like I love.
I love folk tales, but specifically Latino folk tales. I
feel like they're deeper.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
They're terrifying.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Did your mom, you're gonna go out at me? Go
ahead and stay out after men, I might go on,
I might get you. And then I was like, and
I was such a good kid because I'm scared of
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I remember when we were kids. I must have been
like maybe ten years old. We went to one on
a trip, on a family trip, and we took a
tour of the cobblestone street and they it wasn't in
my head. It was at nighttime and they told the
story of La and I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I still don't sleep because of her. I still don't.
My dad swears she she's appeared to him, my dad swears,
my mom swears, my grandma swear like, oh I saw
law you don't know. I was like, oh my god.
It's fun that this episode's all about embracing the spooky.
I do too.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm very excited and we're going to talk about stories
but also how some of these stories connect to food
and drink.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, it's Halloween. My name is Eva.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Longoria and I am Myra and welcome to Hungry for History,
a podcast that explores our past and present through food.
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some
of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Culture, So make yourself at home. When I feel like
there's so much we know about the Salem Witch Trials,
but not a lot about Latin America, and I think
women had to have been persecuted as which is in
Latin America and Mexico too, because we're definitely healers and

(02:11):
healers of the land and that was looked you know,
that was frowned upon.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
And food centric magic features prominently in the Lores of
Witches in the sixteen hundred, So like the Sale and
Witch Trials, which you just mentioned. So if the butter
didn't churn or if the bread had mold, the only
logical explanation was black magic.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah, because the women were responsible for all of this.
So the women were responsible mostly for food production. So
if anything went wrong with that or good, yes, they
could be considered a witch exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
A witch and a threat to social you know, hierarchy.
We talked about this a little bit during our beer
episode last season.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yes, remind people of that. So it was where the
witches hat comes from.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, so the witches had it with women were brewers,
and they were set up in the markets and they
would wear a pointy hat so that people could see
that I.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Could see where the beer was being sold. Yeah, exactly,
and only women brewed the beer. And so that's why
they had the pointy hat. And that's where a witch's
brew came from and a witch's hat. So I always
thought that that was interesting. But you know, I'm going
you should come. I'm going to Galicia in my Searching
for Spain series, and that's another origin country of witches. Really, Yeah,

(03:27):
Bligedaleic Celtic. Is that why it's called Anisia because of
the Gaelic influence. Yeah, I had no idea how Celtic influence,
very Irish influenced. Fascinating. Yeah, And they'd have the biggest
witch festival in summer Solstice June twenty fifth this year
and they do this huge bonfires on the beach and

(03:47):
all these rituals and how cool. My point is it
must have come from Latin America because of colonization, Like
the Spanish Inquisition was like established what in the late
fourteen hundred, yes, for the eighteen hundreds, so between then,
not only thousands of Muslims and Jews were killed for
their religious beliefs, but there must have been like women

(04:11):
that were associated with sorcery or witchcraft during that time
that were targets of Spain and the Inquisition.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Absolutely, and the Inquisition actually came to Mexico and it
was actually instituted in Mexico in fifteen seventy one, in
Mexico and in Guatemala as well, and it took different
targets from the Spain. So it was Jews and Muslims
in Spain, and here it was also witchcraft, sexual activities,

(04:43):
drug abuse. And this is where the food comes in chocolate.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Oh my god, that's right, because in last season's Hungry
First three, in the Chocolate episode, we talked about chocolate
being this like plant based food, which the seed of
the cucaas is dried, it's toasted, then it's like ground
with spices and and then it changes into something new.
And the drink, because it was mostly a drink and
it was pretty bitter. It was reserved for priests and aristocrats,

(05:10):
and the cacao seeds were used as currency, and chocolate
was really special. It was also used medicinally, and so
people thought it was magical and it was sacred. And
so a common spice used in chocolate by the mines
was achiote, which turned the drinker's mouth red because achiota

(05:31):
is that red seeds now like that, yeah, ano, it's
also called a nato. And it looked like they were
drinking blood when they would drink this hot chocolate. Yeahpa
thought it was like bad, bad influence chocolate drinkers.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Sad influence with the red chocolate, and it was an aphrodisiac.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, it's amazing. So and that's witchcraft right there, exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, this is where we start seeing you know, if
you even if you think about it, it's the myth
that they're with the chocolate and the all of these
spices in there, and they're just grinding it so east
and then it's a liquid, and then it's it's magic.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
It's magic.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
It's basically literally, it's literally magic.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
And women always prepared the chocolate.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yes, that is key. Women always prepare the chocolate. By
the time we get to the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
chocolate was available to everybody. So pre conquest it was
only reserved for nobility, the aristocracy, and it was had
all of these spices cut to Post conquest, it was
available for everybody.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Every social class, every ethnic group, indigenous, Baniard, African, mixed,
it was everybody.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
And it was still consumed with water, but it was
available for everybody, still made by hand in a meta day.
But it's dark and grainy, and so it provides this
ideal environment to hide potions in it.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Oh, you could like poison somebody.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
And this is what a lot of the Inquisition in
Mexico were targeting women who were making potions.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Because they thought they were Brujas, the Bruhaus through chocolate specifically,
and I think that is so fascinating, fascinating.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
So there are a few stories of so called brujas.
My favorite is the one of Juan de Fuent then
Cecilia the Ariola. So in most cases women made the chocolate,
but in this story, it involves a man on August eighteen,
sixteen ninety five, Juan de fund that complained to the

(07:38):
inquisition authorities that his wife bewitched him with sorcery. So
he was a thirty three year old Mulatto construction worker
denouncing his Mulata wife, Cecilia, and he charged her by
casting spells and curses so quote unquote, so that he

(07:58):
could not be a man on all the occasions that
he desired to have intercourse with his weight.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
So he was suffering from a rectile dysfunction, and he
blamed that his wife was using sorcery on him to
keep his his wee wee limb exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Of course, that's the only explaination, the only explanation. And
also he would prepare the chocolate when women would prepare
the chocolate, so he was accusing her of poisoning him
and shifting the gender roles because it was unnatural that
he was preparing the morning chocolate while his wife slept,

(08:37):
So he was accusing her of everything. Cecilo was interrogated,
she was convicted by the Inquisition and then she denounced
dozens of women practicing witchcraft and was sent to Central
Jail in Mexico City. And according to this really great
article called Chocolate, Sex and Disorderly Women in the late

(08:58):
seventeenth and eighteen entry, this happened to my La. Even
though she went to jail in Mexico City. She says
that she took a few personal items with her, including chocolate,
and everything about the case and everything that she did
that they did. Everything is recorded how from the court

(09:20):
from the court and it's digitized, and all of the
documentation was online. That so crazy, it's crazy of her
and other women.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
So we know.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Oh, on August eighteenth, sixteen ninety five, he complained to
his wife.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
There's so many stories, but it's always like it's all
of these stories are basically men ratting on their wives
because they don't want to be married anymore. So they're like, oh,
you're a witch, and then the inquisition would come and
take them away.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
No, that same guy that I just mentioned fun three
days before married somebody else. Yeah, because her wife was
out of the way. Of course, he did. But the
crazy thing to me is the association between chocolate and
disorderly behavior, Like that's just crazy to me. But it
also extended to the elite Spanish women as well, and

(10:07):
so there it wasn't just like the mulatos and the
indigenous people. There was also it was it an englishman, yeah,
who wrote about his travels, and he described a public
confrontation between a bishop and an elite woman who insisted
on drinking hot chocolate in church, which disrupted mass, and
they boycotted cathedral services and protested the bishop's prohibition of chocolate.

(10:31):
And then he became ill during the protests and died
a week later. He was poisoned. And all these women
were either killed or certain time in prison because they
were like, for sure they did it, they did it.
I don't know. This one sounds like they did. They
probably didn't. I don't blame them.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
They wanted to drink our chocolate. Hey, But it's so
interesting because it was the elite women and they were
they're the ones whose stories are documented because we don't
see the mixed race, the indigenous swimmen, the African women.
They were probably also using chocolate, but we don't have.
We don't have records of them.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
So the other thing I remember growing up, did you
ever get the O hole? Yes? Yes? And what is
with the egg?

Speaker 2 (11:21):
The oh my god, the egg the egg like So.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
To this day, when I get sick, I'm like mom
and my mom will do Does she do it? Yes? Yes,
my mom does the egg and she doesn't our father
and hail Mary and all my body and then I
sleep it off. And then we cracked the egg in
the water. And if it's cloudy in the morning, yeah,
then it was an evil spirit inside of you. And

(11:45):
if it's clear, then it wasn't illoho. Wasn't somebody who
gave you the os? So interesting?

Speaker 2 (11:50):
When I was in China, did your.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Mom do No?

Speaker 1 (11:53):
My mom was like, never mind, I don't wigs.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
When I was in high school in Moreedo, during lunch,
we used to go across to normal rada, know and
with my friends and we would often go toha. One
time when we went and one of my friends went
in and she did the webbo and then they cracked
it and.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
It was black. Another thing I remember when my sister
and I were riding her riding our bikes and she
fell off and broke her arm, and I got so scared.
I had to carry her back to the house, like
down the block, and I was carrying her because she fainted.
She passed out. So I get back to my house
and they're like, oh my god, and they just like
grab her and they take her to the hospital. And

(12:30):
and I was just at home and I was so scared,
like I had a susto and my grandma was like,
give her sugar, give her sugar, and they made me
take spoonfuls of sugar for the shock.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Oh wow, and you just kind of yeah, I was
just there going like whenever she going to die?

Speaker 1 (12:46):
She broke her arm. I thought you were I thought
she died. Yeah, I mean literally was, because you know,
they like rushed out of the house and you know,
is she gonna die? Mom and my grandma. I remember
her shoving a spoonful of sugar in my mouth and
I was like, what the hell. But I did read later,
like recently, like why that it does, like that adrenaline
of sugar changes your synapses. It has something to do.

(13:08):
But I thought it was a folkgo and then I
was like, oh, there's actually science behind that one. I
can prove it, all right, so because it's Halloween, we
felt it appropriate to start out by making vombiles. I
don't even know what a vampido is. Yes, you've never
had it. It's like a Mexican bloody mary. Okay, then
I'm in. Yeah, it's amazing. The vampido. It is the
national cultail of Mexico. Why it's not the margarita, it's

(13:30):
the vampido is the national drink of medes. It says
who who created it?

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Well, a man named Oscarednandez. He was a fruit vender
in Jalisco, in a town called San Luiso. Yet lan
he's selling from plastic bags with a strong size.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
I still do that, Yeah, sosas with in a plastic maggie.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
But it's red. So it's like your sucking blood, like
a vampire. So we're going to start making a vampiedo.
It has tequila, It has tomato juice, freshly squeezed, lime juice,
fresh be squeezed orange juice, and grinity. Basco and grinity.
So it's basically the tomato juice grenadine and the two

(14:10):
juices is a sanity bat. So it's the bases, the
sugity bat.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Oh is it so?

Speaker 2 (14:14):
We're just gonna and make our vampiros because we have
to drink vampios.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
If we're talking about of course.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
In folklore in various countries over the centuries, so not
just in Mexico, but Persians, Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans,
the Mayans all had their own tails of thirsty beings
with the taste for thick, warm blood. So some of
these vampire like creatures in Latin America, there are a
few of them. One of them is called Gamasots camas Gamasots. Well,

(14:46):
he's sort of the most vampire like creature conjured up
by the Mayans.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
It's a half fat, half human.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
With a blood thirsty temper, and he's known for tear
the heads off of other gods and ferociously draining the
blood from its victims. And in the Mayans Sacred Book,
he is a bat like figure that acts as the
guardian of the underworld and kills victims by decapitation.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
For real or for fake is the question? Scary stories
are so scary? It comes from the Mayan, it comes
from the mine.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Well, the imagery of the Kamasots is actually based on
a little vampire bats that are native to southern and
Central America, and these vampire bats have large fangs that
don't feed on insects or fruit like most bats feed
on fruit. They only feed on blood, and so they
use their fangs to slice into the skin of an

(15:51):
animal and they lick the blood as it oozes out.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
Okay, you know what that sounds like. That sounds like
sweet potato.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
It's not, sir, it's not.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
Let's see.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Okay, Halloween, Happy Halloween.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
That's delicious. That's good. So that was from the Mayans,
that is from the mind. But the Aztecs have something similar, right, have.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Something similar and scary. So among the Aztects, a woman
in labor was said to capture the spirit of her
newborn child, much like a warrior captures his opponent in battle.
But if a woman died while giving birth, her own
soul was transformed into a terrifying demon known as a sea.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
So she's kind of ala, kind of a Laurdana.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Actually, some people say that the legend of the of
the Yourana is based on a sea oh to have
descended to Earth on five days during the Aztec calendar,
and during these times they haunted crossroads in the hopes
of snatching young children, the young children that they were
never privileged to meet. So in order to keep their

(17:06):
children safe, people would create shrines full of food at
crossroads and the hope that these demons would be too
busy eating to notice the sun because the seattle helped
guide the sun. So she had a favorite food, uh huh,
cakes in the shape of a butterfly. Okay, little tamales

(17:27):
and toasted corn, so she.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Would be too busy eating now, and then the sun
would come up and she would ye. Basically basically, well,
when we come back, we're still telling scary stories.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Our spooky episode continues with a special guest, a fellow
Texan and host of the podcast Whole This is a
great title, I'd wait for history.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
He sat down with Aiden Castillano's host of Still, a
podcast based on South Texas, lay in Banks and Spooky.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Stories, Enjoy This Halloween Inspire to interview Aiden. I'm so
excited to meet you. Hi.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Likewise, both Eva.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
And I are from South Texas and you're from South Texas.
I came across your podcast and I was like, oh
my god, I've been listening to it every morning when
I walk my dog. I introduced your podcast to Eva
and so it's just very, very exciting. How did you
get interested in spooky stories?

Speaker 4 (18:27):
Susto itself for people who don't know, but I feel
like if they're listening to Hunger for History, they shouldn't know, right.
Is it's a cultural illness where after a big scare
or something traumatic, the soul separates itself from the body,
and if it's a severe enough scare or trauma, the
soul can even fragment, and there's different remedies for it
based on who you're talking to. For me, growing up,

(18:50):
it was sugar, a spoonful of sugar in a glass
of water, and if we had susto, we had to
mix it up and then chug that. Growing up, you know,
I'm also from South Texas like both of you, and
I just heard all of these stories growing up. They
were always being told to us, whether it was at
you know, family barbecues late at night when people were
starting to leave and it was dark and okay, it

(19:11):
suddenly it turned into okay, who saw the devil last?
And so I just kept hearing these stories growing up,
and even in the schools. There's a book that I
think a lot of us in South Texas know of
it's the stories that must not die. And this book
had all these stories. It had stories of Lichusa's Layoora,
the girl who danced with the Devil, all of these

(19:33):
spooky stories that were collected in South Texas and they
were reading them to us in elementary But it wasn't
purely to scare the life out of us. They were
teaching us reading comprehension because these stories were in English
and Spanish.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
So what is the story. I don't know the story
of a girl that danced with the devil?

Speaker 4 (19:52):
In nineteen eighty nine, I believe it was in McAllen, Texas.
There was a young woman who was from a very
pious family. They're very religious, and she was kind of
sheltered and she was never allowed to go out, definitely
not alone, but especially to I guess places of ill repute,
we'll say. And she decided one night to sneak out

(20:13):
with her friends and to go to a dance, to
go to Bocachio two thousand and she was out and
from one moment to the next, this stranger appeared out
of nowhere and approached her, and she was completely taken
by him. He was handsome, nobody in her group knew
who he was. He was very suave and mysterious, and

(20:36):
he approached her and he asked her to dance, and
she said yes. So they're dancing and dancing, and you know,
she's having a great time. She says, this is what
my family kept me from. I'm having a good time.
I'm not doing anything bad. I'm just dancing right. And
before she realizes it, she can start to hear the
crowd freaking out. People are screaming, they're terrified, and so

(20:58):
she's looking around and she noticed, say, is that they're
all looking at her. They're all pointing at her partner,
her dance partner. She looks closely and she sees that
they're screaming and they're pointing at his feet. Look at
his feet, Look at his feet. And she looks down
and she sees that he has one goat's tough and
one chickens talan. She'd been dancing with the devil.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
So in a cloud of smoke, he disappears. All that's
left on her burn marks from where he held her,
and the smarrill sulfur, and nobody saw him leaves.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Are there any folk tales specific, Are there any foods
that you see in these stories?

Speaker 4 (21:40):
Not really a story, but a piece of advice that
I heard growing up from one of my uncles. He
lives on a ranch land, and he said that he
would get visited by the tusas sometimes as owls or
in their human forms, and that he would offer he
would offer them chilas if they showed up. Was an owl,

(22:00):
and he thought this owl might be able to choicell er,
I don't know, if he wanted to test it out.
He would offer them chilas, the chili pickings from the bush,
and that he would throw it out so the owl
would eat it, and that if the owl ate it
and it did not react, then it was simply just
an owl. It was just a bird. But if it
did react, if it had a reaction to the spiciness

(22:22):
of the chila, then it was actually a human. It
was a brucha. And I never understood that white he
told me this. I was like, what is the reason
for that white chilas? And then I learned a few
years ago that birds don't react to capsaicin, which is
the enzymer or the chemical or whatever that makes chila

(22:43):
spicy to humans and so I don't know if my
uncle knew this or maybe he did, but yeah, that's
why people will put chilas in their bird seed so
that the squirrels won't get to it, because birds aren't
affected by that chemical. And so that was his way
of testing out is this really just an owl litusa

(23:03):
or is it ausa? So everybody key some chila's in
your pockets just in case you come across a litusa
that might.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Be a brou so interesting.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
You can listen to Sustal anywhere podcasts are available. You
can also visit sustalpodcast dot com and if you would
like to follow me online, my handle is at sustal
podcast across every single platform.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
And so is s u s t Oh.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Aiden. Well, I could talk about scary stories beforeever, but
I will. We will end it here and I encourage
you to have a lot of Mexican candy this Halloween,
and if you can't find it, there's some great recipes
on how to make some some spooky Mexican candy. So

(23:54):
I'm gonna be doing that. Likes yeah, like with an eyeball. Oh,
I love those yeah, yeah, scary molds and brains, brains
and things like that about that stuff. It's gonna be fun.
Happy Halloween, everybody, Thanks for listening. Be safe out there.
Happy Halloween. Hungry for History is a Hyphenite media production

(24:14):
in partnership with Iheart's Michael Fura podcast network.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Advertise With Us

Hosts And Creators

MAITE GOMEZ-REJÓN

MAITE GOMEZ-REJÓN

Eva Longoria

Eva Longoria

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