Legends From Sonora

Home to a diverse landscape and 3 million people, the state of Sonora also has many legends.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries, and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert Viitto.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome and we bian beneathos to episode number one, one
hundred ninety four of Mexico Unexplained, where we examine the magic,
the mysteries, and the miracles of Mexico. I'm your host,
Robert Bitto. The Mexican state of Sonora is located in
the northwestern part of the Republic and borders the Mexican

(01:16):
states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Baja California, as well as the
American states of Arizona and New Mexico. It is home
to a diverse landscape of deserts, high mountains, fertile river valleys,
and beautiful beaches. It is also home to three million
people and many interesting legends. Here are a few. Number

(01:39):
one Bobuk the Toad and the end of the Great
Drought many centuries before the Spanish arrived. The Yaqui people
lived in the deserts of the modern day Mexican state
of Sonora in eight fairly large towns. The towns were
like little independent kingdoms that lived peacefully with each other,

(02:00):
sharing a common language and culture, along with some natural
resources like water and hunting areas. A long time ago,
according to legend, the Yakis were suffering from a great drought,
and even their wells and springs were drying up. Famine
and disease soon spread throughout the Yaki homeland. When the

(02:20):
situation became dire, the rulers of the eight Yaki cities
got together to try to come up with a solution
to solve their crisis of lack of water. They agreed
that they would send a sparrow to fly to the
heavens and talk to Yuku, the rather temperamental god of rain,
who lived in a large house in the clouds. The

(02:40):
bird flew to Yuku and asked him to send rain
down to Earth because the Yakis were thirsty and their
lands were drying up. The rain deity reluctantly agreed, but
felt a little bothered by this request. The sparrow happily
flew back to the earth, but never made it back home.
It was struck by lightning and carried off by the

(03:02):
fierce winds of the storm. Because Yuku felt no need
to fulfill a promise to a dead bird, he seized
the rain before any of it reached the parched earth
and the desperate humans who so needed it. When the
sparrow never returned and the rain amounted to nothing, the
eight great rulers of the Yaki Territory gathered together again

(03:23):
to come up with another solution. They decided to send
a stronger bird, a swallow, to talk to Yuku. The
valiant bird flew until it met the rain god in
his great house in the sky and begged him to
give the Yaki some water. Yuku replied, without hesitation, go
without concern and return to your chiefs and rest, assured

(03:46):
that the rain will come after you. The swallow headed
back to Earth, satisfied with Yuku's promise, but like the sparrow,
it was caught by the wind and struck by lightning.
No more was heard of the bird, and not a
drop of water fell to the ground. The eight Yaki rulers,
in desperation, opted for another messenger, Bobok the toad, who

(04:09):
lived in Bakwam, a swampy shallow lake now completely dry.
The chiefs met him in Vicum, a town that still
exists near modern Dagwaimas there they entrusted him with the mission.
Before he could meet the rain god Yuku, Bobok visited
an old sorcerer who lived outside of town. The old

(04:30):
Yaki magician gave the toad a pair of bat wings
so he could fly up to the cloudy kingdom of
Yuku to plead with the rain deity. When he made
it up to the clouds, Bobok the toad begged of
the rain god. He said, Sir, please don't treat the
Yaki so badly. Send us some water to drink, because
we are all thirsty. Yuku responded in the same way

(04:54):
that he did with the sparrow and the swallow, because
he was so bothered. Yet again Yuk who wanted to
kill the toad as he had gotten rid of the
pesky birds. So Bobuk the toad pretended to leave the
Kingdom of the clouds, but instead hid. Suddenly, the sky darkened,
lightning flashed across the skies. The wind blew with fury,

(05:17):
and it began to rain. Finally, the water reached the ground,
but unknown to the god Yuku, the rain did not
touch the toad. Bobok rose much higher than the rain
as he started croaking. Yuku listened to the toad and
made it rain again. The bat winged toad was silent
and the rain stopped. After a few moments, Bobok resumed

(05:41):
his chant and threw himself to the ground. The rain
god sent to deluge to kill him, but he did
not find the toad, and thus the water moistened the
entire Yaki territory. The storms filled the wells again and
quenched the Yaki's thirst. With this over above sundance of water,
the Yaqui River was born. Suddenly, the toads were numerous,

(06:05):
and all sang happily. Bobok returned the borrowed bat wings
to the old magician and went back to live in
peace in the now wet swamps at Bakuam number two.
The Ghosts of Magdalena Daquino. On the road from the
border town of Nogales to the state of Sonora's capital, Ermosillo,

(06:25):
is a small colonial town called Magdalena Dequino. The first
mission there was founded in sixteen eighty seven by Father
Usebio Francisco Quino, the man for whom the city is named.
Father Quino is buried there at the old mission. Although
the town has a current population of about twenty three thousand,

(06:46):
because of its age and because it has served as
a crossroads for many years, Magdalena Deiquino is home to
many ghosts and other assorted paranormal activity. Here are three
of the most popular ghost stories coming from from this town.
The first ghost story takes place in the Extre Madura Cemetery.

(07:06):
A middle aged man named Ector Torribio Montes Deoca was
at a local canteena drinking alongside the town's gravedigger, Camilito Sinfuegos.
Don Ector said to the grave digger that he couldn't
believe that anyone would want to work at a cemetery
because of the possibility of having bad things happened to
him while there. The cemetery worker assured Senor Montes that

(07:29):
there was nothing to worry about because the dead could
never harm anyone, and that he would be happy to
show him around his workplace. So Montes agreed, and after
some light drinking he accompanied Sinfuegos to the Estremadura Cemetery.
It was night and there was a slight crescent moon,
making the evening especially dark. While they were walking outside

(07:52):
the cemetery walls, they heard voices that were coming closer
to them. They were the voices of people speaking and
indigenous language that neither of the men could understand. Suddenly,
three shadowy figures jumped Senor Montes and yelled at him
in that unknown language. He ran away, leaving the grave

(08:12):
digger there A bit shocked as he saw the shadowy
figures disappear. Montes ran to his mother's house and barricaded
himself there. He wouldn't leave that place for months. His
elderly mother knew him well and asked him if there
was more to the story. Montes confessed that when he
was a teenager, a wealthy hacienda owner paid him a

(08:35):
bounty for killing an Indian family that used to raid
the hacienda's lands to steal food in livestock. He put
the bodies in a mass grave in the desert and
told no one except for the hacienda owner. After confessing
this to his mother, Montes lived the rest of his
life as an alcoholic wandering the streets of Magdalena Daquino.

(08:58):
He was unable to live with himself for the murders
he committed many years before, and was always on the
lookout for those indigenous ghosts who he knew were still
around to torment him. The second ghost story from this
small colonial town involves a Russian immigrant and his wife
in their beautiful home on Senko Demayo Avenue. In the

(09:21):
eighteen sixties, a man by the name of Emil Costerlitski
joined the Imperial Russian Navy and deserted in Venezuela. He
made his way up to Mexico and ended up in Sonora.
In eighteen seventy one, Costerlitzky joined the Mexican Army to
fight in the Mexican Apache Wars and eventually attained the

(09:41):
rank of colonel. In nineteen thirteen, the colonel and his wife, Francesca,
bought land in town and decided to build a grand house.
Almost immediately after the house was built, Costerlitzky was captured
by revolutionaries and taken prisoner. He was transferred to Agailan
Nogals and was released in nineteen fourteen. He then took

(10:04):
his wife and children and moved to Los Angeles, California,
where he lived until his death in nineteen twenty eight.
During the entire time of their exile in the United States,
Costerlitzki's wife had been in touch with the woman watching
their home, a friend named Dionysia Francesca Costerlitsky. Knew she

(10:24):
would never return to their beautiful home, but promised after
death that she and her husband Emil would never leave
the earth and would live as spirits inside that house.
True to her word, people have seen two European looking
people in early twentieth century dress walking around the house
as if they live there and do not know that

(10:46):
they are dead. The third story from Magdalena Dekino involves
a little girl who was scared by an earthquake. In
nineteen eleven, the small town was rocked by a very
intense shaking, which caused great damn damage and traumatized the population.
Immediately after the quake, many people took refuge in the church,

(11:06):
fearing aftershocks. One of the people huddling in the church
was the six year old Lupita Morales from the La
Industria neighborhood. When the towns folk felt it was safe
to leave the church. They emerged and noticed newly formed
cavities in the hills just outside of town. The caves
fascinated the young Lupita, and as she grew up, she

(11:28):
started to explore them. She was convinced that the caves
connected to deeper underground tunnels that would lead to some
sort of other world beneath the earth. She explored the
cave system so much that she decided to move to
the caves and live in them when she got older.
As an adult, Lupita became known as Loisa de Lindio,

(11:50):
and she was known as an eccentric and a hermit.
When she would come into town, she was seen walking
about dressed in white robes. If anyone came near her caves,
she would curse them and throw rocks at the intruders.
People knew better than to bother her and left Louisa
de Lindio alone. After some time, people stopped seeing her

(12:12):
about town and assumed she had died. People to this
day claimed to see her in the old neighborhood of Lendustria,
floating off the ground and scaring children. Still angry and
still dressed in her characteristic white robes. Number three, the
reptilian man. This story is part urban legend, part internet myth,

(12:35):
and part cryptid siding. Between the years two thousand and
two thousand four, there were many reports of a strange
creature sighted near San Luis, Rio, Colorado, a city of
a quarter of a million people in the far northwestern
corner of the state of Sonora. San Luis is right
on the Mexican part of the Colorado River, just across

(12:57):
the border it shares with the US state of Arazona.
It is mostly an agricultural community at the edge of
one of North America's harshest deserts, the Desierto de Altarre,
where summer temperatures can push beyond one hundred and twenty degrees.
Some believe that the inhospitable territory outside of town, which

(13:18):
is largely unexplored and rarely visited, is home to a
yet unknown creature that is part man in part reptile.
This being has been described as standing about as tall
as a man, green and scaly in appearance, and walking upright.
This reptile man has been sighted stealing chickens from private

(13:40):
residences on the outskirts of town. The creature is known
for its ability to jump several meters when it is
spooked and fleeing. According to one source, a coyote or
one who transports people across the US Mexico border for
a fee, saw one of these upright large humanoids reptiles

(14:00):
in the middle of the desert, jumping over a section
of the border fence separating the United States in Mexico.
In one account, a group of ranchers saw three of
the creatures together running off into the desert. Could this
human sized reptilian be an unknown species which has managed
to elude humans or is this just another internet myth

(14:24):
you decide? Thank you once again for listening to another
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(14:47):
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Speaker 1 (14:59):
Thank you, but listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained
with host Robert Bitto. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary,
Please check out our website at Mexicoanexplained dot com, Like
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Addie arsand haste la vista.