FRENCH RESEARCHER HUNTS FOR CHUPACABRASArgentina: French Researcher Hunts for Chupacabras SOURCE: El Tribuno Digital (Argentina) IN CACHI, A FRENCH RESEARCHER TRACKS THE MYTHIC BEAT An investigation into the presence of the Chupacabras, the mythic bloodsucking beast that apparently devastated sheep, goat and camelid cattle of the Chalchaqui valleys last years was undertaken by French journalist Jean Jacques Maridel, a writer for the prestigious Geo magazine, an equivalent to the U.S. National Geograpic Magazine, and which is known in Spanish as Geo-Mundo. Beyond the search for the evidence leading to the existence of this beast - an unfriendly type that avails itself of the cover of darkness to drain its victims of blood - Mandel wants to delve into the roots of the matter and determine if the numerous claims presented by witnesses and affected parties respond to a collective psychosis based on ancestral legends and beliefs or if they are popular ways to escape from crisis, or a way of escaping the uniformity imposed by globalization. The author has presented numerous reports on fantastic cases in different parts of the planet, especially in those in which ancient cultures are intermixed with underdevelopment and capitalist consumer society. It was thus that in late December 2001 he reported an extraordinary case which occurred in New Delhi, India's capital city: the appearance of a savage "ape man" who terrrorized the 5 million inhabitents of the most populous suburb of this city, in a country where its one billion inhabitants speak 18 languages, have four official religions, hundreds of unacknowledged sects and whose history is not only startling but incomprehensible to Westerners. "This dwelling center, made up of countless buildings, houses, shacks, shanties and separated from one another by their inhabitants' breath, built of solid materials, paper, carboard, tin and any other element, is occupied by workers who put in 14 hours a day in hundreds of auto parts and toy factories, under temperatures which seldom fall below 100 degrees. It is for this reason - says the Parisian journalist - that they sleep on open terraces and the breathing, snoring and moaning of each person invades the other's privacy, becoming familiar even among strangers. One night, a man woke up his entire block, and those in turn wakened others, when he shouted that "a monkey man" had invaded his precarious shelter.. A commotion soon occured among the clustering: the police arrived, alerted by the scandal, whch spread like oil on water and resulting in a tumult that left three dead, hundreds injured and millions of men, women and children gripped by panic." The full description of this experience - retold in great detail in GEO - is fascinating: "The witness ot this unusual apparition was questioned at the police station and made a specific description of the monkey man - a simian head, motorcycle helmet, snow goggles and spiral springs under its hairy legs, required to leap from one rooftop to another. The story was picked up by TV, the psychosis increased, and the police went mad. At this point, the authorities offered a thousand dollar reward to anyone obtaining data or providing positive identification of the beast. Gangs of armed hunters emerged, who wound up fighting each other (a thousand dollars in India equals one hundred thousand in Europe), private security companies patrolled the streets night and day, and every day there were new reports of the creature. Thousands of sacred monkeys were sacrificed and countless merchants profited by selling merchandise related to the improbable being. Law enforcement, faced with the events and the blood streaming down the streets of the shantytowns, and under the influence of its own members, got carried away. The creation of a 1200-man task force with the sole purpose of capturing the monkey man, something they obviously never achieved, was mandated. The psychosis lasted three violent months and the case was finally closed by a court order which ascribed the entire situation to "mass hysteria". Mandel smiles when he recalls his investigation. "Indian analysts drew exotic conclusions: they attributed the situation to an intelligence operation perpetrated by its archenemy, Pakistan, and there were even those who believed that scientists in Islamabad had created a remotely-guided cyborg with the purpose of undermining the morale of its antagonists in Dehli. "I have my own theory," he states."It was a chance circumstance was triggered by an ancient legend of Hindu mythology." ===================================================== Translation (C) 2003 Scott Corrales Institute of Hispanic Ufology
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