Ecology of Fear by Mike Davis

Author:Mike Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

Chupacabra taco stand in Hollywood

In Los Angeles, the Chupacabra craze was something of an antidote to the monomania of the Simpson trial. While O.J. was saturating English-language television in the late spring and summer of 1996, the Spanish-language media, dominated by the huge Univision chain, was covering Chupacabra sightings in Sinaloa and Baja California and debating whether the terror would strike in Southern California. Chicano political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, to be sure, had already suggested that “El Chupa”—bloated on the blood of immigrants—was currently residing in the governor’s mansion in Sacramento.189 Others, however, awaited a more prosaic monster.

In early July, two rabbits and a goat were found dead in a barnyard near Pacoima. (Pacoima may possess some kind of occult locational significance since the Virgin Mary was widely believed to have appeared in nearby Lopez Canyon in 1990.)190 Although no one actually saw the Chupacabra, there were telltale puncture wounds on the animals’ necks, and their bodies, quite vampirishly, were totally drained of blood. Some people locked themselves in their houses and refused to send their children to school. Others had trouble sleeping and were afraid to take the trash out at night.191 The majority, however, simply chuckled: just as Los Angeles had recently acquired a first-rate futbol team, now it also had a genuine Chupacabra to prove its Latin-Americanity. Meanwhile, in the chaparral-covered hills above Pacoima, a pair of very well fed coyotes were howling their own delight.

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