The pishtaco

The pishtaco is the fat thief of Andean tales, told in nearly every Quechua-speaking place. The rumour keeps returning in Peru, in a 2009 police claim the authorities disowned and in crowd violence against people accused of being pishtacos.

S. Hernán Aguilar, writing in the journal Amerindia in 2000, says the tale of the pishtaco, also called nakaq, is known in nearly every place where Quechua is spoken. He gathered his tellings in towns of Huaylas province, in Ancash. El País summed up the old Andean myth in 2009: pishtacos were criminals who roamed the mountains taking the fat of travellers.

That year the story reached the Peruvian police. The Guardian reported in 2009 that a Peruvian gang was alleged to have killed people and drained the fat from their bodies for use in cosmetics, and that it might have been inspired by the legend. El País reported that Eusebio Félix, head of the police criminalistics directorate, had announced the capture of a gang of serial killers said to sell their victims' body fat, and had called four murder suspects pishtacos. The authorities then removed him from his post. El País's headline called the gang false.

Dorothée Delacroix, writing in Cultures & Conflits in 2021, says talk of trafficking in human body parts revives the old Andean rumour of the fat thief. At a time of peace-building, she writes, the figure has returned in an unlikely guise: the forensic doctor said to rob the graves of people killed in the war. She asks what this shows about how Andean peasants see the state and the teams carrying out exhumations. RPP Noticias reported a case from Sicaya, near Huancayo, where residents detained two people they accused of trying to kidnap two children and of trafficking organs, known locally as pishtacos. Police got them away before they could be lynched, and about 500 people armed with stones and sticks then surrounded the police station.