“A living cowhide that floats in the water and wraps around any swimmer to drain their blood.”
The stillest thing on a Chilean lake may be the hungriest. El Cuero — the hide — looks like a cowhide stretched flat on the surface of the water, white with black or brown spots, drifting as innocently as something a farmer lost upstream. Around its rim run hooked claws; at its centre, in many tellings, a feeding mouth. Anything that wades or swims within reach is engulfed in its folds, squeezed, and dragged to the bottom to be drained of blood.
The creature is old. To the Mapuche it was the Trelquehuecuve — trülke wekufü, the hide evil-spirit — a servant of malign forces, and the Spanish-speaking countryside inherited it as the cuero vivo or the manta del diablo, the devil's blanket. Reports of it span an astonishing range, from Viña del Mar and the outskirts of Santiago through Chiloé and across the cordillera into Argentine Patagonia.
The Legend
In its Mapuche form the creature is a wekufe — an agent of harm — wearing the shape of a pelt. It waits in deep pools, river bends, and lagoons; some tellings say it induces a dizziness or drowsiness in those at the water's edge before it strikes. Once the prey is wrapped, the hide contracts, crushing the life from it, and the cuero settles to the bottom to suck its blood, retreating afterward to lonely beaches to digest.
Descriptions collected across Chile disagree gorgeously. In Talagante the hide had countless eyes around the rim and four great eyes at its centre; elsewhere it bore tentacles ending in pincers, or many short clawed legs. In Chiloé it is the manta del diablo; on Lake Lácar in Argentina's Neuquén Province the lafquen-trilque floats disguised as a log, unfurling flat with sharp nails and claws when it attacks.
Documented Sightings
The cuero trailed reports behind it for centuries. The colonial chronicler Vicente Carvallo y Goyeneche recorded the creature attacking children at Talcamávida, and in 1877 Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna reported a sighting at Viña del Mar. The ethnographer Tomás Guevara documented the belief among the Mapuche in 1899 and 1908, and Francisco Javier Cavada set down the Chiloé traditions in 1914.
Julio Vicuña Cifuentes's 1915 compilation gathered accounts from Pudahuel, Buin, Talagante, and Coihueco de Chillán — a map of fear stretching the length of central Chile. Naturalists trying to stand behind the reports have proposed a large ray, an improbable freshwater octopus, or the remolino, the sudden whirlpool that takes swimmers without leaving anything to blame. One lexicographer in 1916 judged the man-attacking freshwater octopus a fabulous invention based on a marine species.
The Lore
Tradition preserves exactly one way to kill a cuero: feed it thorns. Hunters bait it with the spiny quisco cactus or branches of calafate, which the hide seizes and crushes as if it were prey, tearing itself open and bleeding to death. In one Mapuche narrative a machi dressed spiny cuttings of quisco and calafate to resemble a human figure and spoke incantations in Mapudungun over the lure before setting it on the water.
The hide has its own strange habits in regional lore. It hauls out to sunbathe at the water's edge, raising a whirlwind or whirlpool to shove itself back in when it wishes to return. Around Ovalle and Coquimbo it was said to couple with livestock and sire deformed offspring, and in the Butaró lagoon the cueros were counted souls of the damned — the old wekufe showing through its cowhide disguise.
Field Notes
- ✦ Moves through the water undulating like a ray, flat as the hide it resembles.
- ✦ Killed by baiting it with thorny quisco cactus or calafate branches, which it crushes and dies on.
- ✦ Talagante accounts give it countless eyes around the rim and four great eyes at the centre.
- ✦ Reported at Viña del Mar by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna in 1877.
- ✦ On Argentina's Lake Lácar it floats disguised as a log before unfurling to attack.
Case File
- Classification
- Aquatic predator cryptid
- Category
- Lake/Sea Monster
- Territory
- Lakes and coast of central-southern Chile
- First Sighted
- Colonial chronicles (18th century, Mapuche tradition)
- Habitat
- Lakes, rivers, and coastal shallows
- Reported Size
- Hide spanning a cowhide's width
- Also Known As
- The Hide · Trelquehuecuve · Manta del diablo · Cuero vivo