Word: pishtaco
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...police dubbed the gang the pishtacos, based on colonial folklore of a tall, white male who wears a broad-rimmed hat and roams the highlands, stealing the fat - and sometimes the eyes - of unsuspecting travelers. The pishtaco is equivalent to Bigfoot in the U.S. northwest or the chupacabra in the southwest. Everyone has a tale, but the creature remains elusive. (See the 25 crimes of the century...
...William Mitchell, an anthropology professor at New Jersey's Monmouth University who has studied the pishtaco myth in Peru's central highlands, says the current story is so ludicrous that he nearly dropped the phone when his son called to tell him the news. "My first reaction was, 'What?' This story is so crazy that the only thing I could imagine was that the police officers either believed the tale of someone trying to cover up a crime or they were trying to cover up something themselves," says Mitchell. The daily La Republica reported on Nov. 30 that the police...
...story detailed the supposed operation of a death squad within the police unit in the northern city of Trujillo. He documented 46 criminals shot to death by police officers in 2007 and 2008 in the city, which has a population hovering around 800,000. But the allegations of the pishtaco gang surfaced at about the time Uceda's article was going to press. For several days, the murderous fat stealers hogged the headlines...
...Basombrio, who served as a Deputy Interior Minister mid-decade, speculated that the fat-stealing episode could actually be a smokescreen cooked up in the Interior Ministry to steer attention away from the explosive Trujillo case. Spokespeople in Salazar's office said the minister could not comment on the pishtaco case because it was part of a police investigation. However, they added that all the talk in the media about a cover-up fed into a political climate heating up with the approach of the 2010 local elections. Still, one of Salazar's predecessors, Fernando Rospigliosi, called the pishtaco case...
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