Happy October, but most importantly, Happy Spooky Season! Though we are just now setting out carved pumpkins and hanging up ooky-spooky bats for Halloween, we’re almost halfway through Hispanic Heritage Month! My mother was born and raised in Jayuya, Puerto Rico in a small house with her two brothers and sisters. She met my father in the U.S. while in the military, and they proceeded to have, love, and raise three little nuggets. When I was little, I used to latch onto her stories of her childhood in P.R., as they were the some of the only things I knew of the island while growing up. We were raised in an Americanized household. My mom taught us very little Spanish, and though I’ve learned a good bit of the language on my own throughout the years, that language barrier disrupted my sense of identity when I was younger. So, I clung to any bit of my Boricua culture as I could growing up: food, music, and her stories.
One story she would often tell was the legend of the Chupacabra; a hairless, blood-sucking monster that would terrorize farmers, eat up their goats, and take away misbehaving children. I never really found all that frightening, even as a misbehaving child, but I always found it fascinating. When August, aka @lawfuldragon, created an incredibly organized Latinx cosplay group to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, they announced that one of the cosplay prompts would be to cosplay from your heritage’s folklore. I immediately decided on the Chupacabra, thinking back to all those stories from my mother. To honor her tales, her strength, her love, and her power, I wanted to challenge myself and turn into the beast.
Fun time filled with a lot of firsts; you can watch the full video of my Chupacabra here.
feliz Halloween, ya’ll!