When the chupacabra terrorized Mexico during the six-year term of Salinas de Gortari

It is during the sexennium of Carlos Salinas de Gortariwhich lasted from 1988 to 1994, when the legend of the chupacabras exploded on Mexican soil.

A rumor born in Puerto Rico about a strange creature that killed cattle and scared peasants seeped into our country and started a controversial history that Mexicans remember fondly today.

The media of the time, such as that run by Javier Alatorrebegan to cover the issue and report alleged sightings.

A video from the Alatorre TV news can still be seen on the Internet where it reports dead animals in various states of the Republic such as Baja California, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Durango, Querétaro, State of Mexico, Puebla and Veracruz.

In his report, it was said that it was a mythological animal that fed on small animals like dogs, but that it had a special taste for goats, from which he removed the blood until they were dry. It showed pictures of drawings made by children and narrated reports of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects. (UFOs) in El Paso, Texas, United States.

This coverage was repeated for some time, generating hysteria among the people of the country, especially those who had livestock in their care and who lived in rural areas of Mexico.

In other parts of Mexico, the legend of the chupacabra led merchants to take advantage of the situation and name their wares after this supernatural beast. Thus was born a kind of fashion around the creature.

Of course, this myth ceased to be valid some time later, and since then it has become a joke, a joke belonging to Mexican popular culture.

People appear in reports from the time saying they imagined the chupacabra as “an animal like a turkey” or a “half-funny bat”.

There are two theories that the media took seriously the news of the chupacabra’s existence and the supposed havoc it wreaked on the populace of fashionable Mexico, which had exploded after an innocent rumor emanating from Porto. Rico.

The other has to do with what opponents of the PRI government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari. In his view, all this coverage and chupacabra fever was nothing more than part of a smokescreen to distract Mexican men and women from the problems plaguing the country.

At this time, the country’s economic problems were increasing and some criticism against the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that commercially linked Mexico to the United States and Canada was being heard. Similarly, people talked about the murder of Coliseum and national currency devaluations.

Today, social networks have made it possible to remember this curious episode in the history of Mexico, not only on an anecdotal level, but also on a political level. Recently, Twitter helped users remember reports from Javier Alatorre’s news program, and they flooded the driver in the networks because in recent days he issued a recommendation to the public not to lend pay attention to what he said. Hugo Lopez-Gatell on the covid pandemic.

Internet users ironically commented that the driver asked not to take official and scientific information seriously, but that several years ago, in the 1990s, he used his television news to talk about a prank.

The story of the chupacabra is just one of many that make up Mexico’s most curious anecdote.