Folklore of Latin america
Welcome to our class website about folklore of Latin America. During this module, we read Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall about five sisters who encounter characters from Latin American folklore stories, including 'monsters' as they deliver a dead body back to his family in Mexico.
One of the monsters from Latino folklore we explored as a class was the Peuchen. The original story of Peuchen characterizes this monster as a blood thirsty, flying snake that cannot be trusted. The modernized story depicts two Peuchens that are brother and sister. The brother is just as bloodthirsty and dangerous as the original Peuchen, but the sister is caring and saves the five sisters from her brother. Through this modernized depiction, the story illustrates the theme that things are not always as they appear.
At the end of the module, we researched 'monsters' in Latin American folklore and planned, wrote, and revised new scenes for Summer of the Mariposas in which we modernized one of these 'monsters' in the context of the Summer of the Mariposas story.
You can read our new scenes, as well as our rationale for our narrative choices by clicking on the 'Monsters' link on this website and selecting a monster.
Picture Attributions:
La Llorona: Stacey Posnett for EL Education.
Butterflies: Charlie Cowins. "Butterfly swarm." Photograph. Flickr. 14 May 2008. Web. Used under CC BY 2.0.
Peuchen: Adapted from Albert Racinet. “Decorative element from L'ornement Polychrome.” Illustration. 1888. Rawpixel. Web. Public domain.
Studying Monsters!