Cadejo

The cadejo (Spanish pronunciation: [kaˈðexo]) or cadejos is a supernatural spirit that appears as a dog-shaped creature with blue eyes when it is calm and red eyes when it is attacking. It roams around isolated roads at night,¹ according to Central American folklore of indigenous origin.

The myth also exists in several states of Mexico.²

There is a good white cadejo and an evil black cadejo. Both are spirits that appear at night to travelers: the white cadejo protects them from harm and danger during their journey, while the black cadejo (sometimes an incarnation of the devil) tries to kill them. In Costa Rica and Panama, the cadejo is a single creature, black in color, and although monstrous, it is generally harmless. In Costa Rica and Nicaragua, "el cadejo" is known as "el cadejos".

They usually appear in the form of a large, shaggy dog (potentially as big as a cow) with burning red eyes and goat hooves, although, in some areas, they have more rough characteristics.

According to the stories, many have tried to kill the black cadejo, but have failed and perished. It is said that if a cadejo is killed, it will smell terrible for several days, and then its body will disappear.

Guatemalan and Salvadoran folklore also tells of a cadejo that protects drunk people against anyone who tries to rob or hurt them. When the cadejo is near, it is said to bring a strong goat-like smell. Turning one's back on the cadejo or speaking to it is said to induce insanity.³

Although the term "cadejo" used to refer to this being is of Spanish origin, the mythological roots of the Cadejo are found primarily in Maya mythology and in the shamanistic traditions of the Nahua peoples of Mesoamerica, where indigenous myths frequently describe shamans and naguals capable of taking animal form to perform religious and funerary functions, in rituals that employed jade ornaments, animal skins, bird feathers, and masks.⁴ Among Mesoamerican cultures, the dog served as a companion to the dead on their journey to the afterlife.⁵ The legend is therefore a product of cultural syncretism and, in turn, a remnant of an ancient belief that every human possesses an animal companion. This mythical animal is understood as a spiritual double of the person, such that illness or death affecting one will also affect the other. In modern terms, a comparison may be drawn with Western religious thought, which holds that a person has a guardian angel that protects them from danger.⁶

The most prolific descriptions correspond to the black Cadejo. All agree that it is a large black dog with red eyes like embers, which drags heavy chains.⁷⁸ The Costa Rican writer Carlos Luis Fallas, in the glossary of the novel Marcos Ramírez, describes it as "a fantastic animal, with phosphorescent eyes and thick fur, black and very long".⁹ Another version from Costa Rica also adds goat legs and jaguar teeth.¹⁰ Likewise, in this same country, it also appears with completely brown fur on certain occasions. In some versions from Nicaragua, it is capable of manipulating its body to grow, in the manner of a giant dog. In his story El Cadejo, the Salvadoran writer José Efraín Melara Méndez describes it as "a kind of small dog that followed people but did not harm them. Although sometimes people did not see it, they heard its characteristic footsteps similar to those of a goat." For the Honduran writer Jesús Aguilar Paz, "one must not confuse the Duende with the Cadejo: the latter is a nocturnal quadruped that feeds on putrefying corpses, and when it walks its bones rattle; its eyes are luminous and encountering it is dangerous." Miguel Ángel Asturias omits that it has the form of a dog, and incorporates three different species into one body, "with goat hooves, rabbit ears, and a bat's face".¹¹

Curiously, in the Yucatán Peninsula, it is described as a being "half dog, half man", possibly a kind of ghostly anthropomorph (Winik Peek’, in Yucatec Maya).¹²

As with many spectral beings, folklore traditions also describe ways to defend oneself against a cadejo. In Honduras, it is said that to repel the black cadejo one should recite phrases such as "it smells of holiness", "it smells of incense", or "excuse me, compadre Alejo". In his novel Marcos Ramírez, the Costa Rican writer Carlos Luis Fallas recounts an episode in which a peasant confronts a cadejo; after failing to attack it with a cross-shaped weapon, he drives the spirit away by threatening it with the cross on the weapon's hilt, exclaiming: "You may defeat the blade, wretch, but the Cross defeats you!".¹³