because they were worth it

I can’t find it right now but I believe I blogged about the pishtaco – legendary Peruvian human fat vampires – before, in connection with Shining Path. The Senderistas used to tell peasants in remote areas that rambling foreign backpackers were pishtaco, with the result that several were murdered, much to the detriment of the tourist trade. And now:

Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before killing them and extracting their fat.

The liquidised product fetched $15,000 (£9,000) a litre and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.

At least five other suspects, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.

Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in Peru's Huanuco and Pasco regions.

One of those arrested told police the ringleader had been killing people for their fat for more than three decades.

The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.

The original Pishtaco myth was evolved by the indigenes as a way of rationalizing their exploitation by the colonial Spanish, especially through forced labour in the local mines and it later became a pretty obvious metaphor for exploitation when Marxism emerged in Peru in the early 20th century.

It’s also difficult to imagine people doing this without taking inspiration from the original myth, as the Senderistas did, but with more directly profitable intent. And nowadays there's an actual market for the product.

Comments

[ajay]

Slightly insane - I can't imagine there's much of a black market for human fat. If you're using it to make cosmetics, why not use animal fat? If you're using it for surgery, why not use the patient's own and avoid immune reactions? Maybe these guys hadn't actually found a buyer yet...

[ajay]

Compare also the 19th century Chinese belief that orphanages run by Western missionaries were in fact factories for making medicines out of the eyes of Chinese babies.

[jamie]

"Maybe these guys hadn't actually found a buyer yet..."

Now that's intriguing, since it implies that they believed in the legend andso it was a case of "extract it and they will come."

[mtm]

Nothing new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

[Phil]

it was a case of "extract it and they will come."

2. ...
3. Profit!

[Richard J]

What this case is really reminding me of are the persistent rumours about captured Serbian soldiers in '99 being broken up for spare parts. The kind of apocryphal atrocity story that hovers round most conflicts these days, I'd guess, but surprising principally for the seriousness with which it's taken by some fairly knowledgeable people (Carla del Ponte for one)...

[ajay]

Without reading del Ponte's book it's difficult to say how seriously she takes it - according to the press reports she includes an investigator's report from visiting a house that was apparently being used as an improvised surgical facility, and 'indirectly provided' witness statements that PWs were being harvested there. There's no real evidence except a lot of surgical debris at the house, and I'd have thought the most logical deduction from that is that it was an improvised surgical facility used for treating war wounded.

The Serbs and the Russians have, of course, seized on del Ponte's book with cries of delight.

[Richard J]

But unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen. The fact often adduced as a reason for scepticism—that the same horror stories come up in war after war—merely makes it rather more likely that these stories are true. Evidently they are widespread fantasies, and war provides an opportunity of putting them into practice.

G. Orwell

[ajay]

And, for that matter, CS Lewis:

"The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?"

[dsquared]

Some kinds of atrocity story are more credible than others though, and an improvised *transplant* facility is toward the lower end of the spectrum.

[Richard J]

F'sure, which is why it seems slightly noteworthy that it's not just Serbian (or Russian) nationalists who're taking it seriously.

[ajay]

As I say, I'd have to read del Ponte's book to know how seriously she takes it...

[jamie]

while we're quoting:

"Above the arch to the entrance to the Belleicourt tunnel...a most extraordinary chamber was found...it contained three large cauldrons: one empty, one with a few invches of filthy grease at the bottom, from whoch emerged a blackened human hand, while the third held the cut up portions of several human bodies.

"...All who saw this at once rushed to the conclusion that they were beholding one of the much talked of German "corpse factories" in which bodies were said to be melted down for their grease.

...There was a small opening in the brickwork near the top of the chamber and we were informed afterwards by a prisoner that a shell had come through this, killing all these men and throwing some bodies into the coppers. The place was actually a kitchen supplying the trenches above."

From Paul Hart's 1918: a Very British Victory.