Chupacabras

In Mexico, in 1996, on high rating television channels and in newspapers with great circulation, a mythical, fantastic and surreal being became the protagonist for several weeks: the Chupacabra. It was described as a legendary cryptid that attacked animals, and sometimes people, in rural areas. Its name comes from his blood-sucking habits which consist of depriving his victims of all their blood. This project was born from the hypothesis that the Chupacabra myth served as a smokescreen for the Mexican government in a stage of deep social, political, and economic crisis.

Through staged photography (based on the compilation of media material and interviews), I seek to create an imaginary space where I can explore and reveal the mechanisms of construction of the Chupacabra as a social myth used by the media to manipulate and exercise a politics of fear.

These pictures represent the pieces of the puzzle that were necessary for the media to create the Chupacabra.

With this project, I explore the following questions: How do our governments use the media to hide or reveal information? How do our governments use fear as a weapon of power?

I believe the relevance of this body of work relies on how, even if the information has been democratized and expanded, we continue to experience media manipulation and misinformation. Social media and fake news, in part, end up influencing us to the point of not knowing how to differentiate between what is true and what could be fiction.

In the nineties, in Mexico, the Chupacabra served to deviate people's attention. Nowadays we are probably living another smokescreen, another Chupacabra. In these pictures, I chose not to show the monster because I believe everyone has a different idea of what the Chupacabra represents. For some people, it can be a monster, a legend, or a nightmare they had when they were young... for others, it can represent the corruption of the Mexican government, the economic crisis, or even the infantilization of the Mexican people by their government.