El Coco

The Argentinian Dictatorship, a Child and a Dream.

Buenos Aires. In a green and silent residential zone, stood a house. It was a villa constructed around a patio with a thousand caged canaries that sang all the day long. It had so many rooms one could get lost inside it. Every one was furbished in a different style, some were dark and gloomy, some luminous and others were mysteriously unfurnished. But one was more special; it was a living room with too much cumbersome furniture and a mesmerizing device: a television. Hypnotized by it, a little boy was lying on the carpet. He was waiting for Carlitos Balà’s cartoon programme, but the TV obstinately transmitted Fathers of our Country; the biographies and deeds of Agustin de Iturbide, Simon Bolivar and other South American heroes, but the boy wasn’t old enough to understand. The TV dwelled on white and blue flags and modern heroes without virtues, generals and colonels, troops marching in goose-step. Among the many faces shown, one, more than any other, struck him. It was an expressionless, cruel face: Jorge Rafael Videla. The boy will understand, but not on that day. I was that little boy and it was near the end of the 1970s. I spent part of my childhood in Argentina. I went there to meet my great-grandfathers who lived with my grandmother’s two sisters. It was meant to be a short stay, but because of the military dictatorship, I was unable to return to my parents in Turin.

I have kaleidoscopic memories of those days. Magic seemed to pervade everything that surrounded us: giant grasshoppers, as big as a hand, jumped around the patio, and with every leap, they seemed to say “giddy-up”… omelettes made with the egg of a dinosaur, the Nandù, that had refused to become extinct. And then, there was aunt Severa. It was just her name that was severe because she was sweet, always cheerful, and glowing. She hummed no matter what she was doing. She was at the centre of everything strange that happened. One day she said that she would turn the seasons upside down, and Christmas would come in the summer. And that’s what happened. I lived in a world where reality and fantasy merged and became confused, a world where Heaven and Hell lived together. That world deeply influenced my way of living and thinking and my way of creating art...

Carlitos Balà and Videla

Every so often, pieces of my past re-emerge, sharp fragments that still hurt, shards of a broken mirror that reflect details and images I cannot compose into a unified picture.

"If you misbehave, the soldiers will come. They will bind you tightly to a chair and put matches under your nails..." My auntie used to say it when I was misbehaving. The mothers of my best pals would repeat it like a macabre refrain.
"Matches under your nails..."
"...and they will set them on fire..."

In another fragment, I see two soldiers coming towards us while we were walking in a park. I still feel the petrifying fear I felt that day. "...matches under your nails..." I felt my uncle's hand nervously grabbing mine. We changed direction.
"They take children...why?"
I didn't know at that time. Now I know...

Another shard, another cut on the skin of my soul. On the large balcony, the flat roof covering part of the house, an Argentinean flag was waving in the breeze. It was mandatory during public celebrations. "If you don't raise the flag, they will come", I was told... and we know what they do... "matches under your nails..."

Another reflection shows the empty house of our neighbours, their clothes and their belongings, everything scattered on the floor. Closet doors swung open, drawers broken on the floor...
"Why is everything like that, auntie?"
"Because they left in a hurry, dear."
I never liked that answer... what kind of hurry should you have to leave everything like that? Maybe they were hiding from them...
...matches set on fire...

In the house, I felt protected, secure. It was a fortress. No one can enter. “They will never come. I am safe”... But the nights... Not always they were so serene as I wished. All the strange things I experienced during the days were taking more and more consistency. Night after night, they became more and more dense ...and creeping shadows started to dance on the walls of my room. Fear. They were in my dreams and there, staring at me, when I was opening my eyes.... I remember one night, the worst of them all. One of the shadows managed to free itself from the confinement of the wall and slide slowly towards me. It was tall and dark, a shape without shape. Silently, solemnly coming closer and closer. I saw it, I was unable to blink, to move. It was at the side of my bed. It bent over me and whispered words in my ear of pure hate. I do not remember the words, but the chill in his voice, the pure terror that was in their meaning. It was a promise:
“I will come again, and this time to take you away.”
I screamed aloud, I woke up. My auntie ran toward my room. The light was on. I was in shock....
"It is just a dream... it is just a bad dream..."

Few weeks after that night, I was on an airplane, back to my parents in Italy. But this is a story for another day...

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I never revisited that night of horror. I never thought back about the hateful voice until I was doing my research for writing Mind The Kraken. I stumbled upon El Coco, a sort of boogie man of South America, and immediately the nightmare that tormented me that night came back into my memory. My writing is an elaboration of the lore and legends I found related to this shadowy figure. Unfortunately, I do not recall if my auntie told me about it or not... I decided to portray him as the figure I saw that night, a cloudy shapeless darkness....

Dreams and nightmares, reality and imagination merge in my mind. What I described of my life in Buenos Aires is the world as I experienced it, the dictatorship, the big house full of magic... a complex world filtered by the eyes of a child.... Till today I don't know exactly what was real and what was the elaboration of my imagination. Nevertheless, I wanted to share it with you. I have never written about it before, and I am glad to have done it. I merely meant to share the origin of my work as an author and illustrator, and I ended up having a cathartic experience. I feel... lighter.

I hope you enjoy my world, and I leave you with my nightmare: El Coco.

El Coco

Long ago, I found myself washed up on the ominous shore of an island whose jagged rocks and treacherous cliffs loomed like sinister sentinels over the crashing waves. Its inhabitants were petrified in fear, for there dwelled a horribly horrifying creature whose mere name was enough to send shivers down the spine and freeze the blood: El Coco.

El Coco was darker than the darkest night, a shapeless shadow made of the same substance of which the most terrifying terror is made. Its unpleasant and unsettling skill was to take the shape of what terrorized its victim the most, a monstrous and malevolent power that no one could escape.

This frightening fiend would slink and slide through the shadows, stalking and spying on its unsuspecting prey with a ghastly glaring gaze. Silent as a sinister cemetery at night, it would wait for the right moment to strike. And when it did, it was with a quick and deadly clasp, snatch, snap... and the unfortunate prey was no more!

But fear not too much, for El Coco did not feed on everyone; it had a particular taste for children, especially the disobedient ones. Perhaps it was because children who misbehave are more appetizing, who knows?

El Coco loved to hide in spectral shadows, lying under beds and inside closets, waiting patiently for its next meal to come. Unfortunately, the children who saw it never came back in one piece, and so I am left with limited information about this nebulously nightmarish monster.

But if you see it and manage to escape from its clasping claws alive, please, lucky friend, do tell the tale of El Coco and warn others to beware of this shape-shifting shadow.

Size: Unknown
Lifespan: Unknown
Habitat: Shadowy shadows
Diet: Annoying children, mostly

From Mind The Kraken and Other Curious Creatures
(if you are curious, and I hope you are, please have a look at the book, click here)

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before leaving, I would like to give you a couple of links:
Carlitos Balà’s song opening his show; click here
And this is one of his songs…the one I still remember word by word: click here

Have a splendiferous day
Andrea Aste