Organ theft narratives

A striking link with emblematic thoughts of the past with modern traditions of organ-thefts can be observed in the modern incarnation of a vampire-like ogre, the Pishtaco whose appearance in the Andes was documented in the sixteenth century (Ansion 1989, Wachtel 1992). The monster was successively identified with the Spanish conquerors of the sixteenth century, the mendicant friars of the Bethlemites in the eighteenth century, and the evil Sacaojos of present-day Andean towns and cities. Ansion and Sifuentes (1989) who collected and analyzed this Andean lore in 1986, two years before the Lima scares, tell us that Pishtaco has become the involuntary purveyor of the modern world's riches because it is from his extracted fat that are fabricated medicines for the rich, and fluid to lubricate modern machines and computers. The Pishtaco is also said to be a clandestine butcher, and purveyor of children's flesh for the luxury restaurants of Lima. It is evident that this centuries-old demonic tradition paved the way for contemporary Sacaojos accusations of kidnappings and mutilations of children to provide organs for the rich.

Parallel traditions from other parts of the world are apparently spawned from the same universal patterns of emblematic thought that produced the Pishtaco narratives. For example, in nineteenth-century China suspicions focused on the missionaries who housed and schooled abandoned children. A legend of the theft of the children's eyes to furnish materials for new technologies played a central role in starting the riots and massacre of Tsientsin in 1870. It was specifically maintained that "the French Sisters of Mercy, who undertook the education of children, afterwards put out their eyes to obtain the liquid necessary for the preparation of photographic likenesses. This report circulated all through China and was credulously believed" (Prejevalsky 1876:253-255).

These kinds of xenophobic traditions are found in many regions of the world. In Africa, for example, several ethnologists have mentioned the widespread practice of identifying the conquering Europeans with vampires, cannibals, and kidnappers (Arens 1979, Auge 1972, Stevens 1991, White 1993a, 1993b, 1997). And in his investigation of the recurrent rumors of kidnappings among the Dayaks, Richard Drake (1989) has noted the role such rumors have played in the emergence and spread of an anti-state ideology, a link that is also evident in the case of organ-theft narratives.

Another widespread tradition characterized by beliefs, rumors, and distortions that can contribute to our understanding of the origin and nature of organ-theft narratives is that of the so-called "White Slavery" movement. The term, which early reformers used to refer to all forms of prostitution, assumed in the late nineteenth century, the more specific meaning of enforced prostitution in which criminal males employed systematic abductions, druggings and other forms of coercion to force innocent women to become the prostitutes. The exaggerations and distortions of this lore inspired fear and panic among large segments of Western society, and the issue soon became one of intense emotion and indignation that distorted the fact that prostitution is often voluntary. The term "enforced prostitution" is quite vague in that it refers to wideranging and diverse behaviors. That different degrees of coercion contribute to a woman's becoming a prostitute, be it poverty, social prejudices against minorities, entrapment of the young and gullible, deceit, terror, or by pressure upon women the trafficker knows personally, it is clear that the notion of random kidnapping that was trumpeted far and wide by abolitionists, was relatively rare. Indeed, enforced prostitution is of small importance compared to the major social and economic causes that lead to voluntary prostitution. "There is no doubt that there were cases of white slavery. But the force of circumstances, of abysmal ignorance and grinding poverty, were much more important than the wiles of the white-slave trader in keeping the brothels filled" (Bristow 1977:58).