Almamula

A south wind comes up after midnight on the plains of Santiago del Estero, and the dogs start barking all at once. They do not run out to chase anything. They stay close to the house and bark at the dark. Somewhere down the road there is a sound like iron being dragged over hard ground, and a scream that nobody in the house would call the voice of any animal they own. In the morning a goat is dead in the pen, its skin whole and its insides gone.

That is the almamula, the “soul mule” of northwestern Argentina, and the people who talk about it are rarely talking about a stranger. The almamula is a woman. By day she lives in the village like anyone else. By night she is a mule, and the reason is always the same kind of reason. When Berta Vidal de Battini gathered Argentina’s oral narratives for her multi-volume Cuentos y leyendas populares de la Argentina, a 58-year-old man named Rafael Bravo, in the Figueroa department of Santiago del Estero in 1970, put it plainly: the almamula is a woman who leads a bad life, usually one who lives with her own brother. Another storyteller that year, in Pampa de los Guanacos in the Copo department, named the crime as incest or an affair with a priest. Adolfo Colombres, whose Seres sobrenaturales de la cultura popular argentina the municipality of Santiago del Estero reproduces on its culture pages, gives the same two causes: a love affair with a priest, or incest.

The curse is ordered by God, and it runs to a timetable. A schoolteacher named Margarita Soria y Medrano, recorded by Vidal de Battini in 1946 at San Antonio in the Esquiú department of Catamarca, where the creature is called the mulánima, said the woman turned into a mule at the first stroke of midnight and suffered until the bells rang for the first Mass at dawn. Soria described a household where she had worked as a maid, and the night she found her employer breathing fire, her eyes bulging. Then the detail she remembered for the rest of her life: the woman’s feet were a mule’s hooves. Afterwards the memory would bring on fits of nerves, and she would cry out “¡Cruz Diablo!” to push it away.

The mule itself is not a pretty animal. The Colombres account makes it dark, with long ears, fire pouring from its nose and mouth and sparks flashing from its eyes. Residents of La Banda and the Moreno department, interviewed between 2008 and 2010 by the communication researcher Lucas Díaz Ledesma, described it as black, with red eyes, a shining coat and large ears, and a cry so fierce that no one could place it. The Copo storyteller saw something smaller: a mulita pichona, a little young mule, bursting out at a gallop with its chains trailing behind it. Everyone agrees about the chains. They are iron, they are heavy, and they are how the almamula announces itself long before anyone sees it.

It keeps to the weather. The Copo account says it comes out in storms and when the weather turns, and Díaz Ledesma’s informants tied it to the south wind, to the cold months, to the full moon and to Tuesdays and Fridays. It goes for livestock first. Bravo said it could tear through a herd and do terrible damage; the La Banda residents said it killed chickens, goats and pigs by sucking out their insides and leaving the skin intact. It also goes for people it meets on the road, which is why, in Copo, men fired guns at it.

Díaz Ledesma recorded a detail that sets the almamula apart from a lone monster in a single story. In La Banda it is the woman’s soul that leaves her sleeping body and goes out, and it does not always go out as a mule; his informants also named dogs and donkeys, and now and then a goat, a pig, a cat or a bird. The cause they named most often was a father and a daughter, followed by brother and sister. And because each case of incest makes its own, there is no single almamula. There are as many as there are cases.

Bravo told Vidal de Battini about one of those cases. In Figueroa a woman people already suspected was caught attacking a corral one night and wounded. The next morning the woman herself turned up wounded, and before long she was dead. Once she had been found out, he said, she had lost her power.

Which brings everything back to the rescue, because the almamula is a condemned soul, and condemned souls in these stories can sometimes be saved. The cure needs a brave man, and it needs him to stand his ground. The Colombres version tells him to wait at a good spot with a knife and cut the mule’s ear, or its mane, as it passes; the enchantment breaks and a beautiful woman stands where the mule was. Bravo also named the ear, with a warning attached: a cut anywhere else only means that the woman will wake the next day bleeding from the same place. The Copo storyteller’s hero has to get close enough to take the bridle off. Díaz Ledesma’s informants were bleaker. To them a young almamula, still without chains, might yet be saved; one that has grown into its chains is condemned for good, and only death will end it.

The almamula shares its roads with relatives. Brazil tells of the Headless Mule, a priest’s lover galloping with fire where her head should be. The Argentine mule keeps its head and breathes fire through it. In 2023 the director Juan Sebastián Torales took the name for his first feature, Almamula, shot in Santiago del Estero the year before and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. It follows a boy who tries to call the creature up.

Its strength is fear and fire and the weight of iron, and it can break a corral in a night. Its weakness is that it is still a woman underneath, bound to a house and a name, and anything that happens to the mule after midnight is written on her body by morning.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the almamula?

The almamula is a creature from the folklore of northwestern Argentina, especially Santiago del Estero and Catamarca. It is a woman who, as a punishment from God, turns into a mule at night because of incest or a love affair with a priest. The name joins the Spanish words alma, “soul”, and mula, “mule”.

What does the almamula look like?

The almamula is usually described as a dark or black mule with long ears, red eyes and a glossy coat, dragging heavy iron chains. It breathes fire from its mouth and nostrils, and some accounts add sparks from its eyes. One storyteller from Santiago del Estero described it as a small, young mule.

What does the almamula do?

The almamula runs the roads at night, especially in storms, in the cold months and when the south wind blows. It kills livestock such as goats, pigs and chickens, and it attacks people it meets on the road. Its screams and the clanking of its chains warn people that it is near.

How can the almamula be saved or stopped?

In most accounts a brave man must cut the almamula’s ear, or its mane, and the curse breaks, leaving a woman in place of the mule. Another telling says the rescuer must take off its bridle. Some residents of Santiago del Estero say that only a young almamula without chains can be saved, and that one wearing chains is condemned until death.

Is the almamula the same as the Headless Mule?

The almamula and Brazil’s Headless Mule belong to the same family of stories about a woman turned into a mule for a forbidden love, and both can be punishment for an affair with a priest. They differ in the details: the Brazilian mule has fire where its head should be, while the Argentine almamula keeps its head and breathes fire from its mouth and nose.

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