Cipitío (El Cipitío)

The footprints in the wet sand by the river point the wrong way. A farmer crossing his land at first light finds them pressed into the mud, small and bare, the toes aimed back toward the water, and he follows them the only way that seems to make sense. By midmorning he is deep in the cane with no boy and no path, the sun already hard on the back of his neck, and somewhere behind him, in the direction he never thought to look, a child is laughing.

That child is Cipitío, and he has been ten years old for a very long time. He stands no taller than a boy of eight or nine, with a round belly that sticks out over nothing, since he wears almost nothing at all, only a tall pointed hat too big for his head. His skin is the brown of river clay. His feet are the thing people remember. They are turned backwards at the ankle, heel forward and toes behind, so that every track he leaves lies to whoever reads it. He does not hide this. He counts on it.

His appetite is its own small scandal. He eats ashes, scooping cold grey handfuls from the hearths of houses where the fire has gone out, and he loves a fat green cooking banana, the guineo majoncho, which he will steal from a grove and gnaw half raw. He can be in the kitchen and then the riverbank and then the high branches of a ceiba in the space of a breath, here and gone and here again, and no wall or distance holds him. He is not cruel. He is bored, and he has all the time in the world to be bored in.

The boredom has a source, and the source is a sad story. His mother was Sihuehuet, a woman of the moon, beautiful past sense, and she took a lover she should not have, the morning star, while her husband still lived. When the husband learned of it he went to the gods, and the gods did not forgive. The mother was cursed into the Siguanaba, the long-haired phantom who lures men to the water’s edge and turns to show a face like a horse’s skull. The boy was cursed too, though his sentence was stranger and in its way kinder. He would keep his childhood and never grow out of it. His feet were turned around to mark the crookedness of the thing that made him. Mother and son were set loose on the same dark country, she at the river and he in the brush above it, neither one able to die.

So he does what a bored, deathless boy does. He waits at the stones where young women come to wash clothes, and when one of them is pretty he throws pebbles at her, a small stinging rain out of the leaves, and ducks away before she can find him. He whistles in the trees at night and dances where no one can see the dancer, only hear the bare feet slapping the dirt. He follows travelers and lets them follow him, his backwards prints peeling away into the dark until the traveler is somewhere he never meant to go. Some say he is drawn to women who remind him of the mother he lost. The stories do not push the point. They leave him at the riverbank, throwing his stones, laughing.

He is hard to be rid of because there is so little of him to grab. He owns nothing, fears nothing, wants nothing he cannot find in a cold hearth or a banana grove. He cannot be killed, because the curse already took that from him along with everything else. What limits him is the smallness of his world. He cannot grow up, cannot leave the night and the bush and the washing stones, cannot stop being the punctuation mark at the end of his parents’ ruin. His tricks never amount to murder. A pelted girl goes home rubbing her arm, a lost farmer finds his way out by afternoon, and the worst he leaves behind is a story told at the door with the lamp turned low. The Pipil who first told of him gave him a name that simply means child, cipit, and that is the whole of his fate. He got to keep the one thing his mother lost, and he has nothing to do with it but play.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is El Cipitío?

El Cipitío is a mischievous boy-spirit from Salvadoran folklore, rooted in Pipil and Nawat tradition. He is portrayed as an eternally young child of about ten, with a large pointed hat, a pot belly, and feet turned backwards on his ankles. He is the cursed son of the moon-woman Siguanaba.

Why does Cipitío have backwards feet?

Cipitío’s feet were turned backwards by divine punishment, marking the crooked, illicit affair that produced him. The reversed feet also serve a practical mischief: his footprints point the wrong way, so anyone who tries to track him walks off in the opposite direction and becomes lost in the countryside.

Is Cipitío evil or dangerous?

Cipitío is not evil. Unlike his mother, the dangerous Siguanaba, he is playful and harmless rather than deadly. He throws pebbles at young women washing at the river, whistles and dances in the dark, and leads travelers astray, but he does no lasting harm to the people he troubles.

What does Cipitío eat?

Cipitío is said to eat ashes scooped from cold hearths and to favor a green cooking banana called the guineo majoncho. These odd preferences are part of what marks him as a folk spirit rather than an ordinary child.

Who are Cipitío’s parents?

Cipitío is the son of Sihuehuet, a moon-woman cursed into the phantom known as La Siguanaba, and the morning star, her forbidden lover. When the affair was discovered, the gods cursed both mother and child, leaving Cipitío frozen forever as a small boy.

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