Viruñas

Also Known As: also el Viruñas, el Uñas, el Uñón; from Spanish uñas, “nails, claws”
Region/Culture: South America
Mythos: Colombian Mythology, Latin American Folklore
Primary Type/Nature: Demons and Devils
Mythical Attributes: A regional Colombian name for the devil, marked by oversized nails and by a talent for falsifying every dealing he enters.
Role in Mythos: He is the local face of the tempter, the one who offers money, luck or a woman’s consent and comes back later to collect.
Relation to Humans: People deal with him for wealth or skill and discover that the contract has no honest exit. Householders more often meet him as a nuisance that knocks in the walls and shifts objects in the dark.

Before first light on a river in the Colombian Pacific, a man steering his canoe home saw a figure standing in the dark that looked exactly like the devil people talked about. He did not use the word devil. He said Viruñas, and everyone who heard him knew precisely who he meant.

That is the whole trick of the name. Across the Cauca, the Valle and the coastal lowlands, people have accumulated a small vocabulary for the same being: el Patas for the feet, el Chiras, el Jucas, and el Uñas or el Uñón for the nails. Viruñas belongs to that family and is the version that travelled furthest. A country with this many nicknames for one being is not confused about his identity. It is being careful. You do not summon what you do not name.

The nails are the part everyone agrees on. Uñas means fingernails, and the augmented forms mean something closer to claws, which is why the same figure answers to el Uñón in places where the longer word never took. Whether they curve, whether they are black or horn-coloured, whether they show at all under a glove, the sources do not say, and it would be dishonest to draw them in. What the record does give is a judgement rather than a picture. In a 1988 history of Antioquia the entry is flat and merciless: el Uñas or Viruñas is the falsifier in all relations. Not a monster, then. A counterfeiter of agreements.

Some tellings do supply a body, and it is not the one you expect. He comes as a black dog with red eyes, and behind him along the packed earth of a path there is the sound of a chain being dragged, a slow scraping that arrives before the animal does and continues after it has gone. Other communities barely grant him a shape at all and file him with the duendes: something in the roof beams at two in the morning, a pot that slides off a shelf, a chair that has moved three handspans by daylight. The same name covers the thing that ruins a life and the thing that knocks over the salt.

An ethnographer working with a man from Timbiquí, on the Cauca coast, got the clearest statement of the logic anyone has written down. It is the same devil, the man said, taking different names in different places according to local custom. In the Patía valley he shows up as the Patasola. Out past the river mouths he is a water devil who turns boats over. Along the coast he is Viruñas. The being does not change. The vocabulary does.

Where he becomes dangerous is the pact. In the Pacific littoral the word is empautamiento, and an empautado is someone who has struck the bargain: money, or luck at fishing, or a yield that shames the neighbouring plot, or the ability to play guitar better than any man alive. The arrangement works. That is the part the stories insist on, because a bargain nobody profits from is no temptation at all. The empautado prospers for years, and everybody in the village knows, and nobody says.

Then one man in the Patía grew tired of the life he had bought and wanted out. He began to pray. He refused to go where he was told to go. The devil took his testicles, and there the story stops, except that the man went on living without them, which is somehow the worst detail in it. The account is still told locally as something that happened to a neighbour, not to a figure in a book.

His hunting is otherwise unspectacular and entirely personal. He appears to young women and presses them to be his sweetheart, and the pressure is not the kind that can be politely declined. He works the same way with everyone. He arrives as an offer.

Against a being whose whole power is contractual, the defences are contractual too. Prayer breaks the approach, which is why the older accounts have people crossing themselves and reciting on dark paths as a matter of routine rather than piety. He can be shouted at, insulted, and made to leave. In one household remedy from the region, a man who had made a promise he regretted took to sleeping on the inside of the bed, against the wall, so that his wife lay between him and the room, and the devil came, found her there, and would not cross her to reach him. A woman in the way is apparently an obstacle he does not care to argue with.

There is no separate biography here. Viruñas is the devil under a nickname, and the interest lies entirely in what the nickname does. It is a euphemism that became a character, and along the way it collected claws, a dog’s body, a chain, a habit of moving furniture, and a reputation for falsifying every agreement he touches. The Pacific storytellers who still perform him at festivals in Cali and Bogotá list him in the same breath as the duende, the Patasola and the Llorona, which is exactly right. He is not a theological proposition. He is a neighbour with terrible terms.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Viruñas?

Viruñas is a Colombian name for the devil, used mainly in the Valle del Cauca, the Cauca and the Pacific coastal region. The name comes from Spanish uñas, meaning nails or claws, and the same figure is also called el Uñas or el Uñón. A 1988 history of Antioquia describes him as the falsifier in all relations.

What does Viruñas look like?

There is no fixed description of Viruñas beyond the oversized nails his name refers to. Some accounts give him the form of a black dog with red eyes that drags a chain behind it along the ground. In communities that treat him more like a duende, he has no visible body at all and is known only by knocking sounds and objects moving in the house.

What does Viruñas do to people?

Viruñas makes bargains. He offers money, luck, productivity or musical skill, and the arrangement genuinely works for as long as the person keeps to it. He also appears to young women and pressures them into becoming his sweethearts.

How do you get rid of Viruñas?

Prayer is the standard defence, along with insulting him outright and refusing to follow where he leads. In one regional account a man who had made a pact slept against the wall with his wife on the outside of the bed, and the devil would not cross her to reach him. Breaking a pact outright is possible but the stories agree it costs something, and in the Patía valley version the price was the man’s testicles.

Is Viruñas the same as other Colombian devils?

Yes. Tradition-bearers from Timbiquí state plainly that it is one devil taking different names in different places according to local custom, which is why the Cauca also knows him as el Patas, el Chiras and el Jucas. The Patasola of the Patía valley and the water devil of the river mouths are understood the same way.