Legend of the Devil's Tail

Tomás lived in a humble house with a tile roof and bajareque walls in the area known as “La Guajolotera” (Calle C. Colon and Tuxtla between Tapachula and Comitán), the highest part of the El Cerrillo neighborhood.

From the corridor that led to the courtyard, he could see all the clay tile roofs of the houses in the wealthy neighborhoods of the city center.

Since he was little he had lived cleaning the chicken manure of the more than one hundred bucks that his mother raised freely in the yard and in the adjacent streets as the only livelihood.

At 18 years old, he was a believer in the stories of horrors and apparitions that were one of the favorite topics of conversation among the boys in his group in those years of the mid-20th century. The duende, the sombrerón, la llorona, the cadejo, the procession of lonely souls, the tzizimite, and the cart of San Pascualito, were characters and situations that his enormous Catholic faith helped him to overcome in this world.

As part of his entertainment and training, he was part of the choir that accompanied the masses in the church of the Lord of the Transfiguration in the center of his own neighborhood, El Cerrillo, which Father José told them was one of the oldest. of the city since construction had begun in the year of 1547, when the laws of Indians that prevented slavery by the conquerors were decreed in Spain. The construction of the church was started by the Cakchiquel indigenous people who, almost five decades ago (1528), had brought Diego de Mazariegos after defeating the troops of Pedro de Portocarrero, lieutenant of Pedro de Alvarado's army, there in Comitán.

Something that Father José also told them was the temptations of the devil, he told them that he could encourage them to sin, using any ruse, since the devil in his tricks could even represent himself in the figure of a beautiful woman. The devil was capable of anything, the only thing he could not remove was his tail, because this part of his body was his link to the infernal world where he came from.

Tomás, with his 18 years, reached the age when butterflies feel in the stomach and he liked a brunette, with matted hair, who lived in a mud house there on Calle de la Caridad (now, Doctor Navarro). , precisely at the curve where the route abruptly changes its course and heads towards the San Juan de Dios orchard (now Calle Yajalón).

His mother warned him not to notice that brunette, since she was never seen in church and there were comments that in the house where she lived, large amounts of copal were burned every afternoon in the disgusting presence of dozens of cats. .

But illusions and the search for love should not go against the current.

Taking advantage of the fact that a musical concert by the Molina Brothers marimba was being presented at the neighborhood party, who came from Pinola (Villa Las Rosas) and seeing the outstanding presence of the brunette of his dreams, he had the impulse to ask her to dance and arming himself with Valor invited her to dance to the beat of the marimba.

Everything would have gone well that night, if her hand hadn't slipped behind the waist of the brunette from her dreams. When he understood that what her hand felt under the fabric of her dress was not a natural part of a woman's body, her mind was already on its way to the place where madness and hell are part of it. of the same space. In the depths of his soponcio, he could not understand that not everyone touched the tail of the devil himself.