El Sombrerón is a legendary character and one of the most famous legends of

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

, told in books and film El Sombrerón is also a bogeyman figure in

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

. This character is also known with other names, like Tzipitio, the

goblin A goblin is a small, grotesque, monster, monstrous humanoid creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearan ...

, and sometimes Tzizimite, his main characteristics are always the same: a short man with black dress, a thick and brilliant belt; he wears a black, large hat, and boots that make a lot of noise when he walks. He likes to ride horses and braid their tails and manes. When he cannot find horses, he braids the hair of dogs. He also likes to court young ladies who have long hair and big eyes. When he likes one in particular, he follows her, braids her hair, and serenades to her with his silver guitar; but he also puts soil in her plate and she is not able to eat or sleep. El Sombrerón appears at dusk, dragging along a group of mules carrying coal, with whom he travels around the city and its neighborhoods. When a woman responds to his love, he ties the mules to the house's pole where she lives, unhooks his guitar, and starts singing and dancing. Some residents from the neighborhoods of La Recolección and Parroquia Vieja say he still wanders at nights when there is a full moon. El Sombrerón is one of the most important legends of Guatemala, along with La Llorona, Cadejo, and Siguanaba.

The Legend

In the neighborhood of La Recolección lived a young woman named Susana, daughter of a woman who owned a store. Susana was a very pretty girl, with long hair and big hazelnut eyes. One night, when there was a full moon, she was on the balcony admiring the sky. Suddenly, a short character with a big hat and a guitar approached her. Her beauty amazed him. He began to sing her a song, but at that moment her parents found out she was outside and made her go back inside the house. Since that day, she was no longer able to sleep because this character appeared in the house or sang to her from the street. She could not eat, either, because every time she was served food, it was contaminated with soil. Worried, her parents cut her hair and took it to the church so that the priest would put holy water on it and pray for her. A few days later, El Sombrerón stopped bothering her. Culturally, the legend advises teenage girls to preserve the collective

values In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live ( normative ethics), or to describe the significance of different a ...

of a society.¿Creés en las leyendas?
, by Luisa Pérez, Prensa Libre (Guatemala), 17 Apr 2005

Cultural influence

"Legend of El Sombrerón" is the title of one of the short stories in Guatemalan Nobel-prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias' 1930 collection '' Legends of Guatemala''. In 1950, El Sombrerón became the subject of an eponymous film, one of the first films shot in Guatemala.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:El Sombreron Spanish-language Mesoamerican legendary creatures Guatemalan folklore Mythology of the Americas South American mythology Mexican mythology Goblins Bogeymen