Imbunche

The Imbunche, Imvunche or Machucho de la Cueva is a distorted anthropomorphic character. Raised completely malnourished and underfed. His right leg is broken and stuck behind his back. In this way his escape as a child is impossible, and later his distance from the Cave, of which he is the guardian, is prevented. He is a child given to the Majority by his witch father, or abducted from the bosom of a family to be assigned to the custody of the Cave. In raising him, he is supplied with milk from "gata" (Indian nurse); later, meat from "cabrito" (toddler) and, in adulthood, from "goat" (adult individual).

Description
The invunche is a deformed human with its head twisted backwards, along with having twisted arms, fingers, nose, mouth and ears. The creature walks on one foot or on three feet (actually one leg and two hands) because one of its legs is attached to the back of its neck. The invunche can't talk, and communicates only by guttural, rough and unpleasant sounds.

Legend
According to legend, the invunche is a first-born son less than nine days old that was kidnapped by, or sold by his parents to, a Brujo Chilote (a type of sorcerer or warlock of Chiloé). If the baby had been christened, the warlock debaptizes him.

The Brujo chilote transforms the child into a deformed hairy monster by breaking his right leg and twisting it over his back. When the boy is three months old his tongue is forked and the warlock applies a magic cream over the boy's back to cause thick hairs. During its first months the invunche is fed on black cat's milk and goat flesh, and then with human flesh from cemeteries.

Besides guarding the entrance to the warlock's cave, the invunche is used by warlocks as an instrument for revenge or curses. And, because it has acquired magical knowledge over its lifetime spent guarding the cave, even if the invunche is not initiated on wizardry, it sometimes acts as the warlock's adviser.

The invunche leaves the cave only in certain circumstances, such as when the warlock's cave is destroyed or discovered and the warlock moves to another cave, or when the warlocks have need of him, and they carry the invunche while he's thrashing and yelling, scaring the townspeople and announcing misfortune to come. The invunche also comes out when the warlocks take it to the Warlock's Council.

Nature
The invunche is fed solely by warlocks and is only allowed to search for its own edibles if food is lacking inside the cave. The Imbunche does not speak, it only emits guttural, harsh, very unpleasant sounds. The feeding of him is in charge of the sorcerers. Only if it is too scarce, you are allowed to go out in three feet to look for it in the vicinity. During these little outings he is screaming, terrorizing all who hear him. In this way, no one dares to look at it. The only ones who can see it without danger are precisely the witches. There are times when the Imbunche must go out to other districts. This happens in cases in which the Majority holds a meeting in a location other than their usual coven, or when they must indicate the address of someone who must be "thrown a bad bad." To fulfill this mission, he is transported in the air between two experienced witches.

The belief in the Imbunche is a way of explaining the disappearance of young boys from their homes or of justifying the presence of ill-formed children, some of them distorted, unfortunately, true congenital phenomena, who are sometimes kept semi-hidden and from whom popular jargon designates by the name of "nations", that is, phenomena of birth. It is worth noting the evident concordance of the role entrusted to the Imbunche, due to the strange with abnormal formation of him, with the practices established in the hierarchy of the Inca religion. This preferred, for example, for guards of its sanctuaries or temples, to individuals with some visible physical anomaly.

"All individuals who had a singular character entered the service of the temples," says Louis Baudin, either in person (epileptics), or because of particular circumstances of their birth or life (children who had first put their feet out of the temple). born or who had been given birth during a storm; twins, spoiled from birth; Indians touched by lightning without having been killed) .This is the conception that forms the basis of the cult of the huaca of which we have spoken: the divinization of anomalies "... Today, in a sense, the belief in the supernatural value of abnormalities still persists, as can be seen in the faith in the four-leaf clover; in the luck attributed to the encounter with hunchbacks, to the special properties of the "huemas" (first-born) daughters for freight, to the healing benefits of the stones found in the stomach of some animals, to the miraculous power of the animitas of tragically deceased people, to the omen of the black cat, etc. The saying is still frequent: "he was born on his feet." It is very probable that this same principle has also influenced the veneration of the sacred cows of India, and of the Apis ox, in Egypt. Likewise, there may be some relationship with the old Etruscan ritual, according to which Romulus drew the sacred contours of Rome with which an entirely white ox of the same color was yoked. How strange would it be that the Imbunche was also a creation due to this same principle of divinization of the anomalies on which the faith in the "huaca" is based? Superstition around abnormal beings can be seen in the instinctive reaction of fear experienced by children in the presence of disabled individuals. The same is observed before a person dressed in a bizarre way.

The Cave, a secret place reserved for the Butas, for whom impunity is essential, in addition to being strategic sites, needs a guardian rather than a keeper. Hence the terrifying aspect of the Imbunche, deprived of the use of the word and condemned to walk only on three feet.

Trivia

 * The Imbunche appeared on the DC comics.