Mal de Ojo

An urban legend as related by one of my professors, well, more or less:

Here in Chile there exist those who possess the power of the evil eye, people who with a look of malice can bring harm to the unwary and defenseless. The ones most at risk are the weakest–the very old, the very young, and the mentally retarded. In order to protect the guaguas or babies some Chileans will tie a red ribbon with a saint’s medallion onto the baby’s clothes.                

Interesting, but you know no one really believes that any longer. I mean we live in the modern age. Urban legends are just legends, right?

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Staring drowsily out the window of the micro, as I usually did, after I finally leave the university in the afternoon, I noticed a family of four get on the micro. I wouldn’t really have noticed much about them except that the little girl (maybe 6 or 7 years old) sat next to me and the father with his baby sat across from me. Cute, fat little thing. I sat there halfway smiling as the father bounced him on his knee. The older child sitting next to me kept looking over her shoulder at me, which I just dismissed as a little kid’s curiosity when presented with an unknown person.           

I glanced back over to the baby, burbling in his father’s lap, and tensed, looking away quickly. I had just noticed a bit of red ribbon with a tiny gold medal carefully safety-pinned to his bib. Noticing that, I turned to look at the window, half afraid to turn and look that way again in case the dad actually thought I wanted to harm his child.

I know he probably didn’t even think about it, but I often have a very direct gaze, a tendency to look people in the eyes when I’m talking to them. It was a weird experience. This normally dressed family, who looked like they’d just come back from playing together on the beach, had pinned a saint’s medal with red ribbon (red ribbon is key for some reason) on its baby’s shirt.

¿Qué estás hashiendo?” or “What are you doing?”   

The father asked the tot as he bounced him around. The verb here is "haciendo" ha-si-endo. Not ha-shi-endo. It comes from hacer, which is to make or to do. Our teacher had also brought to our attention (literally the day before), saying that pronouncing the “c” as a “sh” is a linguistic marker of lower socio-economic status.

An interesting combination of social and cultural traits sitting next to me in the micro, reinforcing the fact that we’re all the same but so very different. Everyone wants his children to be safe no matter what the country. Some use sun block on their toddlers when they go to the beach or some give their teenagers mace when going off to college and some use saints’ medallions tied with red ribbon.

I wonder if the members of that family actually believed in the mal de ojo or if the parents had just used a saint’s medallion because that’s what you do with babies. Was it a tradition or an actual belief? I don’t know–I would never have the courage to ask. Maybe I should have though. Maybe they would have been happy to share the information, but my fear of offending them stopped me. So I still wonder whether or not such beliefs actually exist in the middle of modernity.

January 23, 2009