Resumen

MAMANI CONDORI, Carlos. Khari Khari, the Killer. Textos Antropológicos [online]. 2017, vol.18, n.1, pp. 37-50. ISSN 1025-3181.

A figure dressed in a monk's clothing roams the Andes terrorizing people. Khari Khari is the generic name given to this apparition by local inhabitants, but rather than being an individual it is more like a multitude spread throughout the region. Its victims claim that this figure walks at night across the countryside and along lonely roads, holding a bell and rosary to lure unsuspectingpeople. The victims are then put to sleep so that their fat or grease may be extracted; death comes soon after. This article is afirst examination ofthe themefrom the discipline ofhistory. Khari Khari is a well-known entity in anthropology from the first scholarly studies of local customs, andfolklorists ofthe region have written reams on the figure as aproduct ofthe native imagination and surviving element ofprecolonial legend, myths, and traditions.As early as thefirstyears ofEuropean domination there exist traces of this theme and it was the Spanish themselves who reported on the figures activities. The clues and traces arefew but enough to be able to identify it as the Spanish matador [or killer] so well described by Bartolomé de las Casas in his Brevísima relación.

Palabras llave : War; deglaver; trauma; priest; fat.