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Autora: CLARA TAHOCES - Grapho-psychologist and writer, Madrid - España
The practice of the cannibalism gets lost in the night of the times. It existed a lot before the Spaniards arrived to the Caribbean, and the root of the term was desvirtuada: carib-calib-canib=caníbales.
In the past two reasons existed for those that a human being decided to eat up to another: for hunger (primitive towns) or due to a ritual (more advanced towns).
In South America there are tests of the existence of a cannibalism so much gastronomic as ritual. In the cases of ritual cannibalism it was only invited the leaders and the relatives.
In the valley of the Cauca (Colombia) the cannibalism didn't have religious connotations and this practice extended in locations in those that abundance of foods of animal origin and cereal existed. The investigating González Torres defends that the cannibalism simply took place in numerous areas for the mere pleasure of consuming human meat.
In Australia, due to the extreme shortage of foods, they occurred frequent cases of endocanibalismo, this is that in occasions the mothers ate up next to their children, to the baby that had just been born. Other places where anthropophagy was given they were the islands Salomón, the paradisiac Fidji, in New Guinea, where the Papúas put to the deads in cabins and once they had filled with worms they devoured them. Also in the archipelago of New Ireland and in multitude of other lands.
Ritual cannibalism
The human sacrifice was a rite tendente to get an end. It was an acci symbolic ón, by means of which felt possible to intervene in the world of the supernatural thing.
When killing a person in a violent way, following a ritual, the sacrificers were convinced that took place the liberation of an energy that if it was managed by elected people - priests, kings or high leaders - it could be channeled to get personal benefits or for the community.
This belief has taken place in numerous towns and the names that has been given to that "energy" they are different: It flows (Polynesian), numen (Roman primitive), teótl (mexicas), etc. to be able to recharge the one flows, it was necessary to introduce a new element: the food, consuming specific parts of the victim's body.
The blood was one of them but other parts loaded with it flows they would be the heart, the head, the thighs... The kings and priests had more it flows. In the case of the ritual cannibalism it was necessary that this took place under certain conditions. Of not being this way, would leave of being accepted by the community to become a crime.
The privilege of the blood
The mexicas, after the wars, moved away the cadavers of his of the battle field. This era a preservation form before the fact that other towns can eat up to their partners, what was considered as an insult.
In Central America the ritual cannibalism was a privilege dedicated to some few ones, the warring tequihua. The children and captive they were broken and their pieces were distributed between the noblemen and the leaders of the war. According to Oviedo, to Motecuhzoma they served him human meat among those more than three thousand plates that were presented as more valuable dishes.
However, for many towns a taboo existed when eating up to a relative, to some of its own ethnic group or a contagious sick person. The disgust didn't provoke it the consumption of the human meat, but knowing that the cadaver that you/they had devoured was a member of its own community.
How and of what it forms
The victim's cadaver was distributed in as many parts as warriors they had participated in its capture (a maximum of six). The thighs and arms were very appreciated. Also the hands and the feet were as it seems very flavorful. The heads and hearts could only be ingested by the priests.
In Shekiam (Senegal), they were persuaded that if the king or the priest ate the captured more valiant warrior's heart, supposedly he acquired that quality: the courage, in this case. The blood was dedicated to the gods and it was not ingested. Those more primitive towns only made it.
According to the victim, the gastronomic preparation it was different. The mexicas, for example, they used to cook it with corn and salt. But the prisoners and the children offered to the deity Tlaloque were prepared with pumpkin shafts and flowers. In the most primitive societies the meat was distributed among all (there was not ritual) and how bigger era the cultural level increased the hierarchization proportionally in the allotment.
Cannibals without knowing it
Fritz Aarmann was beheaded in Germany December of 1924, 20 after having made a number so high of crimes that neither so at least he was able to remember with accuracy how many. Then sold the meat of the children.
Georg Grossmann, countryman of they Arm, neither it could calculate the number of murders that made - it is calculated that about fifty - although that that yes it is known it is it made with the cadavers: it converted them in "hot dogs" that him same sold in the railroad station in which worked
The case of Kate Webster doesn't stop to be even more curious. After killing the lady for which worked with an axe of leaving coal, it broke it being helped of a special mountain for meat and came undone of the biggest pieces throwing them to a river or burning them. Fact this, cooked the more parts "substantial" of those that it extracted the fat that bottled and sold to a restaurant like seasoning of the plates.
In September of 1994, eight people ate the liver of a man in Countrysides (Brazil), after their murderer had sold it to the restaurant, and the owners - unaware to his origin - they prepared it with garlic, onion and pepper.
The attractive thing is that the clients ate to pleasure and only only after knowing that what they had consumed was human meat were scandalized.
Contemporary cannibals
In the decade of the eighty, Jean-beadle Bokassa, Emperor of Central África, it was overthrown. After thirteen years of dictatorship it was accused of genocide and of cannibalism.
The witness that entered in their magnificent palace declared to have found in the freezers human cadavers to those that they lacked several members.
But Bokassa escaped and hid surrounded of guardians that looked after its security. Nobody knew where it was until the journalist Ronald Koven located him in Costa of Ivory, living to king's body. In an interview granted to this journalist, it didn't only recognize without mufflers to have practiced the anthropophagy but rather it even accused Giscard D´Estaing of the own thing.
Possibly Jeffrey Dahmer, the "butcher of Milwaukee", one of the most awful murderers that has known the criminal history, looked for something similar to the one it flows when it violated, murdered, drank the blood and ate up, among other parts of the body, the brains of seventeen youths.
When asking him in short on this matter explained: "He/she made me feel that they became part of me permanently, apart from the curiosity of knowing how they were."
The case of Dahmer deserves reflection, since soon after of these declarations carried out the NBC from the prison - where had intended to several prisoners to form a group of "anonymous cannibals" - another prisoner, Christopher Scarver, 25 year-old convict that was considered the son of God and receiver of supposed telepathic messages, decided to make justice and to kill Dahmer in 1994.
But there are many more cases: Henry Heepe killed its seventy seven year-old mother in 1994 and cooked a stew with her, to consider that it was a "diabolical vampire" that possessed two hearts that beat simultaneously.
George Hasselberg admitted in 1995 to have been eaten its octogenarian lover's bowels. When being interrogated declared "I Never thought that it could have arrived to this end". Line Malishipa, natural of Zambia, it was condemned in 1995 to six months of prison after admitting to have been eaten at seven of their children, with the help of the "demon", in the course of a ritual of black magic.
Francisco García Escalero, accused of making eleven murders, it was not acquitted in 1995 after declarársele responsible for their acts. The call "I beg psychopath", it recognized to have been eaten the heart of some of their victims. The call "butcher of Rostov" it was condemned in 1992, declared culprit of to murder and to eat up to 53 people.
Six months later, in May of 1993, was discovered in Russia to a new criminal. It was baptized by the press like Miklujo-Maklai, name of a celebrated browser and Russian etnógrafo of final of the XIX century that traveled places like New Papúa Guinea.
The nickname was put because e murdered twenty-four women and other so many men at least, following exotic rituals of the ethnoses of the Pacific.
Alexander Spetitsev killed and ate up to eighty people in Siberia. After three years in a psychiatric one, the doctors considered that had been treated, they loosed him and thoroughly insisted in the practice of the anthropophagy with their sister's help and their mother. There are people for everything.
