The Trauco tradition and gendered folklore of Chiloé

Record summary

El Trauco is a small, forest-dwelling male figure in Chiloé folklore, often portrayed as physically powerful and associated in popular accounts with seduction, unexplained pregnancy or danger in the woods. Contemporary scholarship and heritage presentations use the figure to examine local cosmology, gender norms, Catholic reinterpretation and tourism. The lead is especially useful when comparing supernatural explanations for socially sensitive events. Accounts differ over whether the Trauco is an Indigenous being, a colonial moralizing figure or a later folkloric synthesis, and these categories should not be treated as mutually proven.