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S1 E40 Robert Bitto - Author
12 Plays17 days ago
In this week’s episode I had the pleasure of talking to Author Robert Bitto.
Robert specializes in Mexican Culture and has written three books Mexican Monsters, Mexican Unexplained and Mexican Miracles. He is also the host of Mexico Unexplained on You tube.
With me trying to pronounce some of these names, we spoke about the Chupacabra, the Tlahuelpuchi, and the La Llorona.
We then continued with the unpronounceable by talking about the Ahuizotl, La Lechuza and the El Naqual.
We finished off by talking about UFO’s around the mountain Popcatepetl, and are volcanoes portals to the underworld
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Robert Butto and His Work
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. Today we are doing something completely different. We are talking to Robert Butto who is an author and he specializes in everything to do with Mexico.
00:00:29
Lee Hatfield
So Robert, good evening and welcome.
00:00:32
Robert Bitto
Well, thanks for having me.
00:00:35
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and I think we can thank thank Joe for putting you and me in in touch with each other, yeah swapping guests and all that.
00:00:43
Robert Bitto
Yeah, that's always that's always good.
00:00:46
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. yeah So before we go into the books that you've written, can you kind of just give us a little bit of a background about about yourself, please?
Origins of 'Mexico Unexplained' YouTube Channel
00:00:57
Robert Bitto
Okay, well, I started a business in 1999, which I still own, where I import arts and crafts from Latin American countries with an emphasis on Mexico.
00:01:09
Robert Bitto
And so in order for me to get the really good stuff, I have to go to small towns and out-of-the-way places.
00:01:17
Lee Hatfield
We have this representative.
00:01:18
Robert Bitto
And I'm always going to different locales to find really good stuff. And so over the course of my travels, I kept stumbling upon weird stuff, interesting stories, legends, stories.
00:01:36
Robert Bitto
you know, different different strange things that I knew were not being talked about in the English-speaking world. And I got the idea for my YouTube channel, Mexico Unexplained, when I was on a plane from Guadalajara to Phoenix,
00:01:53
Lee Hatfield
Yes.
00:01:56
Robert Bitto
And I was settling down in my seat with a magazine called Muy Interesante. And it's a Spanish-language, Mexican-produced paranormal magazine, basically. And they talk about different anomalies and weird science and things like that. and I was thumbing through the magazine, and I saw...
00:02:18
Robert Bitto
an article about crop circles. And there were interesting crop circles that I had never seen before. And there were Mexican scientists who were analyzing these crop circles and and commenting on them.
00:02:32
Robert Bitto
And I thought, geez, you know what? I haven't seen this in the States, and I haven't seen a lot of the things that I've stumbled across on my various travels and adventures in Latin America.
00:02:46
Robert Bitto
And I thought maybe there's some interest in bringing these obscure factoids, legends, myths, stories, anomalies, paranormal, assorted paranormal stuff.
00:03:02
Robert Bitto
Maybe there's an interest in bringing that to the English-speaking world, taking it out of Mexico, and in some cases, very isolated regions of Mexico. Some of the things that I talk about, people outside the region who are Mexican have never even heard of the stuff that I'm talking about.
Cultural Impact of the Day of the Dead on Business
00:03:21
Robert Bitto
So that's how Mexico Unexplained got started almost 10 years ago.
00:03:27
Robert Bitto
And there is a never ending supply of materials. So I think I can be doing this for another 10 years plus. So that's the background here.
00:03:39
Robert Bitto
Started with my business, which I still own.
00:03:42
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And that that sounds really cool because I can imagine there's quite a few different kind of artifacts and items that you are in touch with on a regular basis.
Exploring Mexican Cryptids: Chupacabra and Others
00:03:56
Robert Bitto
Yeah.
00:03:57
Lee Hatfield
And is what I've been writing thinking, well, I know that the American culture, sorry, the Mexican culture is completely different. And they they even celebrate, is it the Day of the Dead?
00:04:11
Robert Bitto
yeah
00:04:11
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:04:12
Robert Bitto
That's a huge holiday. In fact, October is my highest selling month for my business because I sell all the crafts and all the supplies that you need to celebrate that holiday.
00:04:23
Robert Bitto
And yeah, there is a lot there's a lot surrounding that holiday. It has very deep roots, like a lot of the things in Mexico. And there there are tons of...
00:04:34
Lee Hatfield
you
00:04:37
Robert Bitto
stories that go back thousands of years. Because when the when the Spanish arrived, they met intact, living, breathing cultures that had and unbroken history going back millennia.
00:04:51
Robert Bitto
And so some of these stories are that old. I mean, some of the, especially the cryptids, the legendary creatures, a lot of those go back three to four thousand years.
00:05:06
Lee Hatfield
Wow, that's amazing. And yeah, I know that the the culture of Mexico has got different cryptids than the USA, Canada, that kind of thing.
00:05:20
Lee Hatfield
So I know that the most famous is the Chupacabra.
00:05:26
Robert Bitto
Right.
Tlalapuche: The Vampire Witch
00:05:26
Lee Hatfield
So if you can explain a little bit about that cryptid for me.
00:05:32
Robert Bitto
it's a It's a relatively recent cryptid. It started to appear, or at least appear on the radar, let's say, in the mid-1990s.
00:05:44
Robert Bitto
And that was a result of actually a Cuban-American television show hosted by... earle a television show hosted by a Cuban-American woman named Christina.
00:05:58
Robert Bitto
And on the Christina show, she talked about the chupacabra, which was mostly seen in Puerto Rico. Okay. And it has different descriptions.
00:06:11
Robert Bitto
Sometimes it's described as being a reptilian creature. And a lot of times it's described as being shaggy, furry, like a big dog or a big cat.
00:06:24
Robert Bitto
And either way it's described, its behavior is the same.
00:06:25
Lee Hatfield
It's been... I think...
00:06:29
Robert Bitto
It sucks the blood out of animals, farm animals. So what happened is on the Christina show, she talked about it. And then all of a sudden in Mexico, there were all of these sightings, you know, in reports of this creature appearing.
00:06:46
Robert Bitto
Now, did the show... Cause people to see things or did the show give people permission to finally talk about it without being ridiculed?
00:06:58
Robert Bitto
So there was a big question there. It could be a creature that's always been there, but hasn't been talked about that much. But it rose to prominence in the late 90s, and sightings continue to occur, and variations on the creature, too.
00:06:58
Lee Hatfield
Thank
00:07:16
Robert Bitto
There have been recent sightings in a northern town called Lergo, and I i did a show called The Lergo Monster, and it was very similar to the Chupacabra.
00:07:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:07:28
Robert Bitto
But yeah, the chupacabra has been around for 30 something years, at least on the radar, at least known to people. But yeah, that's one of the interesting creatures. There are a couple of blood sucking creatures that are out there.
00:07:45
Robert Bitto
Besides the chupacabra, one of them, which is a really, really interesting story, is called the Tlalapuche.
00:07:47
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:07:53
Robert Bitto
Now, off air, you had mentioned that some of these names of these creatures are kind of hard to say because a lot of them are in the native languages of down in Mexico.
00:08:04
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:08:04
Robert Bitto
And the Tlalapuche, that comes from Nahuatl, which is the language of the Aztecs. And it's still a living language. In fact, there are more people who speak that language now than there were at the time of the conquest because there are more people. There are like 1.2 million people that who speak that language.
00:08:25
Robert Bitto
But the Tlalapuci is a vampire witch that sucks the blood and is a shapeshifter.
00:08:32
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:08:32
Robert Bitto
And how this came to be known was in the tiny state of Tlaxcala in central Mexico, there was a young functionary who was working in the records the records department in the capital city of Tlaxcala City, and he was processing death records.
00:08:52
Robert Bitto
And there were a lot of infant deaths. And the cause of death was written on these death certificates as chupado por la bruja, which means sucked by a witch.
00:08:58
Lee Hatfield
Wow. Wow.
00:09:05
Robert Bitto
That was the cause of death. And so this young man who wanted to make a name for himself, he noticed all this stuff, went to his supervisor and said, look, I have all of these death certificates and this is the cause of death.
00:09:07
Lee Hatfield
wow
00:09:18
Robert Bitto
What's going on? So then the state government sent people to these very rural, remote areas in the smallest state of Mexico. It'd be the equivalent of the American Rhode Island.
00:09:31
Robert Bitto
okay And so the government sent people to investigate.
The Legend of La Llorona: Personal and Cultural Insights
00:09:36
Robert Bitto
And then they said, well, yeah, the baby is dead in his crib. And it was because of Tlalapuche.
00:09:44
Robert Bitto
And, you know, chupado por la bruja, sucked by the witch.
00:09:48
Robert Bitto
Because what this creature supposedly does, it's a woman, actually, a witch who can shapeshift. And there are several different types of witches in Mexico, and the story is always the same.
00:10:03
Robert Bitto
It's a marginalized woman who is cast out by the town, you know. She was weird. She may have been ugly or whatever. So then she turns to the dark arts, right?
00:10:15
Robert Bitto
And then she's going like Carrie at the prom, you know, she's going to get back people.
00:10:21
Lee Hatfield
All right.
00:10:21
Robert Bitto
So in the case of the Tlalapuji, it's a woman, a witch who then shapeshifts into a wide variety of creatures. And usually it involves taking off a body part, like taking off her leg,
00:10:36
Robert Bitto
and then leaving the leg in the the the the hut or the house where she is. And then she'll turn into a bird or something. And in order to get into house of the intended victim, a lot of times the Tzlawal Poochie will shapeshift into a flea or a little fly and fly in the keyhole or fly in a crack in the window.
00:11:01
Robert Bitto
And then pfft. appear above the baby, you know, and then go after the kid. And so that's the legend. And so if you if you mention the word Tlalapu'lpuchi, before this happened, nobody really even know knew about it except for those people in those villages in that tiny town those that tiny state of Mexico And even now, people in the the whole country of Mexico, if you mention the word Tlalapu'lpuchi, they won't even know what you're talking about.
00:11:35
Robert Bitto
So that's an obscure legend. And anthropologists believe that that legend goes back 2,000 to 3,000 yeah. so yeah
00:11:35
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:11:47
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And just for the record, that was one of the what one of the names that I knew I was going to have trouble pronouncing. But now that you've said it a few times, Tlahul Poochie.
00:12:00
Robert Bitto
Yeah, that was good. That was good.
00:12:02
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, the first attempt, I'll get eight out of 10 for that.
00:12:02
Robert Bitto
Yeah, very good.
00:12:05
Lee Hatfield
cause i did stuff but But just sticking with kind of the, the women kind of cryptids and creatures, I think this one's a little bit easier for me to say the La Lorona.
00:12:22
Robert Bitto
Well, the two L's in Spanish is pronounced like a y
00:12:27
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:12:27
Robert Bitto
So that's Llorona. And that comes from the word in Spanish, llorar, which means to cry. So the Llorona is a weeping woman.
00:12:39
Robert Bitto
And this one, you know, a lot of people ask me, do you have any personal connections to any of these, and you know, anomalies, creatures, whatever, UFO landing sites, whatever it is, you know, do you have any connections to any of these?
00:12:56
Robert Bitto
And this one is close to my heart, believe me. La Llorona. I thought I saw her when I was 10 years old with a bunch of other little kids.
00:13:05
Lee Hatfield
Actually,
00:13:06
Robert Bitto
And I grew up in New Mexico. And so New Mexico is an extension of Latin America, really. And, you know, it's been, it was under Spanish domination from the 1590s with a brief interruption when the Pueblo people revolted, but From the late 1600s until the Americans acquired that part of the American Southwest, it was Spanish and then for 25 years Mexican. But it was part of the same cultural tradition.
00:13:41
Robert Bitto
So... It's a legend in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. And it starts off with a beautiful woman, you know, and she has a dashing, handsome husband who is either a member of the nobility, the old Spanish nobility, or he's a military guy.
00:14:01
Lee Hatfield
Bring me joy.
00:14:01
Robert Bitto
And he goes off and he gallivants, right? And in the town, they talk about how he's a womanizer and stuff. And the woman knows that she's being cheated on and wants to get revenge on her husband.
00:14:19
Robert Bitto
So she takes two of her children, or she takes her two children, a boy and a girl. It's always a boy and a girl in the legends. And she goes to the river and throws the kids in the river.
00:14:32
Robert Bitto
And the kids are screaming for help because the water is rushing so fast. And the woman has regrets in the last moments and wants to save her children.
00:14:45
Robert Bitto
So now, according to the legend, this ghost, this apparition, Llorona, walks the arroyos, walks the acequias, the waterways in the Southwest and in Mexico, because there's a lot of irrigation in these very dry areas.
00:15:07
Robert Bitto
She wanders these waterways looking for kids to snatch. Well, it's a cautionary tale. When I was a little kid, we used to play in the arroyos. They were ditches, basically. There were dry creek beds.
00:15:23
Robert Bitto
And like the weather in New Mexico and northern Mexico, there can be a rainstorm, a huge thunderstorm miles and miles away, and you could be playing in the sunshine.
00:15:34
Robert Bitto
And I've seen this happen where I was on the edge of an arroyo once as a kid, and the water just, a wall of water just rushed down, right?
00:15:46
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:15:46
Robert Bitto
So this can be a cautionary tale to keep kids away from water because of flash floods.
00:15:49
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:53
Robert Bitto
And in fact, in the city of Albuquerque, they posted signs at the Arroyos that said, ditches are deadly, stay away. And there was a ditch witch that called her the ditch witch, but everybody knew was the Llorona.
00:16:07
Robert Bitto
So back to my personal thing, and i was going I was part of my fifth grade class. We were going to the teacher's swimming pool.
00:16:07
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:16:19
Robert Bitto
We're going over to the teacher's house to go swimming. And because the school system is very poor there, there was no money for a school bus, so we had to take the city bus.
00:16:29
Robert Bitto
We had to take a couple buses. And between bus stops, we had to cross an arroyo. And so we were crossing the arroyo, me and the other kids. So wasn't just me.
00:16:41
Robert Bitto
There are other witnesses, not just me. were
00:16:45
Lee Hatfield
Always a good thing.
00:16:47
Robert Bitto
We were crossing over the arroyo. And we looked down, and there was an old woman there. And one person, one of the kids, I remember David Ortega, he yelled out, it's La Llorona, La Llorona.
00:17:02
Robert Bitto
And we all looked and we saw this old lady dressed in black in the middle of the arroyo. Then we took off. We like screamed.
00:17:10
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:17:11
Robert Bitto
We ran and laughed because we couldn't believe what we saw.
00:17:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:17:16
Robert Bitto
We like stumbled over each other. It was, I have never run so fast in my life. And we were, like i said, laughing. And it's like, Well, could that have been her, really?
00:17:27
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:17:28
Robert Bitto
And I told this story once. I was on a show that was hosted by a medium, a very sensitive woman. And she said, she sends children. That's why she did that.
00:17:42
Robert Bitto
And I said, well, yeah, that would go along with the legend.
Mythical Creatures in Aztec Mythology
00:17:44
Robert Bitto
That's true. Yeah.
00:17:45
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:17:46
Robert Bitto
And so it doesn't stop there, this weird connection that I have with this. It goes beyond that even to the present day, the present month, this legend is connected to me.
00:18:00
Robert Bitto
Okay. So there was a movie in 2019 called The Legend of La Llorona. Okay. And I bought tickets to the first showing because I thought, yay, I'm going to go see this movie.
00:18:14
Robert Bitto
So i I get my popcorn. I'm all nice and comfy in my seat. And I look up and about 10 minutes into the movie, what?
00:18:25
Robert Bitto
I'm looking up and I'm looking at... my own merchandise from my business that I only carry myself. And it's in the movie.
00:18:37
Robert Bitto
And then in another scene, it's there too. And there's more that I only make that is only made for my business. And then I remembered that like nine months before I had a big order of merchandise from a studio in Burbank, California. And and it I was to send it care of the movie called The Children. And I guess it was a working title.
00:19:07
Robert Bitto
So it's strange.
00:19:07
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:19:08
Robert Bitto
I was sitting there and I was watching my own merchandise in the movie about this thing. Okay. Now, That was 2019. Now, here we are in 2025, and I told you there's a weird connection, too.
00:19:24
Robert Bitto
Now... I moved to western Nebraska. Okay, I know that's kind of weird. I moved from San Diego to western Nebraska just six weeks ago.
00:19:35
Robert Bitto
And the name of the street I'm living on, where I have my house, is the name of that arroyo that I crossed when i I was in New Mexico as a 10-year-old.
00:19:47
Robert Bitto
It's the same name, Han, H-A-H-N, Han, the Han Arroyo, and I live on Han Avenue.
00:19:55
Robert Bitto
It's so weird.
00:19:56
Lee Hatfield
That is weird.
00:19:57
Robert Bitto
oh Yeah, but I was freaking out when I was in the movie theater because I knew that was my merchandise because it was only made for me and nobody else carries it.
00:19:59
Lee Hatfield
That is bizarre. That really is.
00:20:11
Robert Bitto
And then I remembered, like I said, months and months before I got a purchase order from studio. So, yeah. So that's my personal connection. Yeah.
00:20:22
Lee Hatfield
that that's pretty good kudos so in all fairness yeah to to have stuff that you've actually you know held and and sold to be in a movie right what are the chances of that yeah
00:20:32
Robert Bitto
Yeah.
00:20:34
Robert Bitto
Yeah, it was so, in that you know and that movie. you know
00:20:40
Robert Bitto
And then when I got this house here in little town, there are 22,000 people who live in this town, okay? And I moved here because I thought this is like paradise compared to where I lived before, Southern California.
00:20:40
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:20:56
Robert Bitto
It's not what it used to be. But then I realized, wait, that's the same name of that arroyo that where we saw the Llorona.
00:21:05
Lee Hatfield
there's There's bound to be another connection soon. You just know it's going to happen.
00:21:08
Robert Bitto
Oh, no. And you know what? Here's something else. I am 15 minutes walking distance from the South Platte River. And I was walking along that river and I like chuckled to myself and I thought, I better not come out here at night.
00:21:28
Robert Bitto
I just might get snatched and no one will ever see me again or something, you know?
00:21:31
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So all you have to remember about running, you don't have to be the fastest. All you have to be is fastest and the slowest person. That's all you have to remember.
00:21:40
Robert Bitto
Exactly.
00:21:44
Lee Hatfield
OK, so let's... yeah You're probably going to laugh at me saying some of these names, but at least I've got the longest name correct. So the next one is Huey Zottle.
00:21:57
Lee Hatfield
Is that correct? Did I say that correct? A mythical creature with a monkey-like head and a dog's body. H-H-U-I-Z-O-T-L.
00:22:08
Robert Bitto
thought Yeah, that's one of the Aztec monsters. Yeah, so there are quite a few there are quite a few monsters that combine men, you know like a man and a goat and a you know different parts like that.
00:22:25
Robert Bitto
And so that's part of the Aztec mythology. And anything that is...
00:22:29
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:22:32
Robert Bitto
that is Aztec like that, or even the gods themselves, there are various stories about each creature. And there was one emperor named Oisot who was named after a lake monster, their Loch Ness monster, or the Oisot.
00:22:50
Robert Bitto
He wanted to standardize the religion and the myths and stuff like that. So, yeah, he wanted to come up with an official canon for all of these gods and creatures and things.
00:23:02
Lee Hatfield
Right.
00:23:04
Robert Bitto
And it was ironic that he was named after this Loch Ness monster creature in the lake that some people believe was a real creature. So, yeah.
00:23:15
Lee Hatfield
Well, people believe that Loch Ness is real. yeah Until you can 100% prove its existence, everyone's going to be thinking, yeah is it real? Is it not real?
00:23:31
Robert Bitto
Well, you know, I had a problem with the Loch Ness Monster when I was a kid. i would It's supposed to be a dinosaur, but isn't Scotland cold?
00:23:42
Robert Bitto
I mean, dinosaurs are cold-blooded. They're only supposed to be living in tropical areas, you know?
00:23:48
Lee Hatfield
So I've got a theory for that. We have a yeah a lake monster in Canada.
00:23:56
Robert Bitto
ol go Pogo Pogo, isn't it?
00:23:56
Lee Hatfield
think it's Algo Pogo. So what i think what I think it is, because of all the all the waters are connected, it goes to Scotland in the summer under the muse Loch Ness, and then it come it comes back to Canada just on vacation.
00:24:14
Lee Hatfield
So that's my theory.
00:24:14
Robert Bitto
Well, maybe a vacation's in Mexico, hey.
00:24:18
Lee Hatfield
Maybe, yeah, yeah, who knows? So do you have any particular favorites that you like talking about?
00:24:28
Robert Bitto
Well, beyond the Llorona, there's also... One of my favorites is the Lechuza, which is a gigantic owl creature.
00:24:39
Robert Bitto
And why that's a favorite of mine is because... When I put the show out, when I put the YouTube show out about this, the comment section blew up with people who were contributing their own experiences, which made me believe that this creature could be real.
00:25:01
Robert Bitto
and So once again, it's a witch, okay? According to the legend, it's a witch that, you know, marginalized woman, scorned, all that stuff. And then she turns into a gigantic owl and goes and kills livestock, takes your dog, attacks your kid.
Bigfoot-Like Creatures in Mexico
00:25:19
Robert Bitto
And there are different ways you can ward it off. And if you shoot it, then it falls to earth and turns back into a woman. But it's a gigantic owl, basically, and its habitat is northern Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
00:25:38
Robert Bitto
I had a viewer even offer to take me on a Lechusa hunt if I were ever in the south Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
00:25:49
Robert Bitto
because this person said that they've seen these creatures many times. And you know what? people don't People have different views about Mexico, and they don't realize what a vast country it is. There's a lot of empty space there.
00:26:06
Robert Bitto
And there is a lot of rugged wilderness, a lot of inaccessible mountains. And I don't know. There could be a gigantic bird creature there.
00:26:17
Robert Bitto
And yeah, if you go to the show, the YouTube show about the Lechuza, you'll read the comments and some of them are amazing. One of them was from someone from Southern California.
00:26:29
Robert Bitto
And it's funny because there used to be a nuclear reactor. I don't know who the genius was who decided to put a nuclear reactor in an earthquake country, but the Sinonofre nuclear plant and some Some guy said that when he was a kid, they used to see the luchusa hanging around there.
00:26:50
Robert Bitto
And his father said that it was a regular owl that ate radioactive rats. And that's why it grew so big. but But it is a legend that goes deep into Mexican history.
00:27:05
Robert Bitto
And so this is really intriguing to me because I think it could actually be a real creature. So i don't know.
00:27:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and talking about shape shifters, the other one that I've got in front of me, the Elnaguel.
00:27:26
Robert Bitto
Oh, the Nawal.
00:27:26
Lee Hatfield
See, I was close.
00:27:27
Robert Bitto
Yeah. That's, yeah, that was good. Yeah. You're doing well. We're going to have you speaking Nahuatl pretty soon.
00:27:36
Lee Hatfield
OK, that sounds like a plan.
00:27:39
Robert Bitto
Yeah, that is a very, very old shapeshifter. And it's a sorcerer. This time it's not a woman, it's a man. It's a sorcerer, like the shaman of the the village, let's say.
00:27:53
Robert Bitto
And at night, he will change into this snarling, have k nine half half feline creature. And go around and and cause mayhem and everything.
00:28:08
Robert Bitto
And the whole idea of the Nawal in the late 60s and 70s, Carlos Castaneda's books talk about it as being like an alter ego or something.
00:28:21
Robert Bitto
And that was never really traditionally Mexican. It was always this... you know, shape-shifting sorcerer. And you can see in some of the codexes, the bark paper books that were made before the Spanish conquest, you can see pictures of the Nawal in these books that date back, you know, 1500 years or whatever.
00:28:46
Robert Bitto
So, yeah, there have been depictions of... You know, these creatures going way back. In fact, the Bigfoot creature, one of the Bigfoot creatures, did you know there was a Bigfoot in Mexico? a lot of people don't know that.
00:29:00
Lee Hatfield
I was going to ask you that. That was going to be my next. When you started talking, oh why wonder if there's a Bigfoot in Mexico.
00:29:07
Robert Bitto
Well, there are two Bigfoot creatures, but, you know, there's a counterpart to everything. There's a Bermuda Triangle. We briefly touched on the Oesot, the Loch Ness Monster creature.
00:29:18
Robert Bitto
And yes, there are two Bigfoot creatures. And one of them is in the jungles of southern Mexico, the states of Chiapas, Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatan.
00:29:32
Robert Bitto
And it's kind of a shy forest creature. And it was first described by the outside to the outside world in the 1870s, I believe.
00:29:43
Robert Bitto
Some miners had stumbled on with the creature. And then the most famous sighting that... got the Sisamite worldwide attention was a circus worker from Canada, this trapeze artist.
00:30:03
Robert Bitto
He went down to Central America to seek his fortune, and he was in a tent and was woken up by this creature.
00:30:12
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:30:13
Robert Bitto
But the creature... has an Aztec name. Cisamete comes from Zitzimito, which means demonic creature.
00:30:24
Robert Bitto
Okay. But it's not a bad guy. Okay. it It comes, but that's the Aztec name for it. The Maya believed that it was a creature of the forest with magical powers like a jaguar.
00:30:37
Robert Bitto
They believe that the jaguar, deer, you know, any of the forest creatures had a bit of magic attached to them. And they believe that the sisimite was just a forest creature.
00:30:48
Robert Bitto
So that's that Bigfoot. There are two. The other one is called the Kwatlakas, and that's the big, buff, hairy, mean, angry Bigfoot that's akin to the North American Bigfoot that you would find in the Pacific Northwest.
00:31:04
Robert Bitto
And a lot of people don't know because of Clint Eastwood movies about, you know, dusty Mexico or whatever. a lot of people think Mexico is either a big desert or it's full of fun resorts on the coast, you know.
00:31:19
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:31:19
Robert Bitto
But there are three or four mountains that have glaciers on them. Permanent snowpack. And Iztasiwat a big mountain that's near Mexico City. Iztasiwat and Popocatepetl.
00:31:35
Robert Bitto
Now say those 10 times fast. Those, with when Popo, we'll shorten it, it from Popocatepetl, when Popo is not erupting, it has snow on it, but Iztasiwat next to it always has permanent snowpack.
00:31:53
Robert Bitto
And there are other mountains that have permanent snowpack. And there are people who are part of... Alpine rescue in these national parks who are trained in Switzerland, Mexicans who are trained in Switzerland in Alpine rescue.
00:32:10
Robert Bitto
OK, that's that's how hardcore this is.
00:32:10
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:32:13
Robert Bitto
You know, these glaciers. Right. And people are hiking in these glaciers all the time and they see this big, hairy creature. And also in the the forests.
00:32:25
Robert Bitto
See, once again, it's not a dusty Clint Eastwood movie. Unending forests, especially in the northern part of the state of Puebla, that's where that's like the heart of the Cuatlocas territory.
00:32:39
Robert Bitto
And only stories were coming out in the 60s when humans were starting to encroach onto the territory of the Cuatlocas and started to do illegal logging.
00:32:51
Robert Bitto
And in one case, there were some illegal loggers that went up there with their truck and started cutting down trees. And then they camped for the night. And then they there was all of this noise in the middle of the night and like crashing sounds.
00:33:09
Robert Bitto
And one of the Kwatlakas supposedly took a log and threw it at the truck and completely disabled the truck and smashed it to bits.
00:33:21
Robert Bitto
And the the people there had to be extracted by forestry officials and were arrested because they were you know cutting down trees illegally.
00:33:32
Robert Bitto
But there have been a lot of other sightings since then because as the population increases, then people are encroaching on the habitat of this creature. So you don't want to mess around. The Sisamite, the other Bigfoot's more shy. He's skinny.
00:33:49
Robert Bitto
He's tall, but skinny and has four fingers. I forgot to mention that. and the But the Kualakas, it's the big buff Bigfoot that you don't want to mess with.
00:34:00
Robert Bitto
And you know what? There's a figurine, the Olmecs, who their territory, they're supposedly the mother civilization of of Mexico, the first complex civilization to emerge.
00:34:17
Robert Bitto
And there is a sculpture called the Olmec Ape. And people, scholars believe that it's a rendition. It's a carving of the Bigfoot creature that they used to see in the forest.
00:34:30
Robert Bitto
So, Yeah, it's not a new sighting. I think these creatures have been hiding recently, but they can't hide anymore because of human encroachment.
00:34:43
Robert Bitto
So I don't know. You can be skeptical and say, where's the body and all of that. And I'm right there with you. You know, I'm right there with people who want more proof.
00:34:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
UFO Activity and Encounters in Mexico
00:34:54
Robert Bitto
But yeah, these are these really are interesting stories nonetheless.
00:35:00
Lee Hatfield
That's it. And that's what I love about doing these kind of podcasts, because yeah before tonight, apart from the Chupacabra, which I can say because I've said it many times,
00:35:12
Lee Hatfield
there's loads more cryptids that I never knew existed. So it's all good for my for my knowledge base to, even though i can't say them, I kind of kind of know what they are.
00:35:24
Lee Hatfield
But Mexico is not just famous for its own cryptids. There's a lot of other mysteries, like there's a lot of UFO activity in Mexico as well. but And I believe that your second book, Mexico unexplained covers UFOs in that one.
00:35:45
Robert Bitto
Yeah, there's some, yeah, I do talk about some UFOs and, you know, other like alien encounters and stuff like that. One of the first abduction experiences ever recorded was in Mexico in the nineteen fifty s It was a cab driver.
00:36:01
Robert Bitto
And, His name was Salvador Villanueva Medina. And he was near the border with the United States. And he was driving his cab around and his cab broke down.
00:36:15
Robert Bitto
And then two people approached his car and they were in UFO lore. They would be considered the Nordics. Okay. The tall blonde, you know, and this cab driver just thought they were gringos, you know,
00:36:31
Robert Bitto
Oh, man, they're just Americans, right?
00:36:31
Lee Hatfield
Sure.
00:36:34
Robert Bitto
And so the two Nordics who encountered this broken down cab said, would you like to come to our, you know, our ship? We'll show you or whatever.
00:36:46
Robert Bitto
So he got out of the cab and went, you know, into the desert a little bit. And there was a a saucer that was there. And then so they took him aboard. So it's not technically an abduction because he went willingly.
00:37:00
Robert Bitto
And there's there were a lot of stories like that. There was a teenage girl who went willingly. It was at an Air Force base. That's an interesting story. Yeah. But this very first case, it was like 1954, I believe.
00:37:15
Robert Bitto
Then they took him aboard. and then later he wrote a book called Estuve en el Planeta Venus, meaning i was on the planet Venus, because he thought he was...
00:37:27
Robert Bitto
being taken to Venus. And if if you know a lot about UFO history, in the 50s, people thought that Venus was inhabited and that the Venusians were visiting us.
00:37:39
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:37:40
Robert Bitto
you know So he, with the help of some other people, ghostwriters or whatever, he wrote this book describing the craft, the flight over there, what he saw on Venus, all of this stuff.
00:37:57
Robert Bitto
So you know that was an interesting case. And then the other one, there was oh an Air Force base and a girl a teenage girl who was the daughter of one of the Air Force personnel stationed there.
00:38:14
Robert Bitto
And she woke up in the middle of the night And their house was at the edge of the base. And there was this craft hovering over the it was hovering over the but ground.
00:38:29
Robert Bitto
And then these people came out of it. And she thought they were gringos. And I don't know if if you would consider them Nordic because they were just Caucasian.
00:38:42
Robert Bitto
And some people believe that Either this was NASA project from the Americans or it was a Russian, you know, because this happened like in 1970.
00:38:49
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:38:55
Robert Bitto
And some people believe that it were it could have been the Soviet Union. And the way she described the people, they could have been Eastern Bloc people, you know, but from the Soviet Union, check Czechoslovakia, Poland, you know, the Eastern Bloc.
00:39:07
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:39:13
Robert Bitto
So some people are thinking that this could have been an experimental craft sent by either the Americans or the Soviets. And she went on board and they talked to her and everything. And they she felt like she didn't move anywhere.
00:39:30
Robert Bitto
And so, I don't know, it could have been it could have been some sort of experimental thing or it could have been, you know, from some other world or another dimension or whatever. But that was a really interesting case because she went into great detail about what they told her.
00:39:51
Robert Bitto
and what the future would be like and you know and all of this stuff. so But there are a lot of different stories. There there are some stories about UFOs crashing. in fact, on one of my buying trips, I was in the back country of the state of Mitchell Conner, Jalisco. I think it was Jalisco.
00:40:12
Robert Bitto
And whenever I do these trips, I usually contract with local drivers who have trucks and stuff. So, you know, I can have somebody there and take me to these places with their own vehicle, and then we can load up the truck and then go back to a main city. And, you know, then I have it.
00:40:30
Robert Bitto
you know, palletized and sent out or whatever, you know. But i'll I'll take little trips out into the country. And we were driving along and we stopped in this town and there was all this hubbub and everything, all this commotion. what What's going on? And, oh, outside the town, there there was a landing site.
00:40:51
Robert Bitto
was a UFO landing site in some farmer's field. And i I said to the driver, let's go. and look the the guy who owned the field was charging admission.
00:41:03
Robert Bitto
so it was like 50 pesos or something, you know, like a couple bucks or whatever. You know, they're really capitalistic down there. you know like And so we drove by and And to talk about the whole capitalism thing, people were selling balloons and and food to eat and stuff like that.
00:41:22
Robert Bitto
So there's like they came out of nowhere to sell stuff and everything, this whole thing.
00:41:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:27
Robert Bitto
It was like this big pop-up thing.
00:41:28
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:29
Robert Bitto
And so the driver, I'm like, yeah, let's go and all this stuff. But he was afraid of the radiation. He said, I don't want to go because there could be radiation. So was like, darn.
00:41:41
Robert Bitto
I had my opportunity to go, but he didn't want to go.
00:41:43
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:41:44
Robert Bitto
But yeah, there have been, that wasn't the first time that I've heard of that sort of thing, that there've been landing sites and stuff, or even crashes.
00:41:56
Robert Bitto
And the crashes always have retrieval. And the retrieval is usually by the gringos, by the Americans.
00:42:03
Lee Hatfield
yeah i Yeah.
00:42:04
Robert Bitto
And yeah, so there's a lot there.
00:42:08
Lee Hatfield
If I'm driving down a road and I break down and two people come up to me and say, you want to come for a look around my ship? Hell no. It's like, oh, is that? Yeah, i I'm going to walk back now. Thanks. I'm all good.
00:42:27
Robert Bitto
You
00:42:27
Lee Hatfield
But one thing that I have kind of noticed when I've been reading up on things happening in Mexico, popo is very popular for UFO sightings.
00:42:41
Lee Hatfield
There seems to be a lot around, is it popocaterpetl? Yeah.
00:42:45
Robert Bitto
Yeah, that was good. That was good. See, we're getting you on track here for speaking Nahuatl.
00:42:52
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:42:52
Robert Bitto
Yeah, you know, in fact, there was a morning show that was like their Good Morning America, and they were showing how...
00:43:06
Robert Bitto
Popocatepadol was erupting. And so there were puffs of smoke coming out of this and people were eating their breakfast all across Mexico watching this morning show. And they were talking about the volcano slowly coming to life.
00:43:20
Robert Bitto
And then all of a sudden, this metallic disc darted out of the volcano and millions of people saw it. And here's another thing, too, with that volcano and with other volcanoes, because there's a lot of ufo activity around volcanoes.
00:43:40
Robert Bitto
there You can go to a website called Webcams de Mexico, and there is a webcam that constantly is pointing at Popo and these other places.
00:43:51
Robert Bitto
And you have people who are spotting things, you know. But in this live feed, you know, in front of, me it was on that morning show. And then, you know, like, wow, it happened.
00:44:05
Robert Bitto
But... People believe in Mexico, there is a tradition that the volcanoes are portals to the underworld.
00:44:17
Robert Bitto
And that's been belief for thousands of years among the indigenous, you know, the original civilizations. And so it almost has a 21st century twist that these UFOs are coming out of these craters.
00:44:32
Robert Bitto
So, yeah.
00:44:34
Lee Hatfield
Interesting. so We are coming to the end, unfortunately, but like say, you blow my mind with someone but with some of these names because there's no chance that I'm ever going to be able to pronounce them.
00:44:47
Lee Hatfield
Never in a month of Sundays am I going to be able to.
00:44:49
Robert Bitto
You were doing so well. You were doing great.
00:44:52
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, on the smaller ones, not the big ones. that you So you you've written your three books, Mexican Monsters that we've already been disc discussing with the cryptids,
00:45:03
Lee Hatfield
Mexico on unexplained with your your magic, mysteries and UFOs. Mexican miracles, virgin saints and shrines of Mexico. So what's next for Robert Bitto?
00:45:16
Robert Bitto
What I'm working on now is a history book. So what I'm doing is I'm compiling obscure history stories. And that book should be out in the next few months.
00:45:28
Robert Bitto
So I'm really close to finishing that one.
00:45:32
Lee Hatfield
So are you?
00:45:32
Robert Bitto
I try to get a book out every couple months or a couple years. And there's also a companion to Mexican monsters. There's a coloring book for the kiddos and for any adult colorers out there.
00:45:46
Robert Bitto
So you can see the creatures and you can color them any way you want.
00:45:52
Lee Hatfield
that's pretty cool. So anything else on the pipeline after this next book?
00:45:58
Robert Bitto
No, it's steady as she goes with weekly shows. Every Sunday I drop a show. and like I said to you earlier, there's never-ending material.
Future Projects and Plans
00:46:09
Robert Bitto
There are stories that I've... come across personally. There's research that I'm always doing. When I was in San Diego, I found a big stack at a garage sale of old pulp Mexican UFO magazines from the 70s.
00:46:29
Robert Bitto
Gold, gold, gold.
00:46:31
Lee Hatfield
Absolutely.
00:46:32
Robert Bitto
Yeah. So there's there's always stuff that I can talk about. So every Sunday, I have that show and that's going to continue.
00:46:41
Lee Hatfield
That's awesome. Robert, I thank you for your time. It's been and lesson that I've enjoyed learning today. like
00:46:50
Robert Bitto
Well, great.
00:46:50
Lee Hatfield
and my I'm going to practice my Spanish, so if we talk again in the future, I'll be speaking fluent to you. and you're going You don't say it like that. You don't say it like this. But
00:47:00
Robert Bitto
Well, I think we should do a part two sometime. Yeah.
00:47:03
Lee Hatfield
Most definitely. I will definitely keep to that, my friend, most definitely. But thank you for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:47:09
Robert Bitto
Thank you.
00:47:11
Lee Hatfield
And as you've just said, we will definitely speak again. Thanks very much.
00:47:14
Robert Bitto
Sounds good. Thank you.
00:47:16
Lee Hatfield
Take care.