The Alicanto is a bird of Chilean mining folklore from the Atacama region in the north of the country. It lives among hills rich in minerals and feeds on gold or silver. Its wings and eyes shine with the metal it eats, and miners who follow it may find a rich vein, or, if they are too greedy, be led over the edge of a cliff.[1]
| Type | Bird of Chilean folklore |
|---|---|
| Region | Atacama, northern Chile |
| Food | Gold or silver, depending on the hills where it lives |
| Appearance | Glowing eyes and wings that shine with metallic light; casts no shadow |
| Behavior | Guides miners to ore veins; leads the greedy to their deaths |
| Key sources | Julio Vicuña Cifuentes, Mitos y supersticiones (1915); Oreste Plath, Geografía del mito y la leyenda chilenos (1973) |
Where the legend comes from
The Atacama is one of the driest places on Earth and one of the richest in minerals. From the silver rushes of the 1830s to the copper mines of today, mining has shaped its towns and its stories, and the Alicanto belongs to that world.
The best-known collection of Chilean legends is Geografía del mito y la leyenda chilenos by the folklorist Oreste Plath (1907–1996), first published in 1973. The University of Chile publishes an online anthology of the book, which gives three versions of the Alicanto legend.[1][2]
What the versions say
- Plath’s version. The Alicanto is a fabulous bird that lives among the mineral hills and eats gold or silver, depending on the metal in its hill. Its eyes glow strangely, and as it walks over the rocks its wings throw off reflections that surround it in light. When its crop is full of metal it is too heavy to fly, but it escapes by slipping into cracks in the rock without leaving tracks. If someone chases it, it speeds up or slows down, then flashes a light that blinds the pursuer, who may find himself at the edge of a precipice.[1]
- A second version. The Alicanto nests in small caves and lays two eggs of gold or silver. It darkens its wings when it feels pursued. A miner it guides may be led to a rich vein or to buried treasure, but it sometimes leads its pursuers to their deaths at the edge of a cliff.[1]
- A third version. The bird of silver and gold guides miners to the vein they are seeking. It appears only at night, and its body casts no shadow on the ground. A miner who follows it out of excessive ambition is led over a precipice and dies.[1]
An older source: Julio Vicuña Cifuentes (1915)
Plath was not the first to write the legend down. In 1914–15 the Chilean folklorist Julio Vicuña Cifuentes published the alicanto as the first entry in his collection Mitos y supersticiones recogidos de la tradición oral chilena (“Myths and superstitions gathered from Chilean oral tradition”). His versions add useful detail. The bird cannot fly because its crop is loaded with ore, and it runs faster when it has not eaten. A female living in a cave lays two eggs of gold or silver. Wherever the bird perches becomes a deposit. Some tellers describe copper-green wings as well as gold and silver ones.[3]
Vicuña also recorded where he heard these details: in Santiago, San Bernardo and Talagante, in central Chile, as well as in the mining north. So although the alicanto is most closely tied to the Atacama, it was known much more widely. In the Talagante version, the danger comes from what Vicuña called the densidad de las sombras, the thickness of the darkness. When the bird senses it is being followed it puts out its light, and the pursuer, suddenly blind on a mountainside, walks off a cliff.[3]
The alicanto and the silver rush
The legend is tied to a real turning point in Chilean history. On 16 May 1832, a prospector named Juan Godoy found a rich outcrop of silver about 50 km south of Copiapó, at a place called Chañarcillo. Accounts of how he found it differ. Some say he was hunting guanacos; others say his dying mother told him where to look. Folklore says he was led there by an alicanto.[4][5]
Godoy registered his claim as La Descubridora, “the Discoverer.” His find set off the Chilean silver rush. Chañarcillo became the country’s most productive mining district of the nineteenth century and drew thousands of workers from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. The settlement at the foot of the hill was named Pueblo de Juan Godoy in 1846. Copiapó grew into a trading center, and in 1851 it was linked to the port of Caldera by Chile’s first railway. Silver profits were invested in banks, farms and the coal mines of Lota. The mines declined in the 1870s and were largely abandoned after flooding in 1888.[5]
Godoy himself did not get rich. He sold most of his rights almost at once and died in La Serena around 1842. Today a statue of him stands in Copiapó, and a mineral, juangodoyite, was named after him in 2005. The alicanto story fits his life almost perfectly: a poor man led to a fortune by luck or magic, who still came away with little.[4]
Derroteros: maps to treasure that never was
The alicanto belongs alongside another kind of mining folklore, the derrotero. These were route descriptions, passed by word of mouth or in handwritten copies, that claimed to lead to lost veins or buried Inca treasure. Some were vague, some were distorted in copying, and some were clearly invented. Historians who have studied them conclude that they did not lead to a single significant discovery. Like the alicanto, they show how much hope and imagination surrounded the search for silver in the desert.[5]
The meaning of the legend
The Alicanto captures both sides of the mining life of northern Chile:
- The dream of a strike. Prospectors spent years searching barren hills. A shining bird that knows where the metal lies expresses the hope that luck, or nature itself, might show the way.
- A warning about greed. In every version, the miner who chases the bird too hard ends at a cliff. Mining in the Atacama was dangerous, and the tale warns against risking your life for wealth.
- Light in the dark. Prospectors traveled the hills by night and at dawn, when glinting rocks and odd lights are easy to misread. A glowing bird that leaves no tracks and casts no shadow fits that setting well.
A bird for Borges
The alicanto reached an international audience through Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero’s Book of Imaginary Beings. The 1969 English edition, translated with Norman Thomas di Giovanni, includes a section on the “Fauna of Chile” that paraphrases the legend. That section does not appear in the Spanish original. Andrew Hurley, who retranslated the book in 2006, left it out and noted that its source could not be confirmed. It is a fitting irony that the bird’s most famous literary appearance is a little like the alicanto itself: bright, memorable and hard to trace back to where it came from.[6]
There is no claim that the Alicanto is a real, undiscovered bird. Like the Anchanchu of the Bolivian altiplano, which also guards mineral wealth, it is a figure of mining folklore. See our entry on the Abchanchu (Anchanchu).
References
- “El Alicanto,” in Oreste Plath, Geografía del mito y la leyenda chilenos, online anthology, Universidad de Chile. uchile.cl (in Spanish).
- Oreste Plath, Geografía del mito y la leyenda chilenos (Santiago: Editorial Nascimento, 1973). Record at Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile.
- Julio Vicuña Cifuentes, “I. El Alicanto,” in Mitos y supersticiones recogidos de la tradición oral chilena (Santiago, 1915; first published in Revista chilena de historia y geografía, 1914). Summarized in Wikipedia, “Alicanto”.
- “Juan Godoy,” Wikipedia, citing M. C. Baros M., “Juan Godoy y Chañarcillo,” Minería Chilena 329 (2008).
- “Chilean silver rush,” Wikipedia, citing S. Villalobos et al., Historia de Chile (1995); G. Cortés Lutz, Chañarcillo, cuando de las montañas brotó la plata (Museo Regional de Atacama, 2017); and R. Molina Otárola, “Derrotero de la plata en Atacama,” Estudios Atacameños 48 (2014).
- Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero, The Book of Imaginary Beings, trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: Dutton, 1969), “Fauna of Chile”; and trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin, 2006), translator’s note.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from Chilean folklore sources. An earlier version described gemstone eyes, claws for digging through rock and a tale of a miner lost forever in a labyrinth of tunnels, without sources. These details have been removed. The illustration above is an artistic impression.