Güijes

The güije (also jigüe or chichiricú) is a small water-dwelling being of Cuban folklore. Tellings place it in rivers, ponds and lagoons, often in pools said never to dry up, and describe it as a mischievous, sometimes spiteful trickster rather than a killer.

The word itself is usually said to be of African origin: the Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz reported it as a name for the little spirits of rivers and pools. Other historians quoted by the Cuban encyclopedia EcuRed argued instead that colonial-era adults invented güijes to keep children away from dangerous water. Both ideas fit a creature that blends African, Spanish and local ideas of water spirits.

Legends cluster in the northern part of the old Las Villas region, especially around Remedios and Sagua, where individual stories are tied to named places such as “El Güije de la Bajada”. One well-known tale describes a strange boy with bulging eyes who joins a ball game beside a cane field and bolts into the cane when someone says he is a güije.

Folk practice supplies ways to call one up, such as offering a cigar, walking round a sacred ceiba tree twelve times at midnight, or gathering seven men called Juan. Over the years the güije has turned into an affectionate figure of Cuban culture, appearing in poems, songs, children’s television and film.

Short, dark-skinned and often naked or dressed in leaves, with bulging, darting eyes. Some tellings give it goat legs or a caiman’s tail; others make it a boy or an old man.

Fresh water: ponds, pools, lagoons and rivers across Cuba, with the richest legends in the north of the former Las Villas province.

The güije appears in Silvio Rodríguez’s song “El Güije”, the film Viva Cuba, a children’s television programme and animated shorts. It is a gentle, familiar part of Cuban popular imagination.