Encantado

Overview

A shapeshifting being of Amazonian Brazilian folklore that lives by day as a pink river dolphin (boto cor-de-rosa) and emerges at night, especially during festivals, in the form of a tall, handsome, white-clad man who seduces women and lures the unwary into the underwater realm of Encante.

Details

Origin:

Concentrated in the Brazilian Amazon basin (states of Amazonas, Pará, Acre, Rondônia, Roraima, Amapá), with parallel traditions in adjacent Amazonian regions of Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and the Guianas.

Regions:

Amazon basin, Solimões–Amazon corridor, Rio Negro, Marajó region

First Reported:

Pre-contact

Full Account

The Encantado is a class of shapeshifting being central to the folklore of the Brazilian Amazon. By day the Encantado lives as a boto cor-de-rosa, the Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis); at night, especially during festas (festivals) along the Amazon and its tributaries, it transforms into a tall, handsome, well-dressed man — typically wearing white and a hat to conceal his blowhole — who seduces women, fathers children, and may carry the unwary into Encante, an underwater paradise from which there is no easy return. The legend functions in part as a culturally accepted explanation for the unwanted, scandalous, or unaccountable pregnancies of women in remote river communities. Killing or eating a boto is held to bring lasting bad luck. The figure synthesizes Indigenous Amazonian (Tupi-Guarani) traditions of river-spirits with Portuguese-Catholic narrative forms, and is one of the most widely recognized supernatural figures in northern Brazil. The Wikipedia article on Boto cites Juliette Wood's 'Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore' (Bloomsbury, 2018, p. 62) as the standard scholarly reference for the legend.

Also Known As

• Boto cor-de-rosa (Portuguese, Brazilian Amazon)
• Boto (Portuguese, Brazilian Amazon)
• Bufeo colorado (Spanish, Peruvian and Colombian Amazon)

Etymology

Origin:

Portuguese 'encantado', past participle of 'encantar' ('to enchant'), used in Brazilian Amazonian Portuguese as a noun for an enchanted being.

Meaning:

'Encantado' literally means 'enchanted one'; 'boto cor-de-rosa' means 'pink boto', the dolphin's mythic aspect.

First Use:

Long-standing oral tradition in Amazonian Brazil; documented in 19th- and 20th-century Brazilian folklore studies.

Timeline

• Pre-contact — Tupi-Guarani river-spirit traditions establish the conceptual basis for boto-as-shapeshifter narratives (Indigenous baseline of the legend)
• 1947-01-01 — Luís da Câmara Cascudo's 'Geografia dos Mitos Brasileiros' (1947) systematizes the figure within Brazilian folklore (Major 20th-century scholarly treatment)
• 2018-01-01 — Juliette Wood's 'Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore' (Bloomsbury, 2018) summarizes the boto cor-de-rosa legend in English-language reference literature (Standard contemporary English-language reference)

Sightings & Evidence

Cultural Significance

River dolphins are addressed as 'boto', not as 'dolphins', and are not to be killed or eaten; eye contact with a boto at a festival is to be avoided.

Related Phenomena

• Boto (Amazon river dolphin) — The biological species (Inia geoffrensis) on which the legend is grounded.
• Selkie — Scottish folkloric seal-people who shift between animal and human form; structurally similar to the Encantado.
• Yacumama — Other Amazonian water-spirit tradition.
• Kelpie — Scottish water-horse shapeshifter; comparable role as a seducer and drowner.

Tags

Sources

• Boto — Wikipedia
• Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day — Bloomsbury Publishing, London
• Geografia dos Mitos Brasileiros — José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro