The Alicanto is a mythological nocturnal

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

of the desert of

Atacama The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in the w ...

, pertaining to

Chilean mythology Chilean mythology includes the mythology, beliefs and folklore of the Chilean people. Evolution Chilean mythology covers of a large collection of myths and legends from the beliefs of Chile's indigenous groups (Mapuche, Tehuelche, Changos, Dia ...

Legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...

says that the alicanto's wings shine at night with beautiful, metallic colors, and their eyes emit strange lights. The color of the wings may indicate the type of ore it eats, golden if from a gold mine and silvery if from a silver mine. Some descriptions also portray the color of the wings as copper-green. The bird runs on the ground and can't fly because of the weight of the ore it eats, this means that it runs faster if it hasn't eaten recently. According to legend, a miner that follows an alicanto without being noticed by the bird can find rich mineral outcrops or treasures such as an entierro. But if the Alicanto discovers that it's being followed it will turn off the shining of its wings, and scuttle away in the darkness of the night. Also, if the miner is not of "good heart" the alicanto will guide the miner off a cliff. Accordingly, the miner will not be able to see the cliff in time because of the "intensity of the darkness". It is said that it was an alicanto that guided

Juan Godoy Juan Godoy (1800 – 1842) was a Chilean farmer and miner who in 1832 discovered an outcrop (''reventón'') of silver south of Copiapó in Chañarcillo sparking the Chilean silver rush. Villalobos, Sergio; Silva, Osvaldo; Silva Fernando and ...

to the rich silver outcrops of

Chañarcillo Chañarcillo is a town and mine in the Atacama Desert of Copiapó Province, Atacama Region, Chile, located near Vallenar and 60 km from Copiapó. It is noted for its silver mining. The town grew up after the Chañarcillo silver mine was discovere ...

on May 16, 1832, sparking the

Chilean silver rush Between 1830 and 1850 Chilean silver mining grew at an unprecedented pace which transformed mining into one of the country's principal sources of wealth. The rush caused rapid demographic, infrastructural, and economic expansion in the semi-arid ...

. The account of the Alicanto of folklorist Julio Vicuña Cifuentes is mentioned in the ''

Book of Imaginary Beings The ''Book of Imaginary Beings'' was written by Jorge Luis Borges with Margarita Guerrero and published in 1957 under the original Spanish title ''Manual de zoología fantástica''. The subsequent English version contains descriptions of 120 myt ...

'' in the chapter "Fauna of Chile".

References

* Chilean mythology Legendary birds Spanish-language South American legendary creatures Mining folklore {{SouthAm-myth-stub