The Legend of The Alligator man ( El

Hombre Caiman)
P R E SE NTADO P O R : PA ULA TO R R E S , NI CO LA S
G A LLE G O
The alligator man
EL Hombre Caiman” (The alligator man) is a legend from
the north coast of Colombia. The legend tells the story of
an alligator man, who was a storekeeper.
He fell in love with a young woman called Roque Lina,
the daughter of a rice seller. The father of the young
woman didn’t agree with their love, and he prohibited
the storekeeper to approach his daughter.
But opposite to a river, where Roque Lina had the habit
of bathing nude, there was a restaurant, where the
storekeeper was sitting down eating rice with coconut
and rum. One day, with desire of kissing her, and after
eating his rice, the man went in the river to search her
and turned into an alligator.
 They say that a long time ago there was a very womanizing fisherman who hoped to
spy on the silver women who bathed in the waters of the Magdalena River.
Anticipating that it could be discovered among the bushes, he moved to Alta Guajira
so that a sorcerer prepared a potion that would temporarily turn him into an alligator
so that the bathers would not suspect and be able to admire them at pleasure. The
sorcerer prepared two potions, a red one that made him an alligator, and a white one
that made him a man again.

The leyend Montenegro enjoyed his ingenuity for some time, but on one occasion, the friend who
threw the white potion could not accompany him. Instead it was another who, seeing
the alligator, was scared to believe it was true and dropped the white bottle with the
liquid that made him a man again. Before spilling completely, a few drops of the liquid
splashed only Saul's head, so the rest of his body was turned into an alligator. Since
then, it became the terror of women, who did not bathe again in the river.

The only person who dared to approach him later was his mother. Every night I visited
him in the river to comfort him and bring him his favorite food: cheese, cassava and
bread dipped in rum. After the death of his mother, (who died of sadness for not
having been able to find the sorcerer who had made the potions because he had
died), the Cayman Man, alone and with no one to take care of him, decided to let
himself be dragged to the sea by the River to Bocas de Ceniza, as the mouth of the
Magdalena River is known in the Caribbean Sea at the height of Barranquilla. Since
then, the fishermen of Bajo Magdalena, from Plato to Bocas de Ceniza, remain
pending to catch it in the river or hunt it in the swamps of the riverbanks.