Folklore and the Chupacabra myth:
What made the legends of the goat sucker? What was the real-life inspiration that planted the seed in our minds that this chupacabra was a creature to be feared?
Myth, reality, or both?
As with any folklore, these tales of a creature preying on livestock come from the folk groups desire to tell a good story and have an underlying base in reality.
Research into the myth: Benjamin Radford investigates the many stories of the chupacabra.
Starting in 1995, the legends of this creature have been popping up from Nicaragua to Spain to Florida. This creature leaves a trail of dead livestock where it is seen, the myth growing with its victims in these locations.
As Radford made his rounds to collect the stories of el chupacabra, there was no consistency. Many witnesses but no true concrete creature, only livestock dead and a frightening creature of different forms were recalled. The popularity in pop-culture has brought it onto film in the form of a Scooby-Doo movie, regardless of where or how much is based on fact, it is a popular cryptid.
Radford investigates the origins in Puerto Rico and connects the first sighting with a newly released movie with a creature that fits the description of the chupacabra. He mentions that this has happened several times when movies have been released. I myself was convinced of aliens in the backyard after watching Signs.
In his publication "Mistaken Memories of Vampires", Radford explores the other potential beginnings of the chupacabra as well a discussing the pseudo-myths that have been created by others as a result of the popularity of the beast.
One thing to consider with all of this research that Radford and others do, does it matter where a myth starts once it has been adopted into a culture and creates its own folklore? Don't we enjoy these cryptozoological beings even if they are made up? Will people stop searching for them or making shows about them?
We enjoy myths and folklore as sources of entertainment and part of our heritage, and so the chupacabra too becomes part of that.
Robert Sheaffer's 2001 publication explores the "conspiracy" of the chupacabra:
This 2001 article goes over the rash of sightings in different South American countries of the chupacabra, and even accusations that there was a cover-up to deny the existence of the creature. There was a suggestion that the animal was an alien pet.
This narrative folklore is a great example of the different stories and ideas that can be made upon one subject - such as the chupacabra- that people create out of an idea or an image in their mind. This myth, as it is discussed in Sheaffer's article was also connected to the large folklore of aliens.
The beginning of a new tradition:
Since the first stories of the chupacabra began around 1995, according to Radford's publication, it is still developing its own traditions as far as it's concerned in a folklorist's perspective (Sims & Stevens, pg. 70). A tradition starts with lore and process (Sims & Stephens pg. 70), and had since been identified as a part of a community and a myth on many communities.