La Gargola - Forrest Guthrie

I was walking down the beach and ran into the security guard Armondo. The soft spoken native to Mexico was always eager to share his knowledge of the land and people with the white tourists. He started the topic of the night by telling us about his brother Raul. According to Armondo, Raul was about as honest as Abe Lincoln. At the end of all of Armondo’s stories he ended with, “If you dont believe me, ask my brother, he never lies”.

After about a half hour the sun began to slowly disappear. This is when Armondo’s story truly began. He started by asking us, “have you ever seen a gargoyle?” We laughed as we told him about the big marble gargoyles on the tops of buildings in America. He looked at us as if we were talking about the Virgin Mary as a comic book character. To him La Gargola was much more than a Myth. We later found out that 18 years earlier Armondo experienced something that gives him every reason to believe in such things.

The two brothers had been playing in the fields while their father was tending the crops. Just as the sun came down they saw a giant, unidentifiable, winged figure, soaring towards them. At first glance it seemed to be an enormous hawk. As it got closer it appeared to have the shape of a human body. They say they could get a clear glimpse of the face but what they did was the face of an abused dog, covered in scars and dirt. Armondo could only point at a large beach umbrella when trying to explain the size of this creatures wingspan. It swept down towards them, as if it were trying to snatch them for dinner. It ended knocking over Raul and leaving him with a scar that he still claims was given to him by La Gargola.

To this day Armondo still searches for La Gargola soaring through the moonlit Mexican skyline. He still scares the tourists and shares his stories with them. His family still warns their children of the dangers of being out alone at night. Some natives try to justify what the people claim to have seen, but to this day it is something that can not be proven. They say it was just a freakishly large bird, or that the only time you see it is under the influence. Yet, there are still hundreds of myths that people like Armondo continue to preach about. It is part of who they are and what they represent. It is embedded in their culture and will remain their until it is proven that gargoyles don’t exist.