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Comprachicos (also comprapequeños) is a compound Spanish word meaning "child-buyers". The term refers to various groups in history and in myth who practised the art of changing the physical appearance of human beings by manipulating growing children, in a similar way to the horticultural method of bonsai or through deliberate mutilation. It can be also used in reference to any group or body who seek to alter the minds of children through calculated manipulation.
The use of the word is first found prolifically in the seventeenth century, referring to groups of gypsies who engaged in such practices to meet the lucrative demand for "freaks" throughout that century and the next, if not longer, that were required as objects of amusement in both fairs and the households of nobility in Europe.
The Comprachicos' "arts" included stunting children's growth, placing muzzles on their faces to deform them (it was from this practice that Alexander Dumas took his theme for The Man in the Iron Mask), slitting their eyes, dislocating their joints, and malforming their bones. It is reported that James II of England hired comprachicos to kidnap the heirs of families whose lines he wished to extinguish.
Sophisticated methods had also been reported in China for a number of centuries. Chinese methods included the manufacture of "animal children" where skin was removed gradually from infants and replaced with animal hide (to varying degrees of success and survival). Further to this, operations might be conducted on vocal cords to prevent speech and various contraptions were used to make the child walk on all fours. During the nineteenth century an American doctor named Macgowan recorded that another method of creating child-monsters in China was to deprive the children of light for several years so that their bones would become deformed. At the same time they were fed certain foods and drugs that utterly debilitated them. Macgowan mentioned a priest who subjected a kidnapped boy to this treatment and then displayed him to incredulous observers, claiming he was a religious deity. The child looked like wax, having been fed a diet consisting mostly of lard. He squatted with his palms together and was a driveling idiot. The monk, Macgowan added, was arrested but managed to escape. His temple was burned to the ground.
Victor Hugo's novel The Man Who Laughs is a classic horror story of a young aristocrat kidnapped and disfigured by his captors to display a permanent grin. In the novel, Hugo gives his own account of the work of the Comprachicos who would obtain children by sale or kidnap:
"In China, since time immemorial, they have achieved refinement in a special art and industry: the molding of a living man. One takes a child two or three years old, one puts him into a porcelain vase, more or less grotesque in shape, without cover or bottom, so that the head and feet protrude. In the daytime, one keeps this vase standing upright; at night, one lays it down, so that the child can sleep. Thus the child expands without growing, slowly filling the contours of the vase with his compressed flesh and twisted bones. This bottled development continues for several years. At a certain point, it becomes irreparable. When one judges that this has occurred and that the monster is made, one breaks the vase, the child comes out, and one has a man in the shape of a pot."
Modern References
Comprachicos has also been adopted as pejorative term used for bodies or groups who, from the point of view of the person using the term, are manipulating the minds and attitudes of children in a way that will cause permanent effect or damage. The term "The Comprachicos of the mind" was used in reference to educators by twentieth century philosopher Ayn Rand [1] (http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr005=vqt6kzx6s2.app7a&page=NewsArticle&id=6151&news_iv_ctrl=1069)
A hoax website claiming to do the equivalent with kittens, bonsaikitten.com, provoked outrage when it was published in 2001.
See also
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