It was highly unlikely, but it could be true. The imposing statue of a winged, muscular man with a goat’s head and legs dominated the façade, capping the perimeter wall — at least according to the photos circulating on social media. A sprawling urban conglomerate like Mexico City and its surroundings — which shelters a handful of altars to Santa Muerte, some of them truly colossal, including the one on López Portillo Avenue in Tultitlán — could easily accommodate a statue of Baphomet, the old idol of occultism, the satanic goat. Even if it were in the wealthy Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood, once an emblem of orderly development. In this eclectic, layered city of contrasts, logic rarely applies, least of all when it comes to urban life.
There were elements that, a priori, deflated suspicions about the nonexistence of the Baphomet statue — and they weren’t the most obvious. In the age of artificial intelligence, the enormous horns on a gloomy figure mounted on an otherwise ordinary façade pointed to fakery. But one of the accompanying images fed the opposite idea. The statue’s appearance, a horror-story account declared — the source of the original post — had angered residents to the point that they’d hung up signs demanding respect and asking for it to be removed. In a widely shared photo of one such sign, the irritation showed in the handwriting and the sharp sans-serif font. The adhesive tape that attached the message to some bars was even visible.
At 12.13 p.m. on Tuesday, Iglesia street at the entrance to El Pedregal looked calm and sunny. One of the social media reactions to the statue’s appearance read: “There’s a Legionaries house one block away HAHAHAHAHA.” The comment referred to a house belonging to the Legionaries of Christ, the Catholic congregation whose founder left a damaging legacy for Mexican society. It wasn’t clear how the user inferred the location, but it was worth checking. There is a Legionaries house, Regnum Christi, on Iglesia street. Father Esteban was there just after noon. “Yes, I’ve read the news, but I had no idea about that,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen a Halloween decoration become news, because that’s what it must be,” he noted.
It would have been the height of irony if, on Iglesia street a block from a Legionaries of Christ house, a resident had decided to pay tribute to good old Beelzebub. Although perhaps it would have been a legitimate way to criticize the organization’s past. In any case, Father Esteban is somewhat off as concerns Halloween decorations. Every year, Mexico puts together a fine collection of extravagant costumes, decorations, and other Day of the Dead trinkets — installations that would make Baphomet tremble, including displays simulating clandestine graves, kidnapped people stuffed into car trunks, and drug trafficker masks. Amazon even sells bagged fake corpses — “a perfect gift for your friends and neighbors.”
A video accompanying the photos of the statue showed a stretch of Bulevar de La Luz, at the southern edge of El Pedregal, several miles from Iglesia street. Although the video did not show the statue, its inclusion alongside the photos suggested a possible location. On the dried lava of the Xitle volcano, modernity has arrived in the form of sushi restaurants. In the video you can see a stretch of the boulevard wall with part of one restaurant’s name screen-printed on it. After 1.00 p.m., parking attendants were having a good day thanks to a line of pickup trucks running back and forth. “It really is the devil!” one said when he saw the photo. He shouted so loudly another came over. “Oh, it’s just around the corner; we went this morning to take a picture, but it wasn’t there anymore,” he said.
The second parking attendant pointed to a house covered with large stickers — notices of suspension of activities from the local government. When someone starts work without a permit in Mexico City, or opens a bar or sells alcohol without a license, inspectors arrive and post those stickers. Nothing can be moved there. But it didn’t matter: the house the attendant described bore no resemblance to the one in the photos. Right next door is a preschool. The security guard and a woman staffing the gate at lunchtime knew about the case and suggested it might be on a private street. Jardines del Pedregal, separatist in spirit, was built more than 70 years ago as a gated neighborhood. The city later annexed it by force, but afterwards some streets installed barriers at their entrances.
If Baphomet is on one of those streets, its location seems unclear. Maybe it was just a joke, the security guard and the woman remarked. “Or maybe not,” she said, “because they do do things like that.” There is no certainty regarding the existence of the statue of the human goat in El Pedregal. The Encyclopedia Britannica states that its name stems from a misunderstanding. A Flemish nobleman who took part in the Crusades in the 11th century mistakenly confused the name of the prophet of Islam upon his return. Instead of Muhammad, he said what he said. Centuries later, that ancient fear from the Crusades took the form of a goat-like figure, later adopted as a satanic goat. Perhaps its appearance now is the same thing — a misunderstanding.
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