Father Manuel Jesús Molina, whom we have mentioned in our post on the Fuegian Monkey or Yoshi, was a special character. He was born in Patagonia in Pichileufú, Río Negro in 1904. His father was of a Native American of Chono origin who had migrated from Chile to Argentina. Molina defined himself as a "waiteca" after the Guaiteca Islands in Chile.
When he was a child his family moved to Paso de Los Indios in Chubut. He became an orphan in 1912 and with his six brothers was sent to the Catholic home Nuestra Señora de los Dolores in Rawson, Chubut. He got the call and became a seminarian in 1923, working at the Salesian school in Fortín Mercedes where he worked at the local museum.
He studied on his own biology, entomology and social sciences. He earned a doctorate in theology in Turin, Italy, in 1932. He later taught Biology and Natural Sciences at the San Juan Bosco college of the Universidad de la Patagonia and had a Honoris Causa doctrorate in anthropology.
Starting in the mid 1940s, he was a priest in Santa Cruz, in Puerto Deseado, Río Gallegos, and Río Turbio. He was a teacher in Comodoro Rivadavia, Rawson, and Río Gallegos. During the 1950s and 60s he collected artifacts, and interviewed native people recording their myths and language.
Contemporary English travel writer Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) surely met Molina when he visited Patagonia, and in his book In Patagonia (1977), he created a fictional character after Molina, named Father Palacios.
He died in 1979.
Below is a plate in his book Patagónica published in Rome, Italy in 1976.
The Yosi in Rock Art
Molina wrote about these images in an article about the Yosi, published in Karukinka No. 1, 1972 (cited online: part 1, part 2):
"On a wall at Punta Gualichu of Lake Argentino, there are some paintings of humanoids, in a mauve faded color that could represent these fuegopithec. They are images completely different from the others of human hunters that can be seen in the different hunting scenes in the upper Pinturas River, or the dance scenes at Charcamac Gully.
In one of them it is sitting on its legs, as you could see the yóshil when it approached a fire to get warm, as seen by Pa:ka's grandmother: with its arms open as if making signs with one hand. In the others it can be seen in the clumsy position it adopted when it walked. That is how it was seen by the hunter who shot an arrow at it. What cannot be seen in these figures is the weapon that the Fuegian monkey used to attack or defend itself."
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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