The article below was published in the daily newspaper El Norte, Chaco, Argentina, on February 25, 2004.
The woman who claimed to have been assaulted by the dwarfish entity known as the Pombero, was a patient in the 4 de Junio Hospital's Psychiatric Ward from early morning on Friday to Monday morning. During this time, physicians were unable to complete the evaluation of her mental condition, but they believe that she suffered hallucinations common to an hysteric attack.
However, there are doubts about who inflicted the blows to her face, leading experts to believe that it could all be a case of doemstic violence, and the possibility that doctors may ask law enforcement to investigate the case, has not been ruled out. It is worth noting that Mercedes Liliana Nievas caused a stir in Barrio Santa Teresita when she claimed having been attacked by a short, black, animal faced entity that beat her. Earlier, both the young woman's family and some neighbors reported that the roofs of their homes had been pelted with shards of brick.
When the police intervened, the woman was taken to Ward 8, victim of a nervous attack that caused hospital personnel to bind her hands and feet and administer powerful sedatives. "She left the hospital on Monday, because her family took her away. In other words, she wasn't released by physicians, because we advised her to stay longer in order to complete our findings," Dr. Ramiro Islas, head of the psychiatric unit, told NORTE.
"The evaluation was not completed, but all indications point to a hysteric attack. There are several types of hysteria, and hers was of the dissociative type, meaning that there is confabulation on her part," noted the physician.
Dr. Islas interviewed the patient on two different occasions, and says that she gave different versions each time. "The first time she said she'd fallen in the bathroom, but I didn't believe her because the injuries on her face seemed to be the product of a blow more than a fall. The second time she said it was a Pombero."
According to the psychiatrist, hallucinations of this sort are very common in hysteria cases "but what is not common is that the confabulation should involve a popular imaginary character such as the Pombero."
Finally, Islas believed that the hysteria attack could be the result "of a conflict that sometimes involves family, finances or critical situations which lead to the nervous breakdown." Consequently, there is the suspicion that domestic violence could be involved.
