“El Mundo Gira” is episode eleven of season four of The X-Files.
Various people are talking in Spanish and drinking when a woman tells them to be quiet and listen. She saw a terrible thing and they aren’t going to believe her. They’ll say it’s a fairy-tale, but she saw it with her own eyes.
At a migrant workers’ camp in the San Joaquim Valley in California, a truck has come to pick up labourers. The woman telling the story sees a man and a woman saying goodbye. After the first man has gone, a second comes over to chat to her. The first man was his brother and it seems both brothers like the woman, Maria. The older woman calls out to Maria that the goats are escaping. Maria, and the second man, Eladio, chase after the goats. The older woman, Flakita, gives Eladio a knowing look and says that two brothers and one woman are trouble.
After the two disappear over the rise, there’s a bright light in the sky, followed by yellow rain. Two of the escaped goats return. Flakita heads to look for Maria and finds her and a third goat on the ground, dead. Maria’s eyes and lips are missing, eaten away. Eladio is missing.
Scully is examining the goat and asks how long ago it happened. Three days. She wants to know why they’re looking at a dead goat given he brought her out here on the pretence of an unexplained death. Mulder explains that the death weas preceded by a Fortean even. A bright flash followed by a hot yellow rain from a cloudless sky. Other colours of rain have been seen. Yes, Fortean events have often been linked to alien encounters, such as the dead goat.
Scully asks if the victim died in the same manner. Mulder assumes so. No-one has examined the body. These are illegal immigrants, migrant farmworkers. No-one cares. He thought it would be important to talk to them before they migrated. Flakita, when found, thinks they are immigration police. They explain they want to know what happened to Maria Dorantes. She was killed by el chupacabras – the goatsucker.
Mulder explains that el chupacabras is a small grey creature with a big head and bulging black eyes. Which sounds suspiciously like a Grey. Flakita says el chupacabras ate the eyes out of Maria’s face. She didn’t see it but knows the truth. The man who was with Maria first, Soledad, says she’s a liar. Maria was killed by his brother because she loved Soledad. Scully is satisfied; two men, one woman, trouble. It’s a matter for the police. They don’t care, according to Mulder, and he doesn’t know who does. Scully cares. Mulder wants her to look at the body whilst he searches for Eladio.
Mulder speaks to an INS agent, Lozano. Eladio isn’t in police custody, so he decided to check with the INS. Who have a number of people, none of whom use their real name. Lozano thinks el chupacabras is a fantasy, made to help the migrants feel alive. Scully has got to the morgue and asks to look at Maria’s body. The coroner hasn’t got to Maria yet. When they open the body bag, the corpse is covered in fungus.
Mulder has found Eladio; the guards are avoiding him. When asked, Eladio says he fell to the ground and felt the hot rain. When he opened his eyes, he saw the dead goat, then Maria. She called him name once and died in his arms. He ran away. Eladio is being put in a bus, but none of the other migrants want him in the back, so he rides with the driver. Scully arrives at this point.
She explains that Eladio didn’t kill Maria; it was a massive fungal infection, one that is normally harmless, except to some with immune deficiencies. Scully assumes Maria was one of them. The aliens are the victims, not the villains. They then see the INS bus swerved off the road in front of them. The passengers from the back are running off. In the cab, the driver is dead.
Scully explains that the driver died of a massive fungal infection, a different one to the one that killed Maria. Scully doesn’t believe Eladio is responsible. Mulder is not so sure; he’s the only connection. The INS lacks the resources to find one man. Scully is going to speak to a mycologist as Lozano and Mulder look for Eladio.
Eladio is trying to get back to Mexico, but that needs money and he doesn’t have any. He’s also starting to look very sick. On the plus side, for him, he’s not dead. On the minus side, his brother wants to kill him, Scully’s mycologist discovers that the driver died from athlete’s foot; there’s an enzyme that causes rapid growth in fungi.
The title is a reference to a Mexican soap opera, as many of the elements of the story resemble those of a soap opera.