La Llorona

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According to folklore, La Llorona (IPA: [la joˈɾona] - "lah yoh-ROH-nah", Spanish for "the crying woman"), sometimes called the Woman in White or the Weeping Woman is the ghost of a woman crying for her dead children. Her appearances are sometimes held to presage death. There is much variation in tales of La Llorona, which are popular in Mexico, the United States (especially in Mexican-American communities), and to an extent the rest of the Americas.


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[edit] The story

Virginia Zurí as "La Malinche" in the 1933 Mexican film La Llorona
Virginia Zurí as "La Malinche" in the 1933 Mexican film La Llorona

Many versions of La Llorona's origin exist. Some describe a beautiful young woman in Mexico or New Mexico, who married or was seduced by a local man, by whom she had several children. The woman is sometimes given a Christian name; Sofia, Linda, Laura, and María are sometimes used. The man leaves her, sometimes for another woman, sometimes for reasons of employment, and sometimes just to be away from La Llorona and her several children. At any rate, La Llorona chooses to murder her children, almost always by drowning, either to spare them a life of poverty, to free herself to seek another man, or for revenge against their absent or stray father.

The tales vary mostly in the several motives they give to the mother and father for the murder. The version popular in Las Cruces, New Mexico says that "La Llorona" drowned her children in the Rio Grande when she could no longer support them. On nights with a full moon, says the story, La Llorona can be heard crying near the river.

In south Texas, however, the story of La Llorona is that of a beautiful girl who attracts the attentions of a wealthy man's son though she is herself very poor. The lovers secretly marry and set up a household; they have several children. Unfortunately, a day comes when the young man's father announces that he has arranged a marriage for his son to a young woman within their social class (in many tellings, La Llorona is a Native American maiden and her man leaves her for a Spanish lady). The young man tells his secret wife that he must leave her and that he will never see her again. She is driven mad by anger and a broken heart, and takes their children to a river where she drowns them to spite her husband. When her husband finds out he and several townspeople go to find her, but she kills herself before they can apprehend her. She goes to Heaven and faces the judgement of God. God asks her, "Where are your children?" to which she replies, "I do not know." God asks her three times and she replies with the same answer. God then damns her to walk the earth to search for her children. According to this tale, it is wise to avoid La Llorona, as she is known for drowning passers-by in an attempt to replace her dead children.

Alternatively, right after she drowns her children, La Llorona realizes what she has done and, overwhelmed by grief and by guilt, she runs alongside the river trying to find her children, but never does, and she dies or disappears in her search for them.

Another popular version of the legend takes place sometime in 19th century. A beautiful young woman with two small children was living in the poorest section of Juarez, Mexico, the town across the border from El Paso. She was madly in love with a very rich man. He felt the same way about her, but he, having no interest in children, refused to marry her. So, late one night, the woman took her children to a bridge over the Rio Grande river. In the dead of the night, she heartlessly stabbed her children and threw in the river to drown. Still wearing her bloody nightgown, she went to her lover's home to show him the great lengths she had gone to be with him. The man, seeing her blood-streaked nightgown, was horrified and rejected her. Then, finally realizing the horrible mistake she had made, she ran back to the river screaming, crying, and tearing at her hair, desperately trying to save her children. But it was too late. The woman stabbed and drowned herself in the same river. The legend has it that as punishment for her unspeakable sins she was given the head of a horse, and was to wander the banks of the Rio Grande for all of eternity looking for her lost children.

In yet another Texas version of the story, La Llorona had several children from her first marriage. Her husband died and she was left lonely. Soon she met a suitor who swept her off her feet. He promised her a wonderful life together, but only if she agreed to get rid of her children. After much soul searching the woman decides to follow the man in a new life together and drowns her children in the Rio Grande river. After a few months the suitor grows tired of La Llorona and leaves her for another woman. Realizing that her selfish actions brought about the end of those who truly loved her, she dies in grief with her soul eternally looking for her long lost children.

In another variant, La Llorona is a naive but innocent woman forced into a shotgun wedding with the father of her child; in this case, it is La Llorona's father or her husband who kills the children. La Llorona attempts to stop the murders, and dies in the attempt.

Another version of the story of La Llorona is told in Mexico. According to this version, she lived in Tequila, Jalisco. She went to get her fortune told, and was told that she was going to die, and so were her children. That same night, while they were sleeping, a big storm hit their village, causing the river to overflow its banks. The house was swept away by the flood, and all of her children died. La Llorona went on a journey to find her children, following the river, but died without ever seeing them again.

In southern Mexico specifically the state of Guerrero, La Llorona was a prostitute. After having sex with the men, she would abort the children and throw them in the nearby river of Tecpan. After having done this for many years, she died and legend has it that God told her she would never enter Heaven until she brought him all the children she had killed. So God ordered his angels to dress her in a white dress and send her to find her children. So she wanders the rivers of the Earth looking for her drowned children.

Generally, La Llorona becomes a sort of banshee. Her restless spirit walks abroad at night, crying "¡O hijos mios!" or "¡Ay mis hijos!" (O my children!) if not "¿donde estan mis hijos?" (where are my children?) or "has visto a mis hijos?" (have you seen my children?), the later options and variants being used before it reveals its ghostly nature to the victim leading to the victims death. Those unlucky enough to see or hear her are marked for death themselves. Sometimes she is dressed all in white; other times, in black. She is weeping, and in some tellings her eyes are empty sockets and/or her mouth has a large, unsettling leer like that of a horse. The New Mexican La Llorona hunts after children; some say that she drowns them in the river.

The story also may change based on the location of the tellers. For example, the story told in a seaside town with no river may have the children drowning in the surf. In urban Southern California the rivers have often been lined in concrete and turned into flood control channels, and in local barrios La Llorona may be described as wandering the floor of the channels or the street and highway overpasses above them.

The Weeping Woman has also been said to roam around rivers in Honduras in Central America. Witnesses say she was last seen in the city of San Pedro Sula, where she drowned small children from a public school.

In Honduras la llorona is known as "La Ciguanabana" or "La Sucia" (The dirty one). The name Ciguanabana is made up of Cihuatl - Woman and Nahual - Spirit, spirit of a woman. One of the popular cries in Honduras is: "Toma mi teta que soy tu nana" (Drink my teat; For i am your mother).

In Peru the tales about the llorona are more popular among kids from the capital than other more endemic stories and place her in the southern beaches which are usual holiday destinations, but the northern beaches are sometimes included in the myth.

Typically, the legend serves as a cautionary tale on several levels. Hispanic parents will warn their children that both bad behavior and being outside after dark will be rewarded with a visit from the spirit. The tale also warned teenage girls not to be enticed by status, wealth, material goods, or by men making declarations of love, making declarations too good to be true. Some also believe that those who hear the screams of La Llorona are marked for death.

The legend has been taken to the silver screen many times. The latest version being J-ok'el: The Legend of La Llorona.

[edit] Comparisons to figures in other cultures

The most direct analogue with the La Llorona story is that of the Greek Medea, who likewise murdered her children after being abandoned by Jason, although Medea showed little remorse. Local Aztec folklore possibly influenced the legend; goddess Cihuacoatl or Coatlicue was said to have appeared shortly prior to the invasion of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, weeping for her lost children, an omen of the fall of the Aztec empire.

La Llorona is also sometimes identified with La Malinche, the Native American woman who served as Cortés' interpreter and who some say betrayed Mexico to the Spanish conquistadors. In one folk story of La Malinche, she becomes Cortés' mistress and bears him a child, only to be abandoned so that he could marry an aristocratic Spanish lady (though little evidence exists that La Malinche killed her children). Aztec pride drove La Malinche to acts of vengeance. In this context, the tale compares the Spanish invasion of Mexico and the demise of indigenous culture after the conquest with La Llorona's loss.

Folklore from wider Europe has also added to the legend. Tales of banshees and other female spirits whose wails presage death have influenced the story, and La Llorona's association with pools and rivers links her with water-nymphs like the Nix, Lorelei, the Sirens and Melusine. European ghost lore is full of hauntings by women clad in white, whose restless spirits seek vengeance for some wrong they have suffered or who are damned to a twilight existence reliving the tragedy of their lives. There are also similarities with the Biblical Massacre of the Innocents, which the Gospel of Matthew likens to "Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted.

[edit] Modern woman compared to La Llorona

Recently, convicted murderer Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons after being rejected by a male suitor, was compared to La Llorona in a cartoon which appeared in Time Magazine[1]. In her essay,"The Woman Who Loved Water," Kathleen Alcalá compares murderer Andrea Yates to the La Llorona story and tradition. The essay appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Creative Nonfiction.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1] Susan Smith as La Llorona from TIME Magazine
  2. ^ Creative Nonfiction Issue #23 Mexican Voices: Chrónica de Chrónicas

[edit] See also

Portal:Folklore
 Folklore Portal

[edit] External links

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