La Llorona

According to folklore, La Llorona (pronounced "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, whose 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 the US' large Mexican-American communities), and to an extent the rest of the Americas.

The story

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, 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. 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 passersby in an attempt to replace her dead 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.

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!). 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. 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.

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. 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.

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 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."

The contemporary murderess Susan Smith, who drowned her children in a South Carolina pond, was likened in news reports to La Llorona.

See also

• Bloody Mary

External links

• La Llorona: several versions of the legend
• The New Mexican La Llorona
• Myths Over Miami - La Llorona and related legends among street children in south Florida
• From Llorona to Gritona: Coatlicue In Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros
• La Llorona mural at Chicago and Franklin, Minneapolis MN by the Last Chicano Artist, Jamie Longoria
• Haunted From Within Another movie based on the legend with a new spin.