In every little Central American child’s nightmare’s there lives one person and she is known as La Llorona. The story goes that one day a young woman named Maria married a rich man and they had the happiest life together having 2 children. But the husband began coming later and later home until one day Maria caught the husband cheating on her. In all her rage she decided that the way to truly get back at her husband was to drown their two children, which she did in a river she lived by. But soon after she regretted what she had done and she began crying and wailing lamenting for her children she then decided to also drown herself, leading to her death.Before drowning herself she cursed, now, the legend says, she floats over and near bodies of water in her white, funereal gown, forever weeping as she searches for her lost children, exclaiming ” Ay Mis Hijos”, oh my children. Whenever she sees misbehaved children she will take them with her. This story has caused never ending grief for latin children all over the world terrified of La Llorona coming after them.
The history of La Llorona is not entirely certain but through research and looking into ancient Aztec stories and mythology we are able to see a very similar being also appear. This time in the form of the Goddess Cihuacoatl, a being who most scholars agreed was a fertilizity godess to the Aztecs. But she was also known for participating in infanticide and there are stories where it came to pass that the demon that in the form of a woman walked and appeared, by day and by night, and was called Cihuacoatl, ate a small boy, who was in his cradle in the town of Azcapotzalco. This very story/myth would then be heard by the conquistadors with a few aspects added in as well such as the. Such as there are versions of the story where it was actually an indigenous woman who fell in love with a rich Spaniard man in Mexico. Then there is the overtly Christian/Catholic aspects added to the original story. Including the fact that the original woman went to heaven and was rejected due to her crime, or God himself punished her to always be looking for her children in order to get into heaven. One of the reasons also we see this influence is that José Maria León y Domínguez, a Jesuit academic from Cadiz, published a story about a weeping female ghost called “La Llorona” in 1866. He presented it as a tale he heard from an old man in the town of Rota, Spain.
One interesting aspect about La Llorona and her history is that there are many cases of people reporting to have seen her all over areas influenced by latin culture. Although the original story is that she only haunted by one river in Mexico she has been reported in several areas including in the Southwest, Arizona claim they have seen La Llorona or the weeping woman. People have spotted her along the Rio de Flag in Flagstaff all the way down to the San Pedro River near Tucson. People love to tell their stories of having seen her, there are countless stories of people walking alone at dark seeing or, or in a quiet town at night hearing her yelling for her children.This also isn’t an occurance that is going away either as recent as 2019 during the filming of “La llorona actress Patricia Vazquez and the crew spoke about how during the filming of the movie “Half the crew actually does believe the house that we shot in was haunted, and there might have been something to that”. We see La Llorona appears in stories, books, movies(just in the last few years we saw the release of two movies in English. Also a very famous Mexican folkoric song titiled “La Llorona” even appeared in the hit pixar movie Coco.
The story of la Llorona is one of sadness, of a mother losing her children in a fit of rage and having to then deal with the never-ending guilt of what she has done. It is a story teaching Hispanic children to always listen to their parents and not cause problems, its effectiveness in actually helping children behave or just be super spooked is another entry for another time.
This is a CIMA Law Group blog entry. CIMA Law Group is located in Arizona and specializes in Immigration Law, Criminal Defense, Personal Injury, and Government Relations. If you live in Arizona and need legal assistance CIMA Law Group can help.
CIMA Law Group Blog 