''La Llorona'' (; "The Weeping Woman" or "The Wailer") is a
Hispanic-American
Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spanish and/or Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include all Americans who identify as ...
mythical
vengeful ghost who is said to roam near
bodies of water mourning her children whom she drowned.
Origins
Early colonial times provided evidence that the lore is pre-Hispanic, originating in the central highlands. However, La ''Llorona'' is most commonly associated with the colonial era and the dynamic between Spanish ''
conquistador
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, ...
es'' and indigenous women. The most common lore about La ''Llorona'' includes her initially being an Indigenous woman who murdered her own children, which she bore from a wealthy Spaniard, after he abandoned her. The villainous qualities of La ''Llorona'', including
infanticide
Infanticide (or infant homicide) is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose is the prevention of resou ...
and the murdering of one's own blood is assumed to be connected to the narrative surrounding
Doña Marina, also known as La ''Malinche'', or Maltinzin in her original nomenclature. Today, the lore of La ''Llorona'' is well known in Mexico and the Southwestern United States.
The earliest documentation of La Llorona is traced back to 1550 in Mexico City. But there are theories about her story being connected to specific Aztec mythological creation stories. "The Hungry Woman" includes a wailing woman constantly crying for food, which has been compared to La Llorona's signature nocturnal wailing for her children. The motherly nature of La Llorona's tragedy has been compared to
Chihuacoatl, an Aztec goddess deity of motherhood. Her seeking of children to keep for herself is significantly compared to
Coatlicue, known as "Our Lady Mother" or
Tonantsi (who's also comparable to the
Virgen de Guadalupe, another significant mother figure in Mexican-culture), also a monster that devours filth or sin.
The legend of La Llorona is traditionally told throughout
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...
,
Central America
Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...
and northern
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...
.
is sometimes conflated with ,
the
Nahua woman who served as ' interpreter and also bore his son. is considered both the mother of the modern Mexican people and a symbol of national treachery for her role in aiding the Spanish.
Stories of weeping female phantoms are common in the folklore of both
Iberian and
Amerindian cultures. Scholars have pointed out similarities between and the of
Aztec mythology
Aztec mythology is the body or collection of myths of the Aztec civilization of Central Mexico. The Aztecs were Nahuatl-speaking groups living in central Mexico and much of their mythology is similar to that of other Mesoamerican cultures. Accor ...
, as well as
Eve and
Lilith of
Hebrew mythology. Author
Ben Radford's investigation into the legend of , published in ''
Mysterious New Mexico'', found common elements of the story in a German folktale dating from 1486. also bears a resemblance to the ancient
Greek tale of the
demigoddess
Lamia, in which
Hera
In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; grc-gre, Ἥρα, Hḗrā; grc, Ἥρη, Hḗrē, label=none in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she ...
,
Zeus
Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label= genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label= genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek relig ...
' wife, learned of his affair with Lamia and killed all the children Lamia had with Zeus. Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children, Lamia kills other women's children.
The
Florentine Codex is an important text that originated in late Mexico in 1519, a quote from which is, "The sixth omen was that many times a woman would be heard going along weeping and shouting. She cried out loudly at night, saying, "Oh my children, we are about to go forever." Sometimes she said, "Oh my children, where am I to take you?"
While the roots of the legend appear to be pre-Hispanic,
the earliest published reference to the legend is a 19th-century sonnet by Mexican poet
Manuel Carpio
Manuel Elogio Carpio Hernández (March 1, 1791 – February 11, 1860) was a Mexican poet, theologian, physician, and politician. Much of his poetry was religious or historical, with an inspiration for his poetry deriving from the Bible. He was ...
. The poem makes no reference to infanticide, rather is identified as the ghost of a woman named Rosalia who was murdered by her husband.
Regional versions
The legend has a wide variety of details and versions. In a typical version of the legend, a beautiful woman named María marries a rich ''
ranch
A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most ofte ...
ero /
conquistador
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, ...
'' to whom she bears two children. One day, María sees her husband with another woman and in a fit of blind rage, she drowns their children in a river, which she immediately regrets. Unable to save them and consumed by guilt, she drowns herself as well but is unable to enter the
afterlife
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving es ...
, forced to be in
purgatory
Purgatory (, borrowed into English via Anglo-Norman and Old French) is, according to the belief of some Christian denominations (mostly Catholic), an intermediate state after physical death for expiatory purification. The process of purgatory ...
and roam this earth until she finds her children.
In another version of the story, her children are
illegitimate, and she drowns them so that their father cannot take them away to be raised by his new wife. Recurring themes in variations on the myth include a white, wet dress, nocturnal wailing, and an association with water.
Mexico
The legend of is deeply rooted in Mexican popular culture. Her story is told to children to encourage them not to wander off in the dark and near bodies of
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...
such as rivers and lakes alone. Her spirit is often evoked in artwork, such as that of
Alejandro Colunga Alejandro Colunga Marín is a Mexican artist, painter and sculptor.
Early life
He was born in Guadalajara on 11 December 1948 and studied architecture between 1967 and 1971 and music and hospitality in 1971–1973 at Conservatorio del Estado ...
. is a yearly waterfront theatrical performance of the legend of set in the
canal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface f ...
s of the
Xochimilco borough of Mexico City, which was established in 1993 to coincide with the
Day of the Dead.
She can be seen in most parts of Mexico and children are typically warned to not go near rivers or lakes at night. There is a legend that if you hear her cries being distant it means she's close, and if they seem close that she's far. She usually has a loud cry kind of like a coyote/owl and typically screams " Ay mis hijos " meaning "oh my children".
Guatemala
According to the local legend, in
Guatemala City
Guatemala City ( es, Ciudad de Guatemala), known locally as Guatemala or Guate, is the capital and largest city of Guatemala, and the most populous urban area in Central America. The city is located in the south-central part of the country, ne ...
lived a woman who had an affair with a lover. She became pregnant and gave birth to a child named Juan de la Cruz who she drowned so her husband would not know. The woman was condemned in the afterlife to search for her murdered son in every place where there's a pool of water. She does that by crying out for himhence her
moniker of the Wailing Woman (). It is a popular scary legend that in one iteration or another has been told to generations of children. The terrifying cry of "Oh, my children!!" (Ay mis hijos!!) is well known due to the story. Additionally, one peculiar detail is that when a person hears the cry from afar means that the ghost is nearby, but if the cry is heard nearby, it means the ghost is afar. Someone unlucky enough to face the specter is "won over" to the afterlife, never to be seen again.
United States
In the
Southwestern United States, the story of is told to scare children into good behavior, sometimes specifically to deter children from playing near dangerous water. Also told to them is that her cries are heard as she walks around the street or near bodies of water to scare children from wandering around, resembling the stories of ''El Cucuy''. In
Chumash mythology indigenous to Southern California, is linked to the , a mythological creature with a cry similar to that of a newborn baby.\
People have said they've have experience seeing ''La Llorona'' in southern parts of The United State such as Texas, Arizona, California and New Mexico. Mainly areas that used to be part of Mexico.
Venezuela
The tale of ''La Llorona'' is set in the
Venezuelan Llanos
The Venezuelan Llanos (Spanish: ''Llanos Venezolanos'') also simply known as Los Llanos (English: ''the Plains'') in Venezuela, is a natural region that consists of a very large, flat central depression of approximately 243,774 km2 of extens ...
during the colonial period. ''La Llorona'' is said to be the spirit of a woman that died of sorrow after her children were killed, either by herself or by her family.
Families traditionally place wooden crosses above their doors to ward off such spirits.
Other mythologies
In
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...
, the modern
Rusalka
In Slavic folklore, the rusalka (plural: rusalky/rusalki; ; pl, rusałka}) is a typically feminine entity, often malicious toward mankind and frequently associated with water, with counterparts in other parts of Europe, such as the French Mel ...
is a type of
water spirit in
Slavic mythology
Slavic mythology or Slavic religion is the religious beliefs, myths, and ritual practices of the Slavs before Christianisation, which occurred at various stages between the 8th and the 13th century. The South Slavs, who likely settled in the Bal ...
. They come to be after a woman drowns due to suicide or murder, especially if they had an unwanted pregnancy. Then they must stay in this world for a period of time.
In popular culture
Film
The story of first appeared on film in 1933's ''
La Llorona'', filmed in Mexico.
René Cardona
René Cardona (October 8, 1905 in Havana, Cuba – April 25, 1988, in Mexico City) was a director, actor, producer, screenwriter, and film editor in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.
Biography
René Cardona was born in Havana, Cuba, on Oc ...
's 1960 film ''
La Llorona'' was also shot in Mexico, as was the 1963 horror film, ''
The Curse of the Crying Woman
''The Curse of the Crying Woman'' (Spanish: '' La maldición de la llorona'') is a 1961 Mexican horror film (released in 1963), directed by Rafael Baledón. The film is about Amelia and Jaime, a married couple who travel to an old country house ow ...
'' directed by
Rafael Baledón
Rafael Baledón Cárdenas (25 November 1919 – 6 May 1994) was a Mexican actor, director, screenwriter, and producer of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema
The Golden Age of Mexican cinema ( es, Época de Oro del Cine Mexicano) is a period in t ...
.
The 2008 Mexican horror film ''
Kilometer 31'' is inspired by the legend of . Additionally the early 2000s saw a spate of low-budget movies based on , including:
*The River: The Legend of La Llorona
*Revenge of La Llorona
*The Wailer: La Llorona
*The Curse of La Llorona
is the primary antagonist in the 2007 movie ''
J-ok'el
''J-ok'el'' is a 2007 Mexican supernatural horror film directed by Benjamin Williams. This film was Williams' debut.
Plot
An American man travels to a small town in Chiapas, Mexico called San Cristobal de las Casas, to help his mother when he ...
''. In the 2011 Mexican animated film ''
La Leyenda de la Llorona'', she is portrayed as a more sympathetic character, whose children die in an accident rather than at their mother's hands.
In the 2017
Pixar film ''
Coco'', "
La Llorona", the Mexican folk song popularized by
Andres Henestrosa in 1941
is sung by
Alanna Ubach in her role as Mamá Imelda, joined by Antonio Sol as the singing voice of Ernesto de la Cruz.
In July 2019,
James Wan,
Gary Dauberman
Gary Dauberman is an American screenwriter and director. He is known for writing The Conjuring Universe horror films '' Annabelle'' (2014), '' Annabelle: Creation'' (2017), '' The Nun'' (2018), and ''Annabelle Comes Home'' (2019). He made his dir ...
and Emilie Gladstone produced a film titled ''
The Curse of La Llorona
''The Curse of La Llorona'' (also known as ''The Curse of the Weeping Woman'' in some markets) is a 2019 American supernatural horror film directed by Michael Chaves, in his feature directorial debut, and written by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias ...
'' for
Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. Pictures is an American film production and distribution company of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group division of Warner Bros. Entertainment (both ultimately owned by Warner Bros. Discovery). The studio is the flagship producer of li ...
. The film was directed by
Michael Chaves
Michael Chaves (born November 3, 1984) is an American filmmaker and visual effects artist, best known for his work on the miniseries '' Chase Champion'' and the theatrical films ''The Curse of La Llorona'', '' The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me ...
and stars
Linda Cardellini
Linda Edna Cardellini (born June 25, 1975) is an American actress. In television, she is known for her leading roles in the teen drama '' Freaks and Geeks'' (1999–2000), the medical drama '' ER'' (2003–09), the drama thriller '' Bloodline'' ...
,
Raymond Cruz
Raymond Cruz (born July 9, 1961) is an American actor, best known for his starring role as Detective Julio Sanchez in the series ''The Closer'' and its spinoff '' Major Crimes'', as well as his recurring role as drug lord Tuco Salamanca in ...
,
Patricia Velasquez
Patricia is a female given name of Latin origin. Derived from the Latin word '' patrician'', meaning "noble"; it is the feminine form of the masculine given name Patrick. The name Patricia was the second most common female name in the United S ...
and Marisol Ramirez as La Llorona.
Also in 2019,
Jayro Bustamante directed the Guatemalan film ''
La Llorona'', starring
María Mercedes Coroy
María Mercedes Coroy (born September 3, 1994) is a Guatemalan actress of Kaqchikel Maya descent. She is known for her roles in ''Ixcanul'', ''La Llorona'', ''Bel Canto'', ''Malinche'', and '' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever''.
Early life
Coro ...
, which screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the
2019 Toronto International Film Festival
The 44th annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 5 to 15 September 2019. The opening gala was the documentary film '' Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band'', directed by Daniel Roher, and the festival closed with a ...
.
''The Legend of La Llorona'' was a film released in January 2022 and stars
Danny Trejo,
Autumn Reeser, and
Antonio Cupo
Antonio Cupo (born January 10, 1978) is a Canadian film and television actor.
Early life
Born in Vancouver on January 10, 1978, into a family of Italian immigrants who arrived in Canada in 1968, Antonio Cupo is the youngest of three children. H ...
.
Theater
Mexican playwright
Josefina López wrote "Unconquered Spirits", which uses the myth of as a plot device. The play premiered at
California State University, Northridge
California State University, Northridge (CSUN or Cal State Northridge) is a public university in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. With a total enrollment of 38,551 students (as of Fall 2021), it has the second largest un ...
's Little Theatre in 1995.
Literature
Nancy Farmer's 2002
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
novel, ''
The House of the Scorpion
''The House of the Scorpion'' is a 2002 science fiction young adult novel by Nancy Farmer. It is set in the future and mostly takes place in Opium, a country which separates Aztlán (formerly Mexico) and the United States. The main character Matteo ...
'' includes references to .
The legend of is discussed in
Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz is a Puerto Rican fiction writer, essayist, journalist, cultural critic, and professor. She is the author of ''Ordinary Girls'', which received a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, was a Lambda Literary A ...
's 2019 memoir, ''Ordinary Girls'':
The novel ''Paola Santiago and the River of Tears'', the first part of a young adult trilogy by Tehlor Kay Mejia, is based on the legend of La Llorona. Also La Llorona was portrayed by a story, by the TV show called the Grimm.
Music
"
La Llorona" is a Mexican folk song popularized by
Andres Henestrosa in 1941.
It has since been covered by various musicians, including
Chavela Vargas,
Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (; born January 9, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist. Her contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest and social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing more ...
, and
Lila Downs.
North American singer-songwriter
Lhasa de Sela's debut album ''
La Llorona'' (1997) explored the dark mysteries of Latin folklore. She combined a variety of musical genres including
klezmer
Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...
,
gypsy jazz and Mexican folk music, all in the Spanish language. The album was certified Platinum in Canada, and it earned her a Canadian
Juno Award for Best Global Artist in 1998.
Manic Hispanic
Manic Hispanic is an American Chicano punk rock band from Orange County and Los Angeles, California, United States. They are a comedy act that plays cover versions of punk rock "standards" by slightly renaming songs and adjusting lyrics with hum ...
, a rock band from Los Angeles, California, have a song titled "She Turned Into Llorona" on their 2003 album ''Mijo Goes To Jr. College''.
Television
is an antagonist in the TV series ''
Supernatural
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
'', portrayed by Sarah Shahi in the
pilot episode and by Shanae Tomasevich in "Moriah" and season 15.
is an antagonist in
a 2012 second-season episode of the TV series ''
Grimm''.
appears in the ''
Victor and Valentino'' episode "The Lonely Haunts 3: La Llorona" voiced by
Vanessa Marshall
Vanessa Marshall (born October 19, 1969 in Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American voice and television actress who is most active in films, cartoons and video games. She is the daughter of actress Joan Van Ark and reporter John Marshall. ...
. Contrary to the usual depictions, this version of La Llorona is good and simply lonely and claims to have had twenty kids who had all grown up and left her; implying that she suffers from
Empty nest syndrome.
appears in the ''
Craig of the Creek
''Craig of the Creek'' is an American animated television series created by Matt Burnett and Ben Levin for Cartoon Network. The show's pilot episode debuted directly on the official app on December 1, 2017. The series premiered online on February ...
'' episode "The Legend of the Library" voiced by Carla Tassara. Craig and the Stump Kids visit their friend Stacks at the local library to get out of the rain. When the power goes out and their fellow Creek Kids begin disappearing, Stacks believes that La Llorona is to blame. In the end, it is revealed that the "ghost" was actually Lorraine, the substitute librarian who is very serious about her job. She makes the kids promise to take good care of the library along with a warning, showing a ghostly face at the same time. Whether or not Lorraine was in fact La Llorona or the face was imagined is left ambiguous.
appears in the ''
Riverdale (2017 TV series)
''Riverdale'' (also known as ''Rivervale'') is an American supernatural horror crime drama television series based on the characters of Archie Comics. The series was adapted for The CW by Archie Comics' chief creative officer Roberto Agu ...
'' episode "Chapter 97: Ghost Stories". The characters tell ghost stories about people related to them or the town that had died. La Llorona is one. She haunts Sweetwater River and she also manages to possess Toni and take Betty's unborn child away.
See also
References
Bibliography
*Perez, Domino Renee. (2008). ''There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture.'' Austin: U of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0292718128.
*Mathews, Holly F. 1992. The directive force of morality tales in a Mexican community. In ''Human motives and cultural models'', edited by R.G.D'Andrade and C. Strauss, 127–62. New York: Cambridge University Press.
*
*Ray John de Aragon, ''The Legend of La Llorona'', Sunstone Press, 2006. .
*Belinda Vasquez Garcia, ''The Witch Narratives Reincarnation'', Magic Prose Publishing, 2012.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Llorona, La
Mythology of the Americas
Mexican ghosts
Female legendary creatures
pt:A bela da meia-noite