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La Llorona
The Weeping Ghost of Latin America's Past
La Llorona’s story is one I refuse to take seriously on its face.
It goes like this: long ago, a beautiful Mexican1 There’s a hundred different variations of this legend all across Latin America – this entry mainly deals with the Mexican variant, as it’s pretty much the most influential. wife discovered, in the grand tradition of faithful women, that her husband had secretly been preparing his application to the Douchebag Club, chiefly listing as proof the fact he was cheating on her with a younger woman. Driven mad with grief at being abandoned and hellbent on revenging herself on her now-ex-husband, the wife drowned the children they’d had together. Once finished with the now-ex-children, she came to her senses, went yet madder with grief, and promptly drowned herself. The gatekeepers to the afterlife, unimpressed by her ignominious end, refused to seat her until her entire party was present — that is, until she found her children. To this day, she wanders the earth, weeping for her lost offspring. Her daily routine involves waiting til night, kidnapping wandering children, realizing they are not her kids (hey, it’s hard to see at night), and then drowning the hapless abducted youngsters.
There’s endless variations on this particular “bitches be crazy” legend. There’s the one where the guy she wants to marry doesn’t like her kids, so she kills them so he’ll like her. There’s the one where the man’s rich, she’s poor, and he demands she kill her kids before he’ll marry her. There’s the one where she’s Libyan. There’s the one where she’s just crying over an empty milk carton. There’s the one where she’s sent to the afterlife by two goofy brothers who go on to die hundreds of times. There’s the one where she’s a bag of coffee. There’s the one where she’s a thong2 A fact which inspired one of the best academic footnotes I’ve ever read. Domino Renee Perez writes of the La Llorona thong: “The connection between the legend and thong panties is unclear except that the discomfort, which some will undoubtedly experience as a result of wearing the garment, may cause them to weep like lloronas.”. What I’m trying to say is, people don’t take this story altogether seriously, and thus, so far neither has this entry. But let’s change that for a bit.
So where does the tale originate? As a centuries-old legend echoed in many cultures, it’s a bit hard to pin down, but we do know where the first written example comes from: an ancient Aztec prophecy about the end of the world. Located in the Florentine Codex, one of the oldest Mesoamerican historical texts, the prophecy describes eight portents — one of which was a woman weeping for her children3 Which was evidently taken, at the time, to be a manifestation of Cihuacoatl, goddess of fertility.. True enough, shortly after Moctezuma II witnessed all eight portents, the end of the Aztec world arrived, in the shape of one of history’s greatest shitheels: the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes.
The end of the world arrived in the shape of one of history’s greatest shitheels: Hernan Cortes.
(She didn’t actually kill their kids. What did happen is a story for another time: she’s covered in a full entry in the RP book.)
There are other precolonial folktales that feed into the legend, of women who died in childbirth, who died of drowning, who wandered the earth searching for their children. However, in post-colonial times, the stories shifted alongside cultural views of women — and the portrayals began going down the “bitches be crazy” road.
In the end, what’s at the core of the La Llorona story? A woman who weeps for her children, the ones left after the end of the Aztec world. Children who’ve lost their connection to their ancestry. And a story that changes and morphs into a simplistic “ladies, amirite?” boogeyman tale along with the culture. The “Gone Girl” of its time.
Oh, and thongs. It’s also about thongs. Apparently.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | There’s a hundred different variations of this legend all across Latin America – this entry mainly deals with the Mexican variant, as it’s pretty much the most influential. |
| ↑2 | A fact which inspired one of the best academic footnotes I’ve ever read. Domino Renee Perez writes of the La Llorona thong: “The connection between the legend and thong panties is unclear except that the discomfort, which some will undoubtedly experience as a result of wearing the garment, may cause them to weep like lloronas.” |
| ↑3 | Which was evidently taken, at the time, to be a manifestation of Cihuacoatl, goddess of fertility. |
| ↑4 | aka Malintzin, Malinalli, dona Marina, and, unflatteringly, Chingada — see footnote 6. |
| ↑5 | This is an assertion that’s a bit hard to prove, as the details on Malinche are frustratingly scarce. However, given that she was able to speak the same high language that Moctezuma II used, it’s reasonable to conclude she was royalty. |
| ↑6 | “Chingada,” which refers to a native woman who had children with a conquistador. |
Art Notes
- La Llorona is here pictured in front of Tenochtitlan, as many of the eight portents come to pass — the weeping woman, comets, fire from the sky, lightning hitting a temple, strange flying creatures, and the lake boiling (or are those someone’s air bubbles?).
- La Llorona’s dress is patterned after the one Malinche wears in the Florentine Codex.
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Next Time on Rejected Princesses
Next week I’m taking a break to have a creative recharge, see my parents, and mix up the format slightly for the next entry. I’ll be back in two weeks. Your hint is:
While the ghost of this woman may or may not have haunted Lady Stanhope, there’s no way she’s leaving ISIS alone, after what they’ve done.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
This is probably one of my favorite pictures you’ve drawn!
Thank you! I try and push myself.
you’re welcome :)
I remember seeing that “Got Milk?” commercial on youtube back in college–it was one of the weirdest ones IMO.
Ayyy. I love this entry. The drawing is amazing. <3
My best friend’s mom use to tell us this story to freak us out as kids… In her version of it La Llorona had the face of a horse.
Brilliantly done, although calling the Winchesters ‘two goofy brothers who go on to die hundreds of times’ isn’t really fair, is it? In their defence, the lore on the show is very well researched if not always 100% accurate.
Shameful admission: I’ve never seen an episode of Supernatural, I just have a friend who’s SUPER into it.
It’s actually really good, and despite errors made by the Winchesters, the lore is actually pretty spot on. It’s clear that a lot of time and energy is spent on research to get it right.
One of the versions of Medea’s story also has to do with “gets mad at
guy, kills her children”, which is why I wonder if there was some
European influence to shape this myth. Not that I think Cortés’ party
had enough culture to know Greek ancient stories, but still…
Nice spooky effects. Perfect entry for Halloween week.
The idea of a specter crying for her children or a child-snatching bogeyman is an archetype prevalent among many cultures. As far as China and Japan, you have the story of the sky god’s youngest daughter, who flies around in the form of a nine-headed bird, kidnapping children to replace her own son, who she can never find. So stories of Coatlicue and Cihuacoatl weeping for their children were probably older than European contact. But Malinche’s story came after European contact, so there might be classical mythology being mixed up in there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihuanaba
Might be a version of the Sihuanba tale. Particular to Central American countries.
Hi! I’ve been following for a while now, and I have to say that La Llorona is probably my favorite artwork yet. It is genuinely eerie and conveys a sense of power – as if her grief is causing the fire and the lightning and all of the disasters. Anyway – I think it’s really cool. Keep it up.
La Llorona also has a practical element to it, at least in my home town. Before the dam was built, our section of the Rio Grande had a serious problem with rip currents and places where the water looks deceptively shallow; and since it’s pretty agricultural there, we have ditches that are pretty dangerous too. We were always told that if we went down to the river at dark (like dumb asses) we would get snatched away by La Llorona and drown. Of course we went to the river (like dumb asses), and I fell into one of the sneaky deep parts. It was terrifying despite being a decent swimmer, and I can only imagine how many stupid kids drowned when the river was flowing naturally.
i just found out that the horror movie “Mama” Is loosely based off this story and that mama is la llorona
Here in Indiana, we have pretty much the same myth (most commonly in the northeastern parts). The story is almost exactly the same, only with new locations. I’ve read that the Indiana La Llorona is either the exact same ghost, entering our folklore thanks to Mexican immigrants, or a similar ghoul who recieved her name from the same.
I’ve often wondered if that’s where the ‘crazy woman looking for a drowned kid’ story got its start. With parents attempting to keep their children away from rivers where they could end up dead. They were already losing kids due to childhood diseases, and now their kids gotta’ go be stupid little dumb asses and go play in the river? “Hey, let us tell them a story of a crazy bitch/ witch/ demon that will snatch them if they go by the river.”
It’s my layman’s opinion that most fairytales started as methods for mothers to get children (and their husbands) to behave. Russian ones are the best – there’s an imp that kills you if you don’t make your room, a mermaid that kills you if you go out drinking and run around on your wife…
I would concur that this mostly started as a warning tale. In this case, an expression of anxiety over failure to fulfill the duties as mother. Fertility being very important in ancient cultures and perceived as an integral part of a functioning human being (not just for women, but for men as well, as seen by the fertility rituals held by Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings). At the same time, almost all cultures acknowledge a special bond between mother and child. So when a mother either fails in childbirth, or loses her children, then she can be classified as “failed at life”. Having experienced such a spectacular failure, a human soul would not be able to find peace, even in death, so mythology consigns to her the fate of a wandering vengeful spirit, looking to make other mothers suffer as she suffered. All over the world, there are stories of women who have died in childbirth and wander bewailing their lost babes, female monsters that steal or eat children, and more insidiously, female monsters that take the guise of a mother to trick and eat passer-bys. Many of these spectres lurk near water because water itself shares their liminal quality. They straddle the line between life and death, a mother and something distinctly not motherly, like the river that would mark a boundary. And they are deadly, just like the river. Though, whether the dangers of the river inspired people to identify it with a devouring mother, or whether the story of the devouring mother was compared to a river, is a chicken and egg question. We’ll never know which of these fears came first, whether this serves to caution mothers to watch their children better or warns children away from the water. We only know that humanity had a few primal fears that get expressed in various cultures across the world.
Wow, how in the hell is having her kill her own kids supposed to be *better* PR?
And it’s believable too. The horse tail and willow make some really disconcerting noises when the wind blows, like in the spring and when the kids are getting tired of being cooped up in the house. I was an intern working in the bosque this past spring and I nearly died when I heard that noise. That was when I decided that maybe I was more suited to benchwork in a lab than field work. Haha
While I agree that the concept of the dark mother is a global one, and that rivers by their nurturing nature can easily fit the dark mother narrative as well, I don’t think that’s quite where this story goes. La Llarona, at least as it was told to me, focuses a lot on the events around the children, rather than the events around Maria and her marriage, or Maria as a mother.
The story I learned was this: Maria is down at the river doing laundry with her children. Point of reference, at this time the Rio Grande would have a mosaic layout, rather than the narrow-water-in-between-banks layout we think of today. The children are jumping from sandbar to sandbar when the little boy overestimates, and tries to jump to a sandbar just too far away and falls in. The current carries him away, and his older sister jumps into try and save him. Hearing her children’s screams, Maria throws herself in as well. There is a dramatic bit about how Maria and her children struggle for awhile, and Maria is eventually fished from the water by her husband; the children are never recovered (not super surprising, the sand in the river covers anything that it snags on pretty quickly). Maria, since there are no bodies, goes mad with grief and wanders the river looking for her children, taking any that look like hers.
I would actually have to disagree with the way you presented La Llorona because:
1) It’s a vastly shared story in all of Latino America from Argentina to Mexico, changing to different names, etc.
2) It’s not as much as a “bitches be crazy” story as more of your mom screaming that “La Llorona is going to take you away if you don’t listen to me” or calming you saying “She doesn’t really exist” after you find out the story by yourself.
3) As funny as the versions you gave, there are actual real different versions in Latino Folklore, mostly affected by real mother’s sufferings. In Argentina sometimes her child is taken by dictator-led soldiers, in Panamá she goes partying and leaves her child next to a river as to not forget him, yet the current grows and the child is taken away in some places she doesn’t even kill her own children but it’s the husband’s new conquest that does.
4) This is actually a big cultural figure in Latino Lore and Pop Culture, inspiring a traditional song, parts of the day of the dead parade, and is very dear to some people’s hearts such as me. The story might not be the most feminist but it’s more than a patriarchal construct, it reflects a key aspect of Latino life.
it’s not a story to take at face value as if it was a real happening, but it is more serious than you made it out to be.
You mentioned many of these things now that I re-check but, I still have to say that personally, I just don’t find it right to take this story, this piece of culture as something that isn’t serious.
That’s a totally valid response. As I hope came across in the writeup, I’m not dismissing the impact or place in the culture, just the specifics of the story itself.
Came late to the party but whatevs. I’m from somewhere between Argentina and México (and firm believer that Bolívar was nothing but a dick), and the myth in my city (region, or something) is that she is the spirit of a woman that got pregnant by the cueche (a rainbow, don’t ask) and had to give birth near a river (because that was a thing), but when she finally gave birth, she fainted and her baby fell into the river. So, when she woke up, she started searching for her kid and she mutated in a thing (later called Turumama) condemned to search for her kid forever (and ocassionally trying to stole other people’s babies).
The other myth I have heard is about Coatlicue (that one is Mexican) who was a godess that weeped for her children (the aztecs) because she was predicting the arrival of the spaniards that would conquer their lands. Or something. I’m pretty proud that I remembered the names.
Mostly, I think the whole “bitches be crazy” was a theme after the colony, because is very, very common in some leyends; did you do the do with a priest? Bam! You’re now a horse with a woman’s face, were you found being unfaithful to your husband? Kazam! He cuts your leg and leaves you in the forest, and you become a bloodthirsty demon with one leg. Pretty normal y ‘all.
So she is like a woman in white. They are woman who find out their husban was unfatefull and in a fit of insanity they killed their children. When the relize what they done they kill themseves hunting down unfatefull men
so she did not kill her kids?
And there is also the hebrew “demon” lilith, poor lilith