La Llorona is a popular figure in Mexican and Latin American folklore, known as the Weeping Woman who searches for her dead children. She is said to have killed her own offspring and is often considered a bad omen. Her appearance is frightening, wearing a long flowing dress and crying constantly. Most stories say she drowned her children in the Rio Grande, but there are many different versions of her story. The legend may derive from a comparison between the Spanish conquest of the Americas and a mother’s loss of her children.
La Llorona is the ghost of a woman who weeps and searches for her dead children. She is a popular figure in Mexico, other areas of Central and South America, and in Mexican-American communities in the United States, and there are many different versions of her story about her. Also known as the Weeping Woman, La Llorona is said to have been abandoned by the father of her children and she killed her own offspring. Like the banshee in Irish folklore, she is said to be a bad omen, sometimes heralding death.
La Llorona is generally said to have been a beautiful young woman, but as a ghost, her appearance is often frightening. She wears a long flowing dress, all white or all black, and cries constantly. In some versions, her eyes are empty sockets. She sometimes stops strangers to inquire about her children, or she may just whine for everyone to hear. Seeing or talking to her is almost always considered dangerous; in some accounts, she drowns living victims to shelter her children.
Most stories about this figure say that the woman drowned her children in the Rio Grande. Her motives and those of the man who abandoned her vary between accounts. It is often said that she belonged to a lower social class than her lover; sometimes, she is a Native American maiden seduced by a Spanish lord. After having many children with her lover, she left her for a woman of her own social standing.
In such stories, La Llorona drowns her children out of mad grief, as revenge against her husband or to save them from poverty. She often commits suicide soon after, out of grief or guilt or to avoid justice. She is forced to wander the earth as punishment for the murder of her children, or because she refuses to admit her guilt to God.
Some stories differ markedly from the above version. In one version told in Texas, La Llorona drowns her children from a previous marriage to be free to marry another, who later abandons her. In another variant, it is her husband who kills the children. In a Mexican story, children are not murdered at all, but die in a flood. In some southern Mexican states, this figure is believed to have been a prostitute who routinely drowned her children.
The legend of La Llorona is sometimes thought to derive from a comparison between the Spanish conquest of the Americas and a mother’s loss of her children. La Malinche, a Native American woman who acted as interpreter for the conquistador Cortes, is sometimes compared to La Llorona and considered a traitor to his people. In popular tradition, she was Cortes’ mistress, but he abandoned her for a Spanish noblewoman.
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