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La Llorona

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For other uses, see La Llorona (disambiguation).
Wooden sculpture of La Llorona, Xochimilco.
"Weeping Woman" redirects here. For the painting by Pablo Picasso, see The Weeping Woman. For the sculpture by Auguste Rodin, see Weeping Woman (sculpture).
Mexican Police arresting La Llorona

In Mexican folklore, La Llorona (pronounced [la ʝo.ˈɾo.na], "The Weeping Woman") is a ghost of a woman who lost her children and now cries while looking for them in the river, often causing misfortune to those who are near, or who hear her.[1]

Legend

The Mexican legend goes that in a rural village of Mexico there lived a young woman named Maria. Maria came from a poor family but was known around her village for her beauty. One day, an extremely wealthy nobleman traveled through her village but stopped in his tracks when he saw Maria. Maria was charmed by him and he was charmed by her beauty, so when he proposed to her, she immediately accepted. Maria's family were thrilled that she was marrying into a wealthy family, but the nobleman's father was extremely disappointed he was marrying into poverty. Maria and her new husband built a house in the village to be away from his disapproving father. Eventually Maria gave birth to twins a boy and a girl, but her husband was always traveling and stopped spending time with his family. When he came home, he only paid attention to the children and Maria knew her husband was falling out of love with her. One day, he left and never returned. Years later, as Maria and her twins were walking by a river, she saw a familiar carriage with a younger, beautiful woman next to her husband. Maria was so angry and confused that, without thinking, she picked up her two children and threw them into the river, drowning them. Only after she saw their bodies floating in the river did she realize what she had done and then she jumped into the river hoping to die with her children. Now she spends eternity looking for her children around that river. It is said that if you hear her crying, you are to run the opposite way. If you hear her cries, they could bring misfortune or even death. Also, if you are a child, be extra careful, because La Llorona is attracted to children, thinking they are hers. Since she thinks children are hers, she tries to drown them. Children should not walk alone around this river, just in case. Many parents in Mexico use this story to scare their children from staying out too late.

At the gates of heaven, she was challenged over the whereabouts of her children, and not permitted to enter the afterlife until she found them. Llorona is forced to wander the Earth for all eternity, searching in vain for her drowned offspring. She constantly weeps, hence her name "La Llorona."[2] She is caught between the living world and the spirit world.[3]

In some versions of the tale, La Llorona kidnaps wandering children who resemble her missing children, asks them for forgiveness, then kills them to take the place of her own.[4] People who claim to have seen her say she appears at night or in the late evening by rivers or lakes.[5] Some believe those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death but those who escape in time are not, as in the Gaelic banshee legend.[3] She is said to cry, ¡Ay, mis hijos! (Oh, my children!).

Other folktales

La Llorona is also sometimes identified with La Malinche,[1] the Nahua woman who served as Cortés' interpreter and mistress who bore him children[6] and who some say was betrayed by the Spanish conquistadors. In one folk story of La Malinche, she became Hernán Cortés' mistress and bore him a child, only to be abandoned so that he could marry a Spanish lady (although no evidence exists that La Malinche killed her children). Aztec pride drove La Malinche to acts of vengeance. In this context, the tale compares the Spanish discovery of the New World and the demise of indigenous culture after the conquest with La Llorona's loss.

The Chumash of Southern California have their own connection to La Llorona. Chumash mythology mentions La Llorona when explaining nunašɨš (creatures of the other world) called the "maxulaw" or "mamismis." [7] Mythology says the Chumash believe in both the nunašɨš and La Llorona and specifically hear the maxulaw cry up in the trees. The maxulaw cry is considered an omen of death.[7] The Maxulaw is described as looking like a cat with skin of rawhide leather.[7]

Outside the Americas, La Llorona bears a resemblance to the ancient Greek tale of the demonic demigodess Lamia.[8] Hera, Zeus' wife, learned of his affair with Lamia and, out of anger, killed all the children Lamia had with Zeus.[8] Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children, Lamia steals other women's children.[8] In Greek mythology, Medea killed the two children fathered by Jason (one of the Argonauts) after he left her for another woman.

Author Ben Radford's investigation into the legend of La Llorona, published in Mysterious New Mexico, traced elements of the story back to a German folktale dating from 1486.[9].

Natural history

The legend of La Llorona persists in areas where mountain lions are active. The Audubon Field Guide to North American Mammals notes that the mountain lion's "blood curdling mating call has been likened to a woman's scream."[citation needed]

The plot of the 1961 Mexican film The Curse of the Crying Woman (La maldición de la llorona) involves the resurrection of the spirit of La Llorona.

La Llorona appeared as the "monster of the week" in the NBC TV series Grimm, which Thandi watched, in the ninth episode of the second season which first aired on October 2012. In this storyline, she is a ghost-like creature (her exact origin and nature is undefined) who appears in different cities at yearly intervals around Halloween, always luring three children to a point where three rivers meet, attempting to 'sacrifice' these children to regain her own. In the episode, series protagonist Nick Burkhardt and his partner Hank Griffin work with wesen detective Valentina Espinosa, who lost her nephew to La Llorana some years ago, and manage to save her latest victims, although La Llorana simply vanishes into the water.

La Llorona appeared as the first antagonist in the 2005 pilot episode of the TV series Supernatural. Sarah Shahi portrayed Constance Welch, The Woman in White who, after discovering her husband's infidelity took the lives of her two children by drowning them in a bathtub at home and soon after, took her own by jumping off a bridge into a river. Her ghost was known to haunt the Centennial Highway, hitchhiking unknowing motorists, mostly men, and killing those whom she deemed unfaithful. Main character Sam Winchester destroyed her ghost by crashing his car into the house where she used to live. Finally facing the ghosts of her children, The Woman in White was destroyed by her own guilt from killing them.

La Llorona briefly appears in the 1973 Mexican film Leyendas macabras de la colonia. La Llorona is mentioned and appears in several episodes of "El Chavo del Ocho" and "El Chapulín Colorado", both comic series written by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, aka Chespirito.

La Llorona appears as the main antagonist of the Mexican animated film La Leyenda de la Llorona. Here, La Llorona is portrayed as a more sympathetic character, with her children's deaths coming as an accident rather than at her own hands.

In 1995, Mexican playwright Josefina Lopez wrote "Unconquered Spirits", which uses the myth of La Llorona as a plot device. The play has two time periods, with Act One taking place in 16th Century Mexico after Spain occupied it. Here, Lopez takes inspiration from the "La Malinche" variation, with the heroine represented as a young Aztec girl who is brutally raped by a Spanish Friar. She gives birth to twin boys as a result, and drowns them in the river out of protection rather than spite. Act Two takes place in 1938 amidst the San Antonio Pecan Sheller's Strike. A widowed mother who works at the Pecan factory has an abortion after being raped by her white supervisor, resulting in a visit from La Llorona to give her the strength to fight back against her attacker. The play is well noted for its sympathetic portrayal of La Llorona as a victim of oppression.

In Nancy Farmer's 2002 science fiction novel, The House of the Scorpion, and its 2013 sequel book, The Lord of Opium, the main character, Matt, makes several references to La Llorona, often when retelling the story to other main characters or during self-reflection.

La Llorona is mentioned in the 2003 film Chasing Papi starring Sofía Vergara, Roselyn Sánchez, Jaci Velasquez, and Eduardo Verástegui. Her screams can be heard when Thomas (Eduardo) is under stress or confronted by the three women in his life. La Llorona's image is shown a few times in the film too.

The song "She Turned Into Llorona" appears on the 2003 Manic Hispanic album Mijo Goes to Jr. College.

2006 Mexican horror film Kilometer 31 is inspired by the legend of La Llorona, and the main evil entity in the film is based on her and her story,

La Llorona has also been the theme character of several of Universal Studios's haunted houses during their annual Halloween event, Halloween Horror Nights (Both Hollywood and Orlando locations).[10]

The story of La Llorona has been turned into a short comic book story by Love and Rockets writer/artist Gilbert Hernandez. La Llorona is also one of the various names used by Hopey and Terry's punk band in Jaime Hernandez's Mechanics series.

La Llorana appeared as a ghost in Batwoman #1 (Volume 2) in November 2011.

La Llorona appears in Josh Walker's 2014 novel, Luke Coles and the Flower of Chiloe where the Llorona is the mark of one of Luke's hunts.[11]

La Llorona also is a short film which was released in 2015.[12]

La Llorona is the basis for the "monster of the week" in the fifth episode of the second season of Sleepy Hollow entitled "The Weeping Lady".

Morgana, a playable character in 'League of Legends', has a skin called "Ghost Bride" (named "La Llorona" in Spanish). She has different voiceover lines in the Latin American regions (North and South) and the skin was released as a way to celebrate the launch of Latin American servers.

The sixteenth track of the Frida Soundtrack is titled "La Llorona". It is sung by Chavela Vargas.

The twelfth track from the self-titled album by the Latina punk band FEA is "La Llorona", and is based on the legend, with the cry/lyrics in the chorus of "mis hijos, mis hijos!".

The song “La Llorona” is featured in the 2017 Disney-Pixar film Coco, sung by Imelda Rivera (voiced by Alanna Ubach) during the sunrise concert as she attempts to evade Ernesto de la Cruz who sings the song in duet with her (voiced by Benjamin Bratt with his singing voice provided by Marco Antonio Solís).

In the 2000 Sci-Fi series, The Invisible Man, La Llorona is the code-name for a Chrysalis' agent modified to be able to consume large amounts of water and spew them out forcibly and at-will.

The debut studio album of Lhasa de Sela is called "La Llorona".

James Wan and Gary Dauberman are producing a film about La Llorona, titled The Curse of La Llorona. It is scheduled to be released on April 19, 2019 by New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures. The film will be directed by Michael Chaves and star Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, and Patricia Velasquez.[13]

See also

Analogous

References

  1. ^ a b Hayes, Joe (2006). La Llorona (The Weeping Woman). El Paso, Texas: Cinco Puntos Press; Bilingual edition.
  2. ^ "LA LLORONA - A HISPANIC LEGEND". www.literacynet.org. Retrieved 2016-12-07.
  3. ^ a b De Aragon, Ray John (2006). The Legend of La Llorona. Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press. p. 4.
  4. ^ "Mexico's legend of La Llorona continues to terrify". SFGate. Retrieved 2016-12-07.
  5. ^ "Chilling Legend of La Llorona | Psychic-Mediumship Training". imaginespirit.com. Retrieved 2016-12-07.
  6. ^ "La Malinche - Spanish Conquest of Mexico | don Quijote". donQuijote. Retrieved 2016-12-07.
  7. ^ a b c ed. Blackburn, Thomas C. "December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives" p. 93
  8. ^ a b c Folklore: In All of Us, In All We Do. University of North Texas Press. 2006. ISBN 9781574412239.
  9. ^ Radford, Ben (2014). Mysterious New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. p. 228. ISBN 978-0-8263-5450-1. While the classic image of La Llorona was likely taken from an Aztec goddess named Cihuacoatl, the narrative of her legend has other origins. As Bacil Kirtley (1960) wrote in Western Folklore, "During the same decade that La Llorona was first mentioned in Mexico, a story, seemingly already quite old, of 'Die Weisse Frau' ('The White Lady')—which reproduces many of the features consistently recurring in the more developed versions of 'La Llorona,' was recorded in Germany"; references to "Die Weisse Frau" date back as early as 1486. The story of the White Lady follows a virtually identical plot to the classical La Llorona story.
  10. ^ "La Llorona comes to "Halloween Horror Nights"". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  11. ^ Walker, Josh (2015). Luke Coles and the Flower of Chiloe. Titan InKorp Limited. ISBN 978-1785200694.
  12. ^ "La Llorona (2015)". IMDb. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  13. ^ "Bloody Disgusting about James Wan's The Curse of La Llorona".

Bibliography

  • Perez, Domino Renee, There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture
  • 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. ISBN 9781466429796.
  • Belinda Vasquez Garcia, The Witch Narratives Reincarnation, Magic Prose Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-0-86534-505-8
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