(; ) is a vengeful ghost in Hispanic American folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children she drowned in the river. Whoever hears her crying is said to either suffer misfortune, death, or become extremely unsuccessful in life.
The lore of La Llorona is well known in Mexico and the southwestern United States. Her legend is traditionally told throughout Mexico, Central America and northern South America. is sometimes conflated with , the Nahua woman who served as 's 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.
Origins The presence of ghostly beings who cry by rivers for various reasons is a recurring feature of the mythology of Mesoamerican peoples. Thus, traits of these specters can be found in several pre-Columbian cultures, which eventually, with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, came to share common characteristics due to the expansion of Spanish dominion over the continent. The legend is a story that has mythical referents in the pre-Hispanic universe, but that establishes its drama and its imaginary, anguishing retinue in the colonial order.
To explain the origin of the legend of La Llorona, three main approaches have been proposed: a literalist approach, meaning that the events really happened—a Spaniard killed his indigenous-Spaniard children he had with the woman people blame for her children’s death, and from there the story was told again and again until the woman became a ghost and the story a legend; a euhemerist approach, in which a myth is superimposed on a real story with concrete referents (as, for example, when the myth of the goddess Cihuacóatl is superimposed on the story of La Malinche); and finally, a parabolic approach, which has an apologetic and symbolic reading, with a hidden meaning, in which the story emerges as a way of giving voice to silenced groups—in this case, Indigenous peoples during the Conquest and colonization.
Pre-Columbian legends For the ancestral cultures of the Americas, myths answer questions about the origin of man and the universe. These myths were carried by the Indigenous societies of the Americas in their migrations, being transmitted orally through many generations. Myths are traditionally linked to religion and worship. Their characters are divine beings, both worshipped and feared, whose powers transcend human intellect. Whether the myth is of Quechua, Nahuatl, Guaraní, or Aymara inspiration, its essence lies in the need of the human spirit to unravel the wonders and mysteries that surround and terrify it. The legend of La Llorona is, above all, a story created to warn and frighten.
Mesoamerican myths In Mexico, where it originated in Xochimilco and the Lacandon jungle, several researchers estimate that La Llorona, as a character of mythology and legend, has its origin in certain pre-Hispanic beings or deities such as Auicanime, among the Purépechas; Xonaxi Queculla, among the Zapotecs; Cihuacóatl, among the Nahuas; and the Xtabay, among the Lacandon Maya. She is always identified with the underworld, hunger, death, sin, and lust. In the case of Xtabay (or Xtabal), this Lacandon goddess is identified as an evil spirit in the form of a beautiful woman whose back has the shape of a hollow tree. By inducing men to embrace her, she drives them mad and kills them. The Zapotec goddess Xonaxi Queculla, meanwhile, is a deity of death, the underworld and lust who appears in some representations with emaciated arms. Attractive at first sight, she appears to men, makes them fall in love and seduces them, only to later transform into a skeleton and carry the spirit of her victims to the underworld. Auicanime was considered among the Purépechas to be the goddess of hunger (her name can be translated as the Thirsty One or the Needy One). She was also the goddess of women who died in childbirth during their first delivery, who, according to belief, became warriors (mocihuaquetzaque), which turned them into divinities and, therefore, into objects of worship and offering. This abundance of goddesses connected with phallic cults and sexual life was the origin not only of La Llorona, but also of other female ghosts that punish men, such as the Siguanaba, the Cegua or the Sucia.
Cihuacóatl and other Mexica entities
In the particular case of the Mexica, the pre-Hispanic legend of La Llorona arises from a multitude of hybrid oral narratives. La Llorona has been associated with the pre-Hispanic goddess Tenpecutli, who purged a sorrow for having drowned her children in a river. This goddess, who was very beautiful, had the ability to change her face into that of an animal if someone looked into her eyes, like the nahuales. Another figure with whom she has been associated was the goddess of the underworld Mictlancíhuatl, who seduced and ruined men. It has also been proposed that La Llorona is a hybridization of three Mexica goddesses: Cihuacóatl (the mother goddess and serpent woman), Teoyaominqui (the watcher of the dead), and Quilaztli (goddess of childbirth and twins). For the Mexica, this trio of goddesses wandered in the figure of a woman dressed in white who cried for her lost children, and hearing her was an ill omen.
One of the best-known pre-Hispanic antecedents of the legend of La Llorona is the one that identifies her with the Mexica goddess Cihuacóatl. This goddess has different attributes: goddess of the earth (Coatlicue), fertility and childbirth (Quilaztli), warrior woman (Yaocíhuatl), and mother (Tonantzin), both of the Mexica and of their very gods (she was the mother of Huitzilopochtli, the greatest Mexica god). Cihuacóatl was also the patron of the cihuateteo, spirits of women who died in childbirth who at night cried out and roared in the air, who descended to the earth on certain days dedicated to them in the calendar in order to frighten at crossroads and who were fatal for children. One of these cihuateteo could be heard at night, uttering great laments over the death of her son and the loss of her own life. She was called Chocacíhuatl—from Nahuatl choka, 'to cry', and cihuatl, 'woman'. She was the first of all mothers who died in childbirth. There floated in the air the stripped skulls separated from their bodies (Chocacíhuatl and her child), hunting any traveler who had been caught by the darkness of night. If any mortal saw these things, it was a sure omen of misfortune or even death. This entity was one of the most feared in the Nahua world from before the arrival of the Spaniards.
On 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.
Spirits, ghosts, and weeping women of the Intermediate Area
In the Bribri and Cabécar Talamancan mythology, located on the border between Costa Rica and Panama, the stories of these spirits are transmitted through the Suwoh, the oral tradition of these peoples. In their myths, these spirits, called itsö, are beings associated with dark and tangled mountains, mountain abysses, rains, strong winds, and river waterfalls, with a strong connection to the forces of nature and rural life. They are creatures with the appearance of a woman and the body of a bird that dwell in caves and riverbeds, and that utter mournful cries when a child is about to die, or else lose children in the forest when they stray from their parents. Examples of these myths are the stories of Sakabiali and the Wíkela.In Talamancan mythology, Itsa' was the name given to one of the principal devils, and at the same time it is the generic name given to all evil beings. This demon was cannibalistic, and its purpose was to devour the Indigenous people. In Bribri traditions it has different manifestations. One of them is Wíkela, a hideous old woman with bird-like attributes, who pursued children in order to eat them. This being is the origin of the legend of the Tulevieja. The Talamancan peoples believed that tuleviejas lived in caves behind waterfalls, and that they cried when a child was going to die, or else led them astray in order to devour them. One of these tuleviejas was Sakabiali, a mountain weeping woman who ate Lady Ágata, wife of the god Talá Yakela, the thunder, and mother of the hurricane children. In the Bribri language, the word itsö means both "weeping woman" and "tulevieja". Hence there are similarities between the legends told in Costa Rica and Panama for these two ghosts (basically a woman who kills her child, the result of an unwanted pregnancy, and who is therefore condemned to wander as a ghost).
The Indigenous peoples of Colombia and Venezuela also have many myths about female divinities associated with rivers and nature, such as the Madremonte in Colombia and María Lionza in Venezuela. These are protective deities of forests, animals, and water sources, with powers over natural phenomena. In Colombian legends, for example, the Madremonte appears during stormy nights and tempests, uttering roars and infernal screams that shake the mountain. In the case of María Lionza, many of her origin myths have to do with water, and, like the Madremonte, she is protector of fish and nature.
Amazonian and Andean legends In South America there are some pre-Columbian legends that came to be associated with that of La Llorona once Hispanic dominion was established over the continent, but which do not have a common origin with it, although there are very similar aspects. Similar traces can be found in the legend of the Ayaymama of Peruvian Amazonian mythology. In this legend, a mother abandons her two children in a river because she feels that she is going to die of an illness and wants to avoid them dying because of her. The children end up transformed into birds that emit a mournful sound. In the Guaraní legends of Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, the myth of La Llorona is related to the urutaú (Nyctibius griseus), also called güemí-cué, a nocturnal bird that emits sounds similar to a weeping woman.
Pucullén
Prominent among these legends is the story of Pucullén (from Mapudungun külleñu, 'tears', and pu, a plural prefix), belonging to the folklore of the Mapuches of Chile. Pucullén weeps eternally because her child was taken from her arms at a very early age, or because one of her children died in her arms. She is a ghostly presence dressed in white (black in some versions), whom only people close to death, some people with special abilities (such as machis or calcus), children, and animals with sharper senses can see, among them dogs, which utter mournful howls when they perceive her presence, therefore, if one rubs one's eyes with dog tears, she may be seen; but if the observer's heart is not firm, her image will be terrifying. Pucullén fulfills the characteristics of a psychopomp, that is, a guide of the dead, who indicates by her steps and cries the path that the dead must travel in order to move from their earthly dwelling to the beyond. With her abundant tears, which form a crystal-clear pool, Pucullén marks the exact place in the cemetery where the grave must be opened to place the coffin. She weeps as a mourner for all the dead person's relatives, so that they may soon be consoled for the loss; moreover, she prevents the spirit of the dead person, displeased with the few tears and signs of grief of his relatives, from returning to torment them. She is also an omen of death, so only a person who is about to die can see her.
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