Informant:

Mario is from Mexico City, Mexico, who said himself that he is “extremely interested in his Mexican roots and traditions.”

Original Script:

Mario: “The story of La Llorona is one that literally everyone in Mexico knows. Well, like maybe not everyone, like, knows it but most people have definitely at least heard it. It’s about a girl that basically kills her children by drowning them because her husband, like, left her, so every night at 3 or 4 am, she starts screaming ‘Mis hijos!‘ because she regrets killing them so much. And the point of the story is to, like, make sure that we, as kids, do not cry or whine too much because La Llorona could do to us what she, like, did to her kids.”

Context:

Whenever a child is exhibiting bad behavior.

My Thoughts:

I read about this story earlier this semester, but I did not know how relevant it still is today. I find it almost disturbing that parents still use this story as a parenting method because as a child, I think I would be horrified if I thought there was some way that this La Llorona could somehow drown me like she did to her kids. Parenting is practiced in very different ways in different cultures.