Context: 

My informant is a sibling of a friend.

La Llorona (also known as the weeping woman) is a very old legend that is a part of Mexican culture.

He said that “she is a woman who caught her husband cheating on her and in anger and hysteria decided to drown her children in the village river. After realizing what she did, she felt immense guilt and killed herself. Her ghost appears in a long, white dress that’s wet and she lingers around rivers or passes by the roads at night, crying for her children to return by saying, “Ay, mis hijos!” or “Oh, my children!” If you hear her cries it’s said that death awaits you or if you’re a child she will come steal you away”

He first heard this story as a child from his dad. He said “Children typically get told it (in a less graphic way) as a means to behave, but my father just told it to me as a regular scary story because I would ask him to tell me stories like that”. Like previously mentioned, he thinks it’s just a scare tactic to make children behave or to keep them safe away from rivers and lakes if they were to sneak off to play.

He also mentioned that he has a connection to this story because he is ethnically Mexican and that his dad had passed down this very popular story that’s been told for many years in Mexican culture. He does not believe in La Llorona but as a child he was scared of her.

Analysis:

La Llorona is a popular legend in Mexican culture. The legend of La Llorona is of a woman who, out of anger and sorrow, kills her own children. This story shows the message of guilt and unresolved anger. The woman takes out her own misery onto the innocent, and her ghost still haunts the earth with this heavy burden. This story could resonate to a lot of people, as some may not find peace in their past sorrows and past mistakes in their lives. La Llorona may seem to serve as a message to people who do not know how to support themselves after tragedy or something traumatic. It could also be to think about your actions and the consequences. La Llorona regrets what she has done with her children, as a result she is eternally punished by never being able to see her children again.

As a ghost, La Llorona haunts places that are similar to where her children drowned. She searches for them despite being the one to have killed them. The fear that strikes from her story is that she will take children. I think that this part of her story also comes across as a message to be careful of strangers.