Tag Archives: la llorona

“La Llorona”

Nationality: Caucasian, Mexican
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Temple City, California
Performance Date: April 14th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Who was La Llorona? She drowned her kids. Her husband cheated on her, and then she drowned her kids to get back at him. And then he was mad at her, but that didn’t affect her so much as the overwhelming sadness that hit her. Over time she got so sad…

Because she was so sad and realized it was because she couldn’t live without her children, she killed herself too… but her spirit is unhappy so now she comes back and steals other people’s children to make up for losing her own.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “All of my elders told me; parents, grandparents, uncles used to tell this to all the kids.”

Other information: “This is used as a threat from your elders; IF you’re a bad kid, La Llorona will come and get you… like if you’re misbehaving in the supermarket or make a scene/throw a tantrum outside… or if you don’t listen to your parents, she’ll just come and take you in the middle of the night… We all believed the story… you just innately believe your parents, and don’t think they’re gonna lie to you, you know? And you definitely don’t think your grandma’s gonna lie to you… But just the thought of being taken away from your parents induced the right amount of fear to make it a very real threat.”

Even though it’s not always so believable, particularly outside of childhood or in these specific contexts of being threatened, La Llorona is still real. And the analogous stories (possibly oikotypes) elsewhere in the world show that this kind of theme is important to other groups of people, too, whether it’s used as a threat to make children behave, or to scare newcomers, etc.

La Llorona

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish, Japanese

Primary informant: “La Llorona, I think is just really a part of every, like, Latin American household, I guess. Um, and specifically, I didn’t hear it from my dad because he doesn’t really believe in that shit, but from, like, my aunts and my grandma, whatever. And, um, it’s basically, this lady who… it’s like, okay, myth, legend, I’m not sure which one, but it’s like this lady who had kids, um, I don’t know what happened to the husband, if it was out of wedlock, or he died or whatever– the guy’s not there and, um, she ends up having a lover and the lover doesn’t want kids or whatever, so she takes her kids and she drowns them, in the river, and he ends up not getting with her anyway. So she just- um, like, got, I don’t know, got really sad or whatever and just, like, walks around. They say- people say that they see her walking around, like, rivers or, like, places with children and she’s always, like, they can, like, hear her, like, crying or something and just being really sad and all of that.”

Secondary informant: “La Llorona, she’s forever cursed to stay on Earth and she—for eternity, to find the remains of her children. And that’s why she’s constantly near rivers, because she’s trying to find the remains of her children and she can’t ascend into the afterlife until she does. So that’s why she’s stuck here, that’s why she’s hanging around here and shit.”

Tertiary Informant: “The one that I’m more familiar with, her husband was cheating on her. And so to get revenge on him, she drowns her children.”

Primary Informant: “The variations of that…”

Tertiary Informant: “But in whatever… ends up, he never ends up with her…”

Primary informant: “And she eventually ends up drowning her kids.”

Secondary Informant: “She’s forever alone.”

Laughs

Primary Informant: “Yeah, forever alone.”

 

Both informants who shared information about La Llorona are of Mexican descent and heard this story from their families. This story was shared in the primary informant’s apartment. We spent the afternoon sharing stories and combining the information we all had about each legend. These stories are important to the informants because they have been passed on from the older generations in their families. Because they value their older relatives, they value and enjoy the stories they’ve been told.

 

La Llorona

Nationality: Korean
Age: 23
Occupation: Marketing
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 20, 2013
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: Korean, English

“La Llorona is a tragic story about a mother that went crazy because of love. La Llorona used to be a beautiful woman who married the man she loved. They later had children and she was very happy, until it began to be apparent that her husband was no longer interested in her. He would be gone for long periods of time and only come back like once in a while to see the children. This drove her crazy and made her start to feel resentment toward her children. Then, one day she ran into her husband with her boys on the street. He was with some other woman, who looked beautiful and ric. Once again, he only talked to the children again and completely ignored her, walking past her as if she didn’t exist with the other lady. She went into a fit of rage and murdered her children by throwing them into a nearby river. Then she realized what she had just done and so she went after them and drowned in the river herself. After her death, she floated up to heaven, but wasn’t allowed in. The angels asked her where her children were and told her she could not enter without her children. So she was destined to come back down to earth, not alive nor dead, searching for her children. People say you can still hear her cries as she walks all over the earth, looking for her kids.”

My informant read this story during Dia de Los Muertos in her school. She was very shocked by it then, especially as she was a child. Because part of the legend that has become attached to it is that as La Llorona stalks the earth, she snatches children who are out in the dark and drowns them like she did her children, my informant became very afraid of the dark, especially to go outside at night. Her friends would tell her of people they knew who had actually seen La Llorona at night floating along a river and vanishing. Because of this, this legend was something that terrified her at night and gave her nightmares, although now it just seems like a legend to scare children into behaving.

This story is quite terrifying, and as it seems to target children especially, I can definitely see how my informant would have been shocked after reading this story. I would have reacted in much the same way if I had read the story as a child. In the story it seems as though she greatly regretted murdering her children, being forced to haunt the earth because she did not have her children with her when she went to heaven, may have turned her hostile once again to children. Although frightening stories like this may scare children into obeying, I personally do not think such scare tactics should be used. I can still remember frightening stories I was told as a child that would basically immobilize me because I would become so scared.

La Llorona

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 13
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

“One time there was a lady named Maria, but people later called her ‘La Llorona’ ’cuz one night she used to go out with her sons. She drowned them in the lake and haunts people.”

This JEP informant heard this urban legend when he was five years old. His mother told him this as a bedtime story so that he would go to sleep. His mother learned about this legend from her mother. The informant believes that La Llorona exists even though he has never heard her haunting, because people have told him that she only screams in Mexico. (The informant has never been to Mexico and cannot confirm if the story about the woman’s screaming is true.) His mother, who is from Mexico, does not believe in the legend, though. As an aside, the informant told this story to his little brother to scare him.

“La Llorona” translates to “the weeping or moaning woman” in English. This legend tells the story of a woman driven by madness who drowns her sons in a nearby lake. She then haunts the locals as a ghost woman. This story could have possibly originated and spread greatly to explain the natural phenomena of noises caused by the wind. Also, the story serves as an entertaining, scary story that creates social ties among the listeners.

This legend is annotated. It can also be found at the following source: http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html

Legend – Hispanic

Nationality: Hispanic
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 28, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

La Llorona

Story about a mother who supposedly lost her three children (or died, I don’t know) and she keeps calling them. Her spirit is not at rest so she haunts them [people]. Men especially. She appears to them pretty, like the fantasy I guess, a pretty lady. They’re usually drunk. It’s easier to fool men than women, I guess. My mom told me the story, because my grandpa saw her. He was walking home and it looked to him like my grandma but my mom says it wasn’t because my grandma was at home with her. But he still went home and beat her up. And supposedly my aunt saw her, too, but it was someone she had just finished dropping off on her way back home.

Olga said that her mother would scare them with this story to make her and her siblings go to sleep at night. Her mom would say that if she didn’t go to sleep then, the llorona would come and take her away. Olga believes that the story of La Llorona is simply a legend of a mother who didn’t exactly go in peace. She also added that certain deaths can haunt you, which is what she thinks this story most strongly conveys.

The legend of La Llorona has diverse manifestations and emphasis, but Olga’s family rendition most clearly highlights the tension between gender roles. This conflict is present not only in the basic tale of la llorona, but also in her grandfather’s supposed vision of la llorona and subsequent violence toward his wife. It also directly speaks to the ideals many hold regarding women. La llorona appears to men especially as the ultimate fantasy or vision of a pretty lady as Olga said. She lures them, fools them, and then haunts them. Olga’s grandfather’s story of his experience with this woman is one that unnerves him and sparks his violent physical explosion later that night. This seems to illustrate men’s attempts to free themselves of the women who haunt them in some way, an image and a conflict that does little to empower the female’s role in this legend.