Tag Archives: Mexico

La Llorona: Kid Killer

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student/Library Worker
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is a 18-year-old freshman studying biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. She grew up in Shafter, CA but is now living on campus at USC. She grew up in a family of Mexican descent. I asked her if she had any urban legends she would like to share and she told me her version of La Llorona.

La Llorona was a story used to scare her and the younger members of her family to not go out at night when they were still children. La Llorona means the crying lady. The story behind it is that there was a lady in Mexico, a housewife, with two children and a husband. The husband worked a lot at an unspecified job. My informant had heard versions of the story where the lady was crazy and versions where the lady was just extremely jealous of the attention her kids received from her husband but leaned towards the lady being very jealous of the attention her children received. When either her insanity or her jealousy overwhelmed her, she drowned her children either in the bath or in a river. After she realized what she had done, she killed herself in the same manner. Her ghost/spirit now wanders around wailing for her children and attempting to find other children who happen to be outside. When I asked why she needed to be avoided, the informant said that La Llorona would kill the kids she did find while she was wandering, even though the story was being told in Shafter, CA and was removed geographically from the story’s origin.

This story was first told to her when she was around 6 or 7 years old, when she was old enough to understand the story. Though she did not seem entirely convinced that the tale was true now that she is 18 years old, she was very much scare by it when she was a young child. Though she does not regularly tell the entire legend, she does make references to the story and understand what people are referring to when they mention it. The story places an emphasis on the struggle between loving your children and having to share the love from your husband with them. This type of jealousy is taboo as mothers are “supposed” to give up everything for their children, including the affections of their husbands if need be. Though the children this is meant to scare probably do not immediately pick out this theme, it is certainly understood by the mothers telling the story.

La Llorona is the subject of many authored works, including a 2007 movie called The Cry (directed by Bernadine Santistevan). There is a lot of variation between different versions of La Llorona, but the general idea of a woman drowning children and stealing children that are not their own is pretty consistent throughout the different versions, including both the version I collected from my informant and the version presented in The Cry. 

Petting a wet dog = death by car accident

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2014-04-29
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“I don’t understand this one at all: my grandmother always used to say that if you pet a wet dog, you’d get hit by a car. I genuinely do not understand where she got an idea that stupid. But she told it to my dad and all of her children.”

The informant’s grandmother, who received no formal education, was born, lived, and died in Irapuarto, Mexico. The informant is generally mistrusting of all things he has learned from his grandmother, as he refers to most folk belief as “batshit.” Such beliefs hold no weight to him and serve only to be laughed at.

Don’t Comb Wet Hair

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 2014-04-29
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant learned from his father, who learned from his mother, not to comb your hair when wet, as doing so would make you more susceptible to being struck and killed by lightning.

This belief is likely rooted in the observation of static electricity, a phenomenon which immediately evokes images of lightning.

The informant’s grandmother, who received no formal education, was born, lived, and died in Irapuarto, Mexico. The informant is generally mistrusting of all things he has learned from his grandmother, as he refers to most folk belief as “batshit.” Such beliefs hold no weight to him and serve only to be laughed at.

The Patron Saint of Mexico City

Nationality: Mexican, Afro-Caribbean, Native (South) American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Prosser, Washington
Performance Date: April 13th, 2013
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

This is one of our saints, and the mini-story of how he became a saint…

He was named for Guadaloupe, kind of like the virgin Mary; she was a great virgin or something… but she’s different, not like any of the saints that we (Catholics) have, she’s more distinctly Native American, her symbol is these thorny thorny roses that only grow in the deserts in Mexico.

Anyway, the man left and she came to him, and when he came back he tried to tell everybody what had happened; what he had seen and what she had said to him. But he was an Indian so no one believed he’d seen a virgin, and he went to her and she told him as long as he had faith, everything would work out. So he returned to his people again, and told them that everything would be good, that they would be blessed by God if they were faithful…

After he spoke, on his poncho appeared an image of the virgin, and then out form under it fell roses––her special thorny symbolic roses––a sign that she was actually there. And then people believed him…

Now she’s like the patron saint of Mexico City and that’s what our nativity stories and stuff were based on afterwards.

 

How did you come across this folklore: “I refer to these as “sketchy stories from my (step)father”/sketchy things he did when I was a kid…”

Other information: “My dad has a lot of stories like these, but my mom was big on not sharing them, or letting us hear them—so I heard this in my teens, when were allowed (finally) to ask and he would actually answer… my mom said it would invite bad people/things to us or something…”

This shows the incorporation of religion into folk mythology, where eventually no one questions its truth, which is transcended by its meaning. If you remain faithful, things will work out. This story actually bears strong resemblance to a traditional biblical story (for example, Moses in the Old Testament). The way my informant found out about this piece of folklore also reflects the conflict between mainstream society and minority folk groups, in this case the folklore was hidden from the second generation to protect them from being stigmatized.

House of Tia Toña

Nationality: American
Age: 48
Occupation: Administrative at Santa Monica Unified School District
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 19,2013
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

In the forest of Chapultepec in the capital (DF) there is an old dilapidated house that is said to be inhabited by a woman who flies into a rage when curious onlookers come to visit.  Visitors to the house have said that when she is enraged, you can hear strange noises in and around the house; you will often see a shadow pass through the windows and the feeling of being watched by someone who sends chills down your spine and goosebumps over your flesh. 
The name of the woman was “Tia Toña”, and she was a very wealthy widow who lived many, many years ago in her house by herself. She was a very kind person and to ease her loneliness, she started taking in homeless children off the street. She gave them money, food, clothes and shelter. But in spite of her charitable acts, the kids were unruly and ungrateful. They made her life impossible and one day, they banded together and decided to kill her in order to take the house and her money.
The kids carried out the murder and threw the body down in the attic. However, they were unable to live in peace because the woman’s angered spirit returned and chased them out of the house – eventually leading each to a terrible death.  From then on, the woman’s angry spirit haunted the house and continues to do so now. Kids are especially warned to stay away from the house.

There is another version of this story that I found in this Mexican newspaper:  http://www.vanguardia.com.mx7leyendasdeterrorquehanpuestoatemblaraldf-668416.html
It is all the same except for the fact that the woman is the one who kills the kids (because they misbehaved so much) only to then be driven to guilt by her actions. She locks herself in the house and has been there ever since. Flory told this story to me during a coffee date, there were no particular gestures that she used to relay it; however, she did say that when she visited the capital for the first time with her parents, her mother repeated this story to her in an effort to scare her away from wandering away from them (it worked, especially in said park).