La Llorona ("The Weeping Woman") is a widespread legend in Mexico, the US southwest, Puerto Rico and Central and South America.
Although several variations exist, the basic story tells of a
beautiful woman by the name of Maria who drowns her children in order to
be with the man that she loved. The man would not have her, which
devastated her. She would not take no for an answer, so she drowned
herself in a lake in
Mexico.
Challenged at the gates of heaven as to the whereabouts of her
children, she is not permitted to enter the afterlife until she has
found them. Maria is forced to wander the Earth for all eternity,
searching in vain for her drowned offspring, with her constant weeping
giving her the name "La Llorona".
In some versions of this tale and legend, La Llorona will kidnap
wandering children who resemble her missing children, or children who
disobey their parents. People who claim to have seen her say she appears
at night or in the late evenings from rivers or oceans in Mexico. Some
believe that those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for
death, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend. She is said to cry "Ay, mis
hijos!" which translates to "Oh, my children!"
La Llorona bears a resemblance to the ancient Greek tale of the demonic
demigodess Lamia.
Hera, Zeus' wife, learned of his affair with Lamia, and then forced
Zeus
to give up the relationship and punished Lamia by forcing her to eat
her own children. Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children,
Lamia preys upon human children and devours them if she catches them.
In Greek mythology,
Medea killed the two children fathered by
Jason (one of the Argonauts) after he left her for another woman.
Local
Aztec folklore possibly influenced the legend; the
goddess Cihuacoatl or
Coatlicue was said to have appeared shortly prior to the invasion of Mexico by
Hernán Cortés, weeping for her lost children, an omen of the fall of the Aztec empire.
La Llorona is also sometimes identified with
La Malinche, the
Nahua woman who served as Cortés' interpreter and who some say betrayed Mexico to the
Spanish conquistadors.
In one folk story of La Malinche, she becomes Cortés' mistress and bore
him a child, only to be abandoned so that he could marry a Spanish
lady
(although no evidence exists that La Malinche killed her children).
Aztec pride drove La Malinche to acts of vengeance. In this context, the
tale compares the Spanish invasion of Mexico and the demise of
indigenous culture after the conquest with La Llorona's loss.