Ghost Stories: Lilith in Latin America (Revised, 11/25)

Lilith is best known as the Queen of Demons in Jewish Mythology, the spectral genetrix of every of "unclean spirit" we've ever known. Oddly enough her presence is felt in the the folktales of Latin America as the roving ghost La Llorona.  Like it or not, she also bears resemblance to Brujeria's favorite folk saint, Holy Death.  Let's take a look at a few of the reasons why.

As a child in the American Midwest I heard very little about Mexico.  The older people in my neighborhood didn't paint a pretty picture.  Most of the information they gave me was based on ignorance.  It became clear this was a misunderstood place, home to people who weren't at all welcome in my conservative hemisphere.  Every so often we'd read a geographical fact or folktale in grade school credited to Mexico.  By third of fourth grade I heard about La Llorona, the ghostly woman in white who hunted for children.  By twenty-three I was living in New Mexico and learned several different versions of her tale.  It became clear she was just as misunderstood as the Mexicans who occasionally made their way to my home town.  

     So who is La Llorona?  I asked my boyfriend who grew up in Moriarty and Albuquerque, New Mexico, if he ever heard of her.  He told me she was a woman who was searching for "her kid" and drowned at a certain point.  "I always kind of thought she was real, you know?"  This from a practical twenty-six year old who grew up with the realities of racism, violence and road rage that plagues our city.  "I just knew."

     There are several different versions of La Llorona.  Like Santisima Muerte (The Holy Death) she is partially rooted in Cihuacoatl, the Aztec deity who supposedly appeared weeping in white for her children who would be conquered by the Spaniards.  Later she is linked to La Malinche, an Aztec woman who stabbed her children by a lake in Mexico City to protect them from Cortes.  After her death she was said to haunt the area as the Weeping Woman, terrifying locals with her famous scream.  In more modern times the name has been applied to Maria, a mother who drowned her own children to punish her husband.  After he death she was turned away from the gates of Heaven and told to find her children.  She exists ever after as the mournful Weeping Woman, searching for children who look like her own.

     So how do these spirits relate to Lilith?  They each transcend Christian and Pagan boundaries.  They each have many hats. La Llorona has been called a Mexican Lamia, the child-stealing monster discussed last entry.  Lilith, who was said to steal human children to replace those God had murdered was also refuse by Heaven when she tried to retire there like Maria's Weeping Woman.  In the case of Santisima Muerte we have a Mexican folk saint believed to derive from pre-Christian sources, whose colored robes connect to certain events in the Garden of Eden. Her messenger is none other than Lilith's totemic owl.  They are all phantoms, but they are also angels and ghosts.