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.
