Unable to save them and consumed by guilt, she drowns herself as well but is unable to enter the afterlife, forced to be in purgatory and roam this earth until she finds her children. One day, María sees her husband with another woman and in a fit of blind rage, she drowns their children in a river, which she immediately regrets. In a typical version of the legend, a beautiful woman named María marries a rich ranchero / conquistador to whom she bears two children. The legend has a wide variety of details and versions. The poem makes no reference to infanticide, rather La Llorona is identified as the ghost of a woman named Rosalia who was murdered by her husband. While the roots of the La Llorona legend appear to be pre-Hispanic, the earliest published reference to the legend is a 19th-century sonnet by Mexican poet Manuel Carpio. She cried out loudly at night, saying, 'Oh my children, we are about to go forever.' Sometimes she said, 'Oh my children, where am I to take you?' The Florentine Codex is an important text that originated in late Mexico in 1519, a quote from which is, 'The sixth omen was that many times a woman would be heard going along weeping and shouting. Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children, Lamia kills other women's children.

La Llorona also bears a resemblance to the ancient Greek tale of the demigoddess Lamia, in which Hera, Zeus' wife, learned of his affair with Lamia and killed all the children Lamia had with Zeus. Author Ben Radford's investigation into the legend of La Llorona, published in Mysterious New Mexico, found common elements of the story in the German folktale 'Die Weisse Frau' dating from 1486. Scholars have pointed out similarities between La Llorona and the Cihuacōātl of Aztec mythology, as well as Eve and Lilith of Hebrew mythology. Stories of weeping female phantoms are common in the folklore of both Iberian and Amerindian cultures. La Malinche is considered both the mother of the modern Mexican people and a symbol of national treachery for her role in aiding the Spanish. La Llorona is sometimes conflated with La Malinche, the Nahua woman who served as Hernán Cortés' interpreter and also bore his son. The legend of La Llorona is traditionally told throughout Mexico, Central America and northern South America. Her seeking of children to keep for herself is significantly compared to Coatlicue, known as 'Our Lady Mother' or Tonantsi (who's also comparable to the Virgen de Guadalupe, another significant mother figure in Mexican-culture), also a monster that devurs filth or sin. The motherly nature of La Llorona's tragedy has been compared to Chihuacoatl, an Aztec goddess deity of motherhood. 'The Hungry Woman' includes a wailing woman constantly crying for food, which has been compared to La Llorona's signature nocturnal wailing for her children. But there are theories about her story being connected to specific Aztec mythological creation stories. The earliest documentation of La Llorona is traced back to 1550 in Mexico City. Today, the lore of La Llorona is well known in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. The villainous qualities of La Llorona, including infanticide and the murdering of one's own blood is assumed to be connected to the narrative surrounding Doña Marina, also known as La Malinche, or Maltinzin in her original nomenclature. The most common lore about La Llorona includes her initially being an Indigenous woman who murdered her own children, which she bore from a wealthy Spaniard, after he abandoned her. However, La Llorona is most commonly associated with the colonial era and the dynamic between Spanish conquistadores and indigenous women. Origins Įarly colonial times provided evidence that the lore is pre-Hispanic, originating in the central highlands. La Llorona ( American Spanish: 'The Crying Woman' or 'The Wailer') is a Mexican mythical vengeful ghost who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children whom she drowned in a jealous rage after discovering her husband was cheating on her. Statue of La Llorona on an island of Xochimilco, Mexico, 2015

Compositor de la llorona