Not long ago two North American couples mentioned seeing plays in different parts of Mexico based on the heart-twisting “La Llorona” legend, a centerpiece of this country’s rich lore and myth. One couple was introduced to the sad apparition in Mexico City; the other applauded the story in Zacatecas.
La Llorona (The Crying Woman) is both ancient (pre-Hispanic) and familiar (almost every village and town has a particular place that this ghostly late-night presence prefers for her appearances). In pre-Conquest times, La Llorona was a goddess who sacrificed infants and vanished, shrieking, into some watery source — a well, a washing place for women.
Hispanic versions
Following the arrival of the Spanish, versions of the Llorona legend proliferated as never before. Usually, in those early recountings, La Llorona murders her offspring, born out of wedlock, when her Spanish lover weds a woman of his own race and demands custody of the children.
A subsequent variation changed La Llorona’s lover from a Spaniard to a man of wealth, who turns away to marry a woman of his own station.
There was also the immediately post-Conquest version that had La Llorona weeping for her Mexican children, all of whom had been slaughtered, conquered and dispossessed. “Ay, mis hijos (Oh, my children) / Que no tienen (That do not have) / Ni brazos ni piernas (either arms or legs).”
Mexico’s first Roman Catholic bishop, Bernardino de Sahagun, recording the background of the Mexica (Aztec) god Cihuacoatl in his “History of New Spain,” tells of the legend of a ghostly figure appearing “many times as a woman attired in the kind of finery as is seen in the Palace.” She was heard weeping in the night, according to the bishop, foretelling the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital that Hernan Cortes leveled.
“Ah, my children, our destruction has arrived! Where can I take you that you won’t be lost?” La Llorona wept for all her Mexican children.
‘Malinche’
But even before Sahagun wrote those words, widespread belief existed that La Llorona was the comely Doña Maria, “Malinche,” the Indian princess who became the mistress of Cortes, acting as his translator and often his emissary in aiding the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Now the stories said, she wanders through the night, mourning both her betrayal of her own kind, and her betrayal by Cortes.
Haunting the 17th century
Naturally, La Llorona was one of the indigenous spiritual presences that the conquistadores and Catholic priests tried to get rid of. They ended up merely perpetuating her legend and giving her the gift of her present name. In the 17th century, she terrified much of Mexico City, wailing through late-night streets, haunting the shadows of Spanish churches and homes, her hair wild in the night wind, her white gown wrapped against her body like a shroud.
Church version
One early Hispanicized version of her presence was a moralistic one — if the Spanish couldn’t get rid of her, at least they could turn her presence into a lesson — claiming she was a woman who had committed a great sin and that, unable to find rest in the grave, she returned to assuage her anguish by pacing the earthly night, warning those on the brink of wrongdoing.
Anyone who has lived long in Mexico has heard some version of the myth. It seems as if nearly every state in the Republic has its own interpretation. Many communities claim that such a woman lived right there, just beyond that house, near the old town well, or next to that arroyo that used to be a clear stream. And that woman, many people will tell you, even today wanders the pueblo streets at night wailing her miseries and weeping, “Ay, mis hijos ...”
The well-known folk song “La Llorona” has traveled far from its beginnings in Juchitan, Oaxaca, and though it has many different lyrics and literally hundreds of stanzas, its measured, heart rending melody is the same from the Rio Bravo to the Rio Huixtla.
Though the song’s many lyrics provide little clue to La Llorona’s true identity and none speak of Sahagun’s early report, the melancholy trough of the canto echoes that ancient legend’s unquenchable woe:
“They say I do not mourn, Llorona,
Because they do not see me cry.
But there is a death that makes no sound, Llorona,
And its pain is even greater.
Llorona, take me to the river,
Cover me with your rebozo, Llorona,
For I am dying of the cold.”
Besides this popular song, a number of theater groups dedicated to keeping indigenous and traditional Mexican culture alive today recreate the beginnings of the Llorona legend, not for audiences only in Zacatecas and Mexico City, but throughout the Republic..