The presence of ghostly beings who cry by rivers for various reasons is a recurring feature of the
mythology of Mesoamerican peoples. Thus, traits of these specters can be found in several pre-Columbian cultures, which eventually, with the arrival of the
Spanish conquistadors, came to share common characteristics due to the expansion of Spanish dominion over the continent. The legend is a story that has mythical referents in the pre-Hispanic universe,
Pre-Columbian legends For the ancestral cultures of the Americas, myths answer questions about the origin of man and the universe. These myths were carried by the Indigenous societies of the Americas in their migrations, being transmitted orally through many generations. Myths are traditionally linked to religion and worship. Their characters are divine beings, both worshipped and feared, whose powers transcend human intellect. Whether the myth is of
Quechua,
Nahuatl,
Guaraní, or
Aymara inspiration, its essence lies in the need of the human spirit to unravel the wonders and mysteries that surround and terrify it. The legend of La Llorona is, above all, a story created to warn and frighten. In the case of Xtabay (or Xtabal), this Lacandon goddess is identified as an evil spirit in the form of a beautiful woman whose back has the shape of a hollow tree. By inducing men to embrace her, she drives them mad and kills them. The Zapotec goddess Xonaxi Queculla, meanwhile, is a deity of death, the
underworld and lust who appears in some representations with emaciated arms. Attractive at first sight, she appears to men, makes them fall in love and seduces them, only to later transform into a skeleton and carry the spirit of her victims to the underworld.
Auicanime was considered among the Purépechas to be the goddess of hunger (her name can be translated as the
Thirsty One or the
Needy One). She was also the goddess of women who died in childbirth during their first delivery, who, according to belief, became warriors (
mocihuaquetzaque), which turned them into divinities and, therefore, into objects of worship and offering.
Cihuacóatl and other Mexica entities In the particular case of the
Mexica, the pre-Hispanic legend of La Llorona arises from a multitude of hybrid oral narratives. La Llorona has been associated with the pre-Hispanic goddess
Tenpecutli, who purged a sorrow for having drowned her children in a river. This goddess, who was very beautiful, had the ability to change her face into that of an animal if someone looked into her eyes, like the
nahuales. Another figure with whom she has been associated was the goddess of the underworld
Mictlancíhuatl, who seduced and ruined men. It has also been proposed that La Llorona is a hybridization of three Mexica goddesses:
Cihuacóatl (the mother goddess and serpent woman),
Teoyaominqui (the watcher of the dead), and
Quilaztli (goddess of childbirth and twins). For the Mexica, this trio of goddesses wandered in the figure of a woman dressed in white who cried for her lost children, and hearing her was an ill omen. One of the best-known pre-Hispanic antecedents of the legend of La Llorona is the one that identifies her with the Mexica goddess
Cihuacóatl. This goddess has different attributes: goddess of the earth (
Coatlicue), fertility and childbirth (Quilaztli), warrior woman (Yaocíhuatl), and mother (
Tonantzin), both of the Mexica and of their very gods (she was the mother of
Huitzilopochtli, the greatest Mexica god). Cihuacóatl was also the patron of the
cihuateteo, spirits of women who died in childbirth who at night cried out and roared in the air, who descended to the earth on certain days dedicated to them in the calendar in order to frighten at crossroads and who were fatal for children. On her story being connected to specific Aztec mythological creation stories. "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.
Spirits, ghosts, and weeping women of the Intermediate Area , the owl, lady of the night, is related to the myth of Wíkela, the
Tulevieja, the weeping woman of
Bribri legend In the
Bribri and
Cabécar Talamancan mythology, located on the border between
Costa Rica and
Panama, the stories of these spirits are transmitted through the
Suwoh, the oral tradition of these peoples. In their myths, these spirits, called
itsö, are beings associated with dark and tangled mountains, mountain abysses, rains, strong winds, and river waterfalls, with a strong connection to the forces of nature and rural life. They are creatures with the appearance of a woman and the body of a bird that dwell in caves and riverbeds, and that utter mournful cries when a child is about to die, or else lose children in the forest when they stray from their parents. Examples of these myths are the stories of
Sakabiali and the
Wíkela. In the
Bribri language, the word
itsö means both "weeping woman" and "
tulevieja". Hence there are similarities between the legends told in Costa Rica and Panama for these two ghosts (basically a woman who kills her child, the result of an unwanted pregnancy, and who is therefore condemned to wander as a ghost). The Indigenous peoples of Colombia and Venezuela also have many myths about female divinities associated with rivers and nature, such as the
Madremonte in Colombia and
María Lionza in Venezuela. These are protective deities of forests, animals, and water sources, with powers over natural phenomena. In Colombian legends, for example, the Madremonte appears during stormy nights and tempests, uttering roars and infernal screams that shake the mountain. In the case of María Lionza, many of her origin myths have to do with water, and, like the Madremonte, she is protector of fish and nature.
Amazonian and Andean legends In
South America there are some pre-Columbian legends that came to be associated with that of La Llorona once Hispanic dominion was established over the continent, but which do not have a common origin with it, although there are very similar aspects. Similar traces can be found in the legend of the
Ayaymama of Peruvian Amazonian mythology. In this legend, a mother abandons her two children in a river because she feels that she is going to die of an illness and wants to avoid them dying because of her. The children end up transformed into birds that emit a mournful sound. In the
Guaraní legends of Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, the myth of La Llorona is related to the urutaú (
Nyctibius griseus), also called güemí-cué, a nocturnal bird that emits sounds similar to a weeping woman.
Pucullén , Pucullén is a tall, thin woman, dressed in black, whose crying announces the death of some person Prominent among these legends is the story of Pucullén (from
Mapudungun külleñu, 'tears', and
pu, a plural prefix), belonging to the folklore of the
Mapuches of
Chile. Pucullén weeps eternally because her child was taken from her arms at a very early age, or because one of her children died in her arms.
Europe Stories of weeping female phantoms are common in the folklore of both
Iberian and
Amerindian cultures. Scholars have pointed out similarities between and the of
Aztec mythology, as well as
Eve and
Lilith of
Hebrew mythology. Author
Ben Radford's investigation into the legend of , published in
Mysterious New Mexico, found common elements of the story in the German folktale
"Die Weiße Frau" dating from 1486. also bears a resemblance to the ancient
Greek tale of the
demigoddess
Lamia, in which
Hera,
Zeus's wife, learned of his affair with Lamia and killed all the children Lamia had with Zeus. Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children, Lamia kills other women's children. The
Greek legend of
Jason and
Medea also features the motif of a woman who murders her children as an act of revenge against her husband, who has left her.
Spain The tales of
La Llorona are seen differently in
Spain, as detailed in
Elvira, La Llorona published by José Maria León y Domínguez, a Jesuit academic from Cadiz. The tale begins with a woman named Elvira who experiences a devastating life which slowly led to her transformation into the spectral figure
La Llorona. Other mythologies In
Eastern Europe, the modern
Rusalka is a type of
water spirit in
Slavic mythology. They come to be after a woman drowns due to suicide or murder, especially if they had an unwanted pregnancy. Then they must stay in this world for a period of time.
First documentation of the legend: the sixth omen The
Florentine Codex is an important text about the Spanish invasion of 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. 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 legend of La Llorona was documented around 1550, when Friar
Bernardino de Sahagún recorded the legend of Chocacíhuatl in his monumental work
Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (1540–1585) and identified this figure with the goddess
Cihuacóatl. According to the
Codex Aubin, Cihuacóatl was one of the two deities that accompanied the
Mexica during their pilgrimage in search of
Aztlán. According to the dual conception of Mesoamerican deities, Cihuacóatl is at once the goddess who gives life and death, capable of creating and destroying her children. She is at once a nurturing and destructive mother. According to the legend, before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in Mexico, a series of omens foretold the fall of the
Mexica Empire at the hands of men coming from the east. One of these omens was the appearance of the goddess Cihuacóatl in the form of a woman dressed in a flowing white gown, with long black hair loose, materializing over the waters of
Lake Texcoco, and wandering among the lakes and temples of the
Anáhuac, she wept and lamented, crying out,
"Ay mis hijos, ¿dónde los llevaré para que escapen de tan funesto destino?" ("Oh my children, where shall I take you so that you may escape such a dreadful fate?"), terrifying the inhabitants of
Tenochtitlan, After the
Conquest of Mexico, during the Colonial era, inhabitants reported the appearance of the wandering ghost of a woman dressed in white who roamed the streets of
Mexico City uttering sad wails, passing through the
Main Plaza (former site of the destroyed temple of
Huitzilopochtli, the greatest Aztec god and son of Cihuacóatl), where she looked toward the east, and then continued to
Lake Texcoco, where she vanished among the shadows. Fray Bernardino attributes the legend to the Mexica people, in present-day Mexico.
The legend during the Viceroyal period The legend of La Llorona took shape during the
Viceroyal period, During the period of
New Spain, the legend of La Llorona underwent transformations. Because of fear of heresy, La Llorona could not be directly identified with pre-Hispanic goddesses, so the description and characteristics of the legend changed in order to adapt to the new standards of the colonists, although it retained its Indigenous essence: the white clothing, the long black hair, the wrenching cry of "¡Ay mis hijos!" and its relation to water. translates at a meeting between
Moctezuma II and
Hernán Cortés.
Lienzo de Tlaxcala In colonial Mexico, the legend of La Llorona was identified with the story of
La Malinche, a key figure during the
Conquest of Mexico. This negative view of the story of Malinche and her relationship with
Hernán Cortés is part of the
Black legend of these figures. From here seem to come many of the versions that present La Llorona as the protagonist of a tragic story of love and betrayal between the Indigenous woman (or mestiza or
criollo) and her Spanish lover, which finally leads her to
infanticide as a manifestation of the desire to punish the man in the form of the lover, in some versions, or the woman's father, in others, for which she uses the child as the instrument of vengeance because the child is the proof of dishonor, but also, in some way, as a way of punishing herself for her weakness. However, although there are both popular and literary versions that associate the legend of La Llorona with Malinche, for some researchers, the two figures are absolute opposites, firstly because of historical reality (Malinche did not kill her children), and also because of their symbolism, since her status as Hernán Cortés's sexual slave created the basis of colonial domination by creating ties between Indigenous people and Spaniards. The legend of La Llorona rather destroys this basis by killing her mestizo children.
19th century A published reference to the legend is a 19th-century sonnet by Mexican poet
Manuel Carpio. The poem makes no reference to infanticide, rather is identified as the ghost of a woman named Rosalia who was murdered by her husband. ==Regional versions==