page_title: Ghosts in Mexican culture
section_title: La Llorona
hierarchical_section_title: Ghosts in Mexican culture / Modern ghost legends / La Llorona
caption_attribution_description: Español: Ajileo Barajas se disfraza como "La Llorona" para enfrentar a la patrulla fronteriza.
context_page_description: There is an extensive and varied belief in ghosts in Mexican culture. The modern state of Mexico is inhabited by peoples such as the Maya and Nahua. Their beliefs in a supernatural world has survived and evolved, combined with the Catholic beliefs of the Spanish conquest. The Day of the Dead incorporates pre-Columbian beliefs with Christian elements. Mexican literature and movies include many stories of ghosts interacting with the living.
context_section_description: "La Llorona" is Spanish for "The Crying Woman" and is a popular legend in Spanish-speaking cultures in the colonies of the Americas, with many versions extant. The basic story is that La Llorona was a beautiful woman who killed her children to be with the man that she loved and was subsequently rejected by him. He might have been the children's father who had left their mother for another woman, or he might have been a man she loved but who was uninterested in a relationship with a woman with children, and whom she thought she could win if the children were out of the way.
  She drowned the children and then, after being rejected anyway, killed herself. She is doomed to wander, vainly searching for her children for all eternity. Her constant weeping is the reason for her name. In some cases, according to the tale, she will kidnap wandering children or children who misbehave.
caption: From a film La Llorona.
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