La Llorona

**La Llorona** (pronounced [la ʝo.ˈɾo.na], "The Weeping Woman" or "the cry") is an name given to a female spirit from Latin American folklore. It's said that La Llorona was an women was an wife to an husband, who who abandoned her and their two sons. Out of grief and anger, La Llorona would drown her children would then be eternally condemned to wonder after death and find her children's bodies.

However, during the events of Llorona paranormal event, John Smith who was hired to investigate that involved missing children, did Smith was able to help achieve Llorona goals by locating and aquiring the corpses of her children and finally giving her peace and granting forgiveness when the Archbishop of the Church of England Laura Stuart who was visting Latin America, cleansed her soul in order to get her and her two children to Purgatory.

It's also the name given to spirit phantoms of weeping women of any spiritual classes set by the Magi Order, and the Christian denomination.

## Profile

### Legend

#### Mexican

The legend is said that in a rural village there lived a young woman named Maria. She came from a poor family but was known around her village for her beauty. One day, an extremely wealthy nobleman traveled through her village. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Maria. Maria was charmed by him and he was taken by her beauty, so when he proposed to her, she immediately accepted. Maria's family was thrilled that she was marrying into a wealthy family, but the nobleman's father was extremely disappointed that his son was marrying into poverty. Maria and her new husband built a house in the village to be away from his disapproving father. Eventually, she gave birth to two sons. Her husband was always traveling and began to stop spending time with his family. When he came home, he only paid attention to the sons and as time passed Maria could tell that her husband was falling out of love with her, because she was getting old. One day, he returned to the village with a younger woman, and told his sons farewell, ignoring Maria.

Maria, angry and hurt, took her children to a river and drowned them in a blind rage. She realized what she had done and searched for them, but the river had already carried them away. Days later, she was found dead on the river bank. She had committed the two ultimate sins: Murder and Suicide.

Challenged at the gates of heaven for the whereabouts of her children, she is not permitted to enter the afterlife until she finds them. Stuck between the land of the living and the dead, she spends eternity looking for her lost children. She is always heard weeping for her children, earning her the name "La Llorona".[1] It is said that if you hear her crying, you are to run the opposite way. If you hear her cries, they could bring misfortune or even death. Many parents in Latin America use this story to scare their children from staying out too late.

La Llorona kidnaps wandering children at night, mistaking them for her own. She begs the heavens for forgiveness, and drowns the children she kidnaps. People who claim to have seen her say she appears at night or in the late evening by rivers or lakes, wearing a white or black gown with a veil. Some believe those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death or misfortune, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend. Among her wails, she is noted as crying "¡Ay, mis hijos!" which translates to "Oh, my children!" or "Oh, my sons!" She scrapes the bottom of the rivers and lakes, searching for her sons. It is said that when her wails sound near she is actually far and when she sounds distant, she is actually very near.

### Origins

The legend of La Llorona is traditionally known throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Central and South America.Template:Sfn

La Llorona is also sometimes identified with La Malinche, the Nahua woman who served as Cortés' interpreter and mistress who bore his children and who some say was betrayed by the Spanish conquistadors. In one folk story of La Malinche, she became Hernán Cortés' mistress and bore him a child, only to be abandoned so that he could marry a Spanish lady (although no evidence exists that La Malinche killed her children). Aztec pride drove La Malinche to acts of vengeance. In this context, the tale compares the Spanish discovery of the New World and the demise of indigenous culture after the conquest with La Llorona's loss.

Stories of weeping female phantoms are common in the folklore of both European and indigenous American cultures. Scholars have pointed out similarities between La Llorona and the Cihuacōātl of Aztec mythology,Template:Sfn as well as Eve and Lilith of Old World mythology.Template:Sfn Author Ben Radford's investigation into the legend of La Llorona, published in *Mysterious New Mexico*, traced elements of the story back to a German folktale dating from 1486.

The earliest published reference to La Llorona occurred in a sonnet written by Mexican poet Manuel Carpio in the late 1800s. The poem makes no reference to infanticide, rather La Llorona is identified as the ghost of a woman who was murdered by her husband.Template:Sfn

#### Similar folktales

The Chumash of Southern California have their own connection to La Llorona. Chumash mythology mentions La Llorona when explaining nunašɨš (creatures of the other world) called the "maxulaw" or "mamismis." Mythology says the Chumash believe in both the nunašɨš and La Llorona and specifically hear the maxulaw cry up in the trees. The maxulaw cry is considered an omen of death. The Maxulaw is described as looking like a cat with skin of rawhide leather.

Outside the Americas, La Llorona bears a resemblance to the ancient Greek tale of the demonic demigodess Lamia. Hera, Zeus' wife, learned of his affair with Lamia and, out of anger, killed all the children Lamia had with Zeus. Out of jealousy over the loss of her own children, Lamia steals other women's children. In Greek mythology, Medea killed the two children fathered by Jason (one of the Argonauts) after he left her for another woman.

## References

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10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 ed. Blackburn, Thomas C. "December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives" p. 93
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