Watch Out for La Llorona!

I first heard about La Llorona when I was very young and would sit into the night listening to my mother, aunts and their friends telling stories. We heard these stories during visits with family in San Luis, Sonora from our home on an Indian Reservation in Arizona.

As you might imagine, growing up between cultures exposed me to stories that were rich and varied. These stories were a way of winding all the kids down from a day of hyperactivity, or to bond with family, but mostly a passive-aggressive way of keeping us in line.

This story-telling had a pattern: from cuentos of odd sounds in the night, angelic lights that would guide a weary traveler home safely, to wild animals, brujas (witches) and shape-shifting naguals. They were explanations, warnings of a sort.

Somehow the stories always found their way back to El Cucuy or La Llorona…the ultimate dysfunctional couple (though clearly from different households).

These stories were...mostly a passive-aggressive way of keeping us in line.

Everyone’s recollection of La Llorona is different. Here’s mine:

She started out as a married, lovely lady with a bunch of kids who drove her nuts. These kids were unruly, they didn’t listen to their mother, didn’t do their chores, ran through the house with muddy feet, blew out candles, never put stuff back where it belonged and didn’t say their prayers (obviously). 

Evidently dad wasn’t around much. He didn’t discipline the kids and didn’t pay much attention to the wife. I never got clear on their relationship status - was she a single mother or simply in a bad marriage?

Once La Llorona (I’ve never heard anyone refer to her real given name) had reached the point of giving up on her situation and had also met a studly macho man that she fancied, she wanted out. Evidently, this new guy didn’t like kids and didn’t want them around.

I guess that this left her few options. So she did the next best thing; she killed her kids and then ran off looking for this guy. Her method of disposing her children...?

Drowning them in the river.

As far as I recall, she never found the guy she went after. None of the story-telling adults ever seemed interested in explaining what happened with the relationship.

After she realized what she had done, she went mad and killed herself. An up-lifting story, I know.

Here’s where her story really begins, because from that point forward she wanders through eternity searching for her dead children near or around water. Evidently it doesn’t matter if the body of water is a river, an ocean, a lake or a canal…she’s out there looking for those kids. On a regular basis she takes (and drowns, I guess) any kid she sees running around unsupervised near the water. A good lesson for wandering, truant kids I suppose.

It worked to a certain extent as it got us to think twice!

These stories were always colored with spine-chilling sound effects.  “Oooooooooohhhhh...Aaaaaahhhh…Ooooooohhh.” the women would call out.  Any kind of agonizing weeping and wailing sounds would do.

I was always amazed at how fearless my mom, aunts and their friends seemed. Evidently, La Llorona didn’t scare them; they were brave. They had survived into adulthood by minding their parents and by not wandering off near water alone into the night.

When I was around 8 to 10 years old, we lived in a trailer camp which was an agricultural company’s housing area for the workers. I had friends there from different regions of Mexico. This meant different outlooks…food and of course, stories of La Llorona. Sometimes a bunch of us would sit and compare stories. Somehow we always ended up with La Llorona.

This shows you the impact of the stories we’d each heard in our earlier years, independent of each other. We all shared a deep-rooted fear of La Llorona.

My favorite recollection of one of these stories was from my friend Ricky........ 

Ricky’s uncle who lived on a small farm in Mexico (near a river) was having issues with La Llorona. He could hear her wailing into the night near the river trees. This caused his cows to produce sour milk and stillborn calves, along with other unhealthy things happening to his animals and crops. From the sound of it though, he didn’t have issues with his kids misbehaving.

His uncle decided to do something. He placed crosses made of flowers on cacti and ocotillos along the perimeter of his farm near the river. He did this in meticulous manner, with the crosses forming a pathway leading away from his farm. Apparently this worked. The following night as the uncle heard the wailing and weeping, it turned into screams of fear and pain which he could hear as he sat inside the shelter of his house. The screams faded away from his farm, down the direction he had intended for her to go. Finally, the screams could be heard no more.

Ricky told us that from that point on his uncle’s cattle were fine, as were the crops. La Llorona had been banished forever from this area of the river.

Life returned to normal. Except for the fact that his uncle had committed a sacrilege by placing holy crosses on thorny vegetation. This resulted in the uncle having his own stigmata on his hands. I guess this made his hands bleed periodically as if pricked by cactus thorns. Other than that, everything else was fine.

Living in this farming area during the 1960s and 70s, we were always surrounded by canals and fields. This is a valley in western Arizona where those canals were fed by the Colorado River.

I swear that sometimes sitting outside, whether by myself or with my friends, I would hear La Llorona in the background near the canal. I never actually came across her though.

Honestly, I really wasn’t that scared. Sure, I had a healthy respect (the type of respect you give someone or something in hopes that they’ll leave you alone and not eat or drown you) but the fact that my Tía Ramona never exhibited any fear of La Llorona was comforting enough for me.

Ramona was (and still is, in her mid-90s) a very tough and vulgar-speaking woman. She never hesitated to smack any of her kids or their friends. In my heart I knew that no matter how strict she was, she would protect me from La Llorona.

La Llorona had nothing on her.

I knew that my Tía Ramona could take her in a fight or simply chase her away with a flyswatter. Or maybe even toss a chancla (sandal) at her to make sure she never came back.

Maybe that’s why I never came across La Llorona in person; she had already been chased away.