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Why La Llorona of U.S.-Mexican folklore continues to haunt our cultural imagination

Domino R. Perez, author of “There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture”
University of Texas Press, Dr. Domino R. Perez
Domino R. Perez, author of “There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture”

La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, is one of the most famous figures in U.S.-Mexican folklore.

In the traditional version of the story, La Llorona is a woman abandoned by the man she loved and left all alone to raise their children. Overwhelmed with emotion, she is compelled to murder the children, and throw them into a river. La Llorona dies alone, and in the afterlife, she is condemned to wander for eternity looking for her drowned children, weeping and wailing.

For generations, the legend of La Llorona has been passed down through oral tradition, often referenced in poetry, books, and film. She even made an appearance in a 2004 milk commercial, where her wailing intensifies after she opens the refrigerator and discovers an empty carton.

Got milk? - La Llorona

Dr. Domino Perez, author of a book called “There Was A Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture," has been studying her for decades and joined The Show to talk about why the story haunts our cultural imagination, and how it’s evolved in recent years.

Full conversation

DOMINO PEREZ: Well, I think it all depends on how you interpret the story. I think historically, she has been depicted as a tragic figure. But how that tragedy comes about varies. In some cases, she has been abandoned, some cases, she has committed infanticide as an act of revenge or out of despair.

The wailing is an articulation of her suffering, both her anguish and as a kind of warning, letting you know those who hear her, know what has happened to her or the potential for something like this to happen to really any woman.

SAM DINGMAN: Yeah. You know, I hadn't considered this until we started talking. But here in the US, this election cycle, obviously, the agency and personhood of women as distinct from whether or not they have decided to have children is a subject of great and very intense discussion. And it struck me in terms of what you were just saying that you could also interpret La Llorona’s decision to kill her children to get back at her husband as, as a way of her saying like I am not defined by the fact that I am a mother to these children. I am maybe even first and foremost, a person who you betrayed.

PEREZ: Absolutely. One of my favorites. It's a poetic triptych by Cordelia Candelaria. And she looks at her, in these three poems, she looks at La Llorona in different stages of her life. There's one poem that focuses on her before the weeping and the wailing began. So she's a young girl before any sort of tragedy has happened. And then in another one, she has become the kind of boogie woman who lurks along the shores of rivers or sometimes, you know, out ill behaving children's bedrooms.

And then the third portrait is of her as an older woman. It's a quiet poem about, you know, La Llorona, washing her feet before she has to start wailing and, and wandering again. And as she's washing her feet in the river, she sees her children reaching out for her and her agony begins all over again.

And I think that's a powerful portrait of womanhood that says this figure doesn't exist in isolation. Something happened to this woman. She was once a young girl who was filled with all of this innocence and all of this potential and something or someone failed her.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, I got chills in your, in your unfolding of that description of the triptych. It's, it's so empathic and, and powerful as you say, to consider a version of this story where the crime, like all crimes, doesn't happen in a vacuum.

PEREZ: Absolutely. The importance about why you know the story is that it's incredibly adaptive what we would call in folklore, it's dynamic. It's always changing and it remains relevant because her people and the people who are telling stories about her find her relevant.

So for example, during the previous administration, we saw an uptick of La Llorona stories around the border. And when you think about the child separation policies and the images that we saw of, you know, children in cages and children being taken away from their parents, the person or the entity that's taking away La Llorona’s children is not la Yona or it's not even the man, it's the state.

DINGMAN: I'm curious for you. How did you first discover the story and what was compelling to you about it?

PEREZ: So, our family used to gather, we're very extended family used to gather any sort of big holiday, we would all get together. And there was a lot of food preparation that was taking place and it was gender segregated. And the men would be outside minding the barbecue and the women would be inside. But I wanted to be where my male cousins were and they were outside.

And so I remember sneaking out one night and they were exchanging stories about this terrifying woman. One had seen her. He was driving home one night in the back roads of Texas. And he kept passing this woman, this hitchhiker on the side of the road. And then the last time he encountered her, she was standing in the middle of the road and he slammed on brakes. So the truck didn't hit her and then she turned into a flock of birds. I was terrified.

DINGMAN: I was terrified.

PEREZ: And I went, I went running away from that storytelling circle and you know, I was convinced that this woman, this, this La Llorona was a figure that specifically haunted the men in my family. And then strangely, it was when I was in graduate school and we were reading Rudolfo Anaya “Bless Me, Ultima.” The young protagonist is warned about La Llorona. And I thought, wait a minute, how is this even possible? I haven't even heard of La Llorona since I was a kid. And that just was the beginning of me going down the rabbit hole.

And so I feel like I don't think I found La Llorona. I think La Llorona found me and I've been a steward of her story now. I don't think she's ever gonna quite be done with me.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, it seems like she has a lot of unfinished business from the way we've been talking about her. As a last question, I'm curious to know in all these years of being a steward of her story as you put it. do you ever feel like you've had a direct encounter with her?

PEREZ: So people always ask me this question. They all ask some version of this question they say, you know, do you think La Llorona is a story? Do you think she's real? Do you think she's a spirit? Do you think that she's this kind of avenging angel? And my answer is always yes.

I guess the way to describe it would be that she's always in the periphery like I can see her in the periphery, but I can't turn my head quite slowly enough to get a full glimpse of her, but I know she's there. You can't ever be a temporary steward. Once she picks you, your picked for life.

A still from the Got Milk ad featuring La Llorona.
Got Milk
A still from the Got Milk ad featuring La Llorona.
KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.

Sam Dingman is a reporter and host for KJZZ’s The Show. Prior to KJZZ, Dingman was the creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Family Ghosts.
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