thumb|Statue of La Llorona on an island of [[Lake Xochimilco|Xochimilco, Mexico, 2015]]
(; ) is a vengeful ghost in Hispanic American folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children whom her Spaniard husband drowned after she discovered he was unfaithful to her. Whoever hears her crying is said to either suffer misfortune, death, or become extremely unsuccessful in life.
The lore of La Llorona is well known in Mexico and the southwestern United States. Her legend is traditionally told throughout Mexico, Central America and northern South America.
is sometimes conflated with , the Nahua woman who served as 's interpreter and also bore his son. is considered both the mother of the modern Mexican people and a symbol of national treachery for her role in aiding the Spanish.
Origins
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
thumb|125px|In [[Bribri mythology|Talamancan mythology, 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
thumb|In [[Chiloé, 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?'"
thumb|130px|The Mexica goddess [[Cihuacóatl]]
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.