Mexico's Legend of 'La Llorona' Continues to Terrify Christine Delsol - SFGate
go to original October 10, 2012

Here is a promo trailer for "The Cry", Bernadine Santistevan's 2008 film about La Llorona. (NetStudioTV)

A vile monster with an innocent baby in her clutches may be the most viscerally terrifying image possible: Not only does it make every child's nightmare come true, it strikes at the heart of every parent's most primal fear. All the worse if the monster is a mother, the one person a child should be able to count on to keep him safe.

Halloween in this country has been increasingly populated with myths and traditions from Mexico. Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has become nearly as popular here as in Mexico, and La Catrina is finding her way into northern holiday celebrations.

La Llorona ("The Weeping Woman," also sometimes translated as "The Wailer" or "The Cry"), on the other hand, is little known outside of areas with significant Latin American populations. Nor does she possess a whit of those other characters' lightheartedness. The dreadful woman is all doom and destruction, embraced in recent years by no less a purveyor of Hollywood horror than Universal Studios Hollywood, which has granted her increasing prominence among the likes of Jason, Freddie and Jigsaw in recent years.

The mother from hell

There are many variations on this 500-year-old ghost story, but the typical version starts with Maria, whose beauty was equaled only by her vanity. She uses her wiles to marry a handsome, wealthy rancher and has two children. After a few happy years, the rancher takes to roaming the prairies, ignoring her while he is home but lavishing attention on the children.

One day while walking near the river with the children, Maria sees her husband with a wealthy lady and, in a fit of rage, throws her children into the river. But when they disappear into the water, she is seized by regret. She runs along the bank of the river, arms outstretched, in a futile attempt to get them back.

The inconsolable Maria then drowns herself (or dies of grief, depending on who's doing the telling) and is buried by the villages the next morning. That night, they hear crying down by the river — Maria wailing, "Where are my children?"

A woman in a long white robe like Maria's burial dress is seen walking up and down the riverbank. Rechristened La Llorona from that day on, she is still sighted near rivers, oceans and other bodies of water, night after dark night.

Read more at The San Francisco Chronicle

Former Chronicle travel editor Christine Delsol is the author of "Pauline Frommer's Cancún & the Yucatán" and a regular contributor to "Frommer's Mexico" and "Frommer's Cancún & the Yucatán."

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