La Llorona: Latin America’s Vengeful Ghost in Film & Literature

No ghost story has been told, retold, reworked, and reinterpreted in Mexico and the rest of the Spanish-speaking Americas as that of La Llorona. La Llorona, or “Weeping Woman,” is a folktale about a young woman named Maria who drowns her children and herself in a river after her husband abandons them. According to the legend, La Llorona’s spirit is damned to stay on Earth forever, so she continues to wander around rivers, wailing and looking for her lost children.

The La Llorona folktale has numerous variations. Often, La Llorona is depicted as a woman who dishonored her family by becoming pregnant by her lover, thus losing their support and acceptance. Some renditions attribute the drowning of the children to an accident while the heartbroken mother was crossing the river after being abandoned by her husband, while others depict it as an act of revenge against the husband and the family that had turned their backs on her. Nonetheless, the version depicting La Llorona as a murderous figure is the most widely recognized. Despite the plethora of interpretations, one element remains constant: the ghost of La Llorona, trapped on Earth due to her wrongdoings in life, often appears near rivers, weeping for her children, and an encounter with her ghostly figure means misfortune or death.

Generation after generation, Mexican children have been raised with a deep-seated fear of La Llorona as a malevolent ghost and tormentor of little children who misbehave. The legend has been used for other purposes as well, such as to caution young women against premarital relations or to warn men of the dangers of being lured in by female sexuality. Many retellings of this myth can be found in the book entitled La Llorona: Encounters with the Weeping Woman.

Origins and Literary Retellings

Other proposed sources include an indigenous legend about a supernatural being who seduces men when they are out in the woods or fields by themselves. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, some scholarly approaches have tried to claim a European, and in particular Spanish, origin for La Llorona, noting the presence of European values and traits in the tale.

As with any other great folktale, we may never know La Llorona’s true origins. However, one thing is certain: La Llorona’s figure has been enriched and immortalized through numerous variations across centuries and regions, seamlessly adapting to local traditions and contexts.

When it comes to literary retellings, the legend of La Llorona has been ubiquitous throughout Latin American, and particularly Chicano, literary traditions. For example, in American writer Rudolfo Anaya’s 1984 re-telling of La Llorona as a short novel, the weeping woman is depicted as La Malinche, or Malintzin in the Aztec tradition, an enslaved indigenous woman who became a key figure in the conquest serving as the primary interpreter for the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.

In the latter half of the 20th century, there was a movement toward feminist reinterpretations of La Llorona. In recent decades, Latin American and Chicana feminist writers have portrayed La Llorona as a figure of female agency and emancipation, offering alternative perspectives on this ghostly character. Chicana author Ana Castillo, for instance, briefly introduces the figure of La Llorona in her acclaimed novel So Far From God, in which the mythical ghost befriends one of the female characters to inform her of the death of her beloved sister. Rather than a terrifying ghost lurking by rivers waiting for a chance to attack, La Llorona is portrayed in a positive light, as a companion to La Loca, a character endowed with healing powers and a deep connection to the supernatural. Castillo questions the long-held negative view of La Llorona’s figure, asking:

“Who better but La Llorona could the spirit of Esperanza have found, come to think of it, if not a woman who had been given a bad rap by every generation of her people since the beginning of time and yet, to Esperanza’s spirit-mind, La Llorona in the beginning (before men got in the way of it all) may have been nothing short of a loving mother goddess.”

This approach by Castillo echoes the modern tendency to rework La Llorona’s figure as a decolonizing and feminist figure in contemporary works.

Similarly, Sandra Cisnero’s collection of stories entitled “Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories,” which refers to the eponymous creek in Texas inspired by the legend of La Llorona, bases one of her stories on the folk tale in a contemporary context telling the story of a woman in an abusive marriage. By weaving stories of women living on the U.S.-Mexico border throughout the collection, Cisneros substitutes La Llorona’s ghostly cry with those of silenced women who are finding their own voices in contemporary contexts of patriarchal norms, injustice, domestic violence, and abuse.

La Llorona’s haunting story has graced movie screens both in Hollywood and Latin America. The 2019 Franco-Guatemalan production of La Llorona by filmmaker Jayro Bustamante is quite noteworthy. The award-winning film revisits the figure of this mythical ghost in the horror genre. By inserting La Llorona into a turbulent contemporary setting in modern-day Guatemala, Bustamante addresses questions about collective memory, injustice, and indigenous rights in a captivating narrative. The film revolves around the trial of a former official accused of genocide against the indigenous Mayan population during the Guatemalan Civil War in the 1980s. Against the backdrop of political turmoil and trials, La Llorona emerges as the spirit of an indigenous woman who lost her children to the atrocities of the Guatemalan army. La Llorona’s ghostly figure becomes an embodiment of unresolved traumas of the past and a poignant reminder of Guatemala’s ongoing struggles for justice and reconciliation.

As the film touches on a sensitive topic many prefer not to discuss, Bustamante decided to disguise his discussion of it in the horror genre, taking artistic liberties in his interpretation of the legend while maintaining the seriousness of the topic at hand. In the director’s words, the film’s “real intention is to kill the dictator, the almighty alpha male, that system of oppression we have not abandoned.” To do so, Bustamante chose a female figure that has been vilified for centuries.

Hollywood has not shied away from the adaptation of this Latin American tale for the big screen. Co-written and directed by Michael Chaves, The Curse of La Llorona transports viewers to 1973 Los Angeles, where Anna, a social worker, investigates a case of child endangerment. Amidst the investigation, she finds herself entangled in a series of supernatural events revolving around the terrifying figure of La Llorona. As Anna joins together with a local priest to fight the curse of La Llorona, the stakes get higher until, ultimately, the protagonist has to rescue her own children from the clutches of La Llorona. While the film caters to a broad audience and remains true to its horror roots, it showcases the Hispanic experience by weaving intricate details of this haunting folk tale into the narrative.

Another film in the horror genre inspired by the figure of La Llorona is the Argentinian Mama, produced by the award-winning master of the genre, Guillermo del Toro, and directed by Andy Muschietti. Released in 2013, the film is based on Muschietti’s 3-minute short. Taking inspiration in La Llorona’s tale, the film creates a terrifying yet touching story on motherhood, loss, and grief. Mama stays true to Guillermo del Toro’s belief in the power of the horror genre to make an impactful social commentary. When a young couple, Lucas and Anabel, take in their long-lost nieces, who were raised in complete isolation from society, they have to handle a supernatural being whom the girls call “Mama.” As the film unfolds, Anabel realizes that Mama is not a product of the girls’ imagination but an evil supernatural force that has latched onto them. Anabel’s investigation leads her to the tragic story of a 19th-century woman who leapt off a cliff with her newborn. Unaware that the baby’s body hit a tree and never reached the water with her, Mama, just like La Llorona, has been trapped on Earth looking for her lost child. The ending of the film is both moving and heartbreaking.

La Llorona, a one-of-a-kind figure in Latin American folklore that has been around for ages, is in no hurry to leave. Her ghostly figure continues to be reinvented and repurposed in the arts, cinema, literature, and popular culture. An inspiration for numerous retellings and adaptations, La Llorona’s malevolent figure has recently been seeing fresh reinterpretations that question the vilification of this ghostly figure and reconstruct her as one of agency, empowerment, and justice.