La Llorona, the legend of a ghostly woman who cries at her children at night, became famous after the fall of the Aztec empire and the Spanish conquest. She is cursed and doomed to seek them forever in the afterlife. According to legend, at night, during the full moon, you can hear La Llorona howling: "Oh, my children!"
The sixth omen
The Nahua tradition says that ten years before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, the most terrible event took place, which was considered an omen of the end of an era.
A streak of fire blazed across the night sky and struck the house of the fire god Syukhtek-Kutli shortly after it started raining, and the temple of the war god Huitzilopochtli suddenly caught fire.
This marked the beginning of eight bad omens (“The Weeping Woman” was the sixth omen) that will torment Emperor Montezuma and his people with the fatal foreboding of the Spanish conquest. These omens convey a general feeling in the most powerful civilization of pre-Hispanic times, when they witnessed how their world, their gods and their beliefs were crushed by the Catholic cross and Spanish swords. In particular, there is an omen that has transcended time and is embedded in the collective imagination in the form of a legend. It now represents a wealth of oral tradition in central Mexico.
Crying woman
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In those fateful days, Tenochtitlan was destroyed by floods, and rumors spread throughout the Aztec city of a woman who wandered the streets at night and cried. People called her “La Llorona” (crying woman). The Duran Codex states that Montezuma was aware of this situation and ordered his people, especially the Kalpikkas (priests responsible for carrying out the orders of the Tlatoani), to unravel the mystery by engaging in conversation with a supernatural being:
-If you meet a woman wandering the streets crying and moaning, ask them to ask why she is crying and moaning. Tell the priests to find out everything they can until they are satisfied with the information they receive (History of the Indies of New Spain (490-491))
This legend is also closely related to a certain kind of goddesses. The supernatural side of La Llorona is probably related to these entities. Aztec beliefs say that women who die during childbirth become Chihuateteo, supernatural goddesses who, according to Bernardino de Sahagun, author of the Florentine Codex, floated in the air and from time to time appeared before the living, assuming human form:
“The Chihuateteos linger at intersections where they can injure passers-by, so parents forbid their children to go out on certain days of the year to prevent them from meeting goddesses who might harm them.” (The Florentine Manuscript (The Book I Am))
People believed that these goddesses took on human form in order to persecute travelers and night wanderers who listened to their strange lamentations. Meanwhile, people also associated these mysterious women with Chihuacoatl, the fertility goddess who ruled Chihuateteo, which probably inspired the first version of the legend. According to The History of Tlaxcala, written by Diego Muñoz Camargo, the Aztec Mother Goddess roamed the city of Tenochtitlan, announcing the tragedies to come.
Versions of the La Llorona legend
First version
The story of the crying woman became known after the fall of the Aztec empire. During the colonial era, Western elements of Spanish and Christian culture infiltrated the oral tradition of the Aztecs, initiating the modern version of the legend: a half-breed woman falls in love with a Spaniard and, rejected by him, decides to drown her children before committing suicide. Now at night on the streets appears the ghost of a veiled mournful woman, mourning her lost children. “La Llorona” remains a popular name among people in Mexico and other Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Argentina, Colombia, and El Salvador.
Second version
This version tells about a young peasant woman named Maria. She married a rich man. For a while they lived happily, they had two children, before Maria became uninteresting to him. Once, while walking near the river with her two children, Maria saw her husband ride in his carriage with a young beauty.
In a fit of anger, she threw her children into the river and drowned them both. When her rage subsided and realizing what she had done, she sank into such deep grief that she spent the rest of her days crying by the river looking for her children. According to another version, after drowning the children, she rushed into the river and drowned herself.
Third version
In other versions, Maria, it was a vain woman who spent her nights in debauchery, not caring for her children. After one drunken party, she returned home to find that the children had drowned. For this she was cursed to seek them in the afterlife.
The constants of the legend are always dead children and a crying woman, both a man and a ghost. La Yorona is often seen in white, crying for her children next to running water.