La Llorona

Posted by Robert Dailey Sep 21, 2006

As the cold winds sweep out of the mountains and howl nightly across the desert this October, folks tell of another sound, the screams and cries of La Llorona, The Wailing Woman, seeking the children she stabbed and drowned in the waters of the Rio Grande.

People who have heard La Llorona's cries say they are horrible. People who have seen her haunting the banks of the Rio Grande say she wears a white nightgown, stained with the blood of her murdered children. Her eyes are empty sockets and her mouth is fixed with a wide, savage grin.

La Llorona was either a poor Mexican or Native American woman from New Mexico, who loved, and was loved by, the son of a wealthy Spanish grandee. Being beneath his station, they shared their love in secret, and several children were born of the union.

But the grandee arranged a marriage for his son, with a Spanish woman with equal social standing. The son, bowing to his father's wishes, broke the news to La Llorona, and told her he could never see her again.

Enraged, hurt and jealous, La Llorona took the children to the Rio Grande, and stabbed each one and dropped them in the rushing river.

She then killed herself. When she appeared before God, she was asked three times "Where are your children?"

She replied, three times, that she did not know.

God then damned her to prowl the deserts of the southwest forever, and disfigured her. Horrid to look at, she roams the deserts, particularly along the Rio Grande, looking for her dead children.

It is wise to avoid La Llorona, especially when one hears her cries of O hijos mios, (Oh, my children), it is said, because she has been known to lure the unsuspecting to their deaths.

Although some of the details of the story vary, most of them agree that the murders took place somewhere along the Rio Grande, anywhere from northern New Mexico south to Juarez.

La Llorona has been sighted or heard from California through south and west Texas, north to Colorado and south to Central America.

She was reportedly seen several years ago in San Pedro Sula, Honduras on a night when several school children were drowned.

La Llorona (Sp. The Crying Woman) is seen by many to be a cautionary tale told to children to keep them away from waterways at night (understanding that their presence near a fast-flowing river at night probably meant they were doing something they shouldn't)or to teens to warn about careless sex.

The story of La Llorona is possibly pre-Colombian in origin, because there are similar tales in Aztec, Toltec and Mayan lore. It is still told (and believed) by many in Mexico, the west and southwestern United States, Central America and Puerto Rico.

So when you're out in your desert garden on a cold October night, listen closely to the wind coming across the desert. On top of the sounds of the wind, see if you can hear the voice of La Llorona wailing for her lost children.

If there is a moon, look across the desert. If you see a figure in white, standing there alone, maybe it's time you go back inside and lock the doors.