Fairy Tale Flip Ep 13: La Llorona, the Mexican folktale of the Wailing Woman Artwork

Fabric of Folklore

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Fairy Tale Flip Ep 13: La Llorona, the Mexican folktale of the Wailing Woman

November 21, 2024 • Fabric of Folklore • Season 2

Have you encountered the Latin American hauntress, La llorona? In episode 13 of Fairy Tale Flip we delve into the haunting folktale of La Llorona, exploring its origins, symbolism, and cultural implications. We trace the many and varied roots of La Llorona, from the first documentation in 1550 to its connections with Aztec mythology and themes of grief. We also discuss global variations and interpretations, highlighting the portrayal of women as "monsters" in folklore and societal narratives surrounding betrayal. Comparing La Llorona to other archetypal female figures in mythology, we reflect on the mental health aspects pertinent to the tale, emphasizing themes of isolation and struggle.

Timestamps
Introduction and Story Overview (00:09 - 11:00)
•Episode 13 of Fairy Tale Flip podcast
•Hosts: Vanessa Y. Rogers and Donna Lee Fields
•Topic: La Llorona, a popular Latin American folktale
•Story summary: Indigenous woman drowns her children after betrayal by Spanish lover
•La Llorona's ghost wails and searches for her children near bodies of water
•Different variations of the story exist across cultures
Historical Context and Symbolism (11:00 - 20:35)
•First documentation of La Llorona traced back to 1550
•Story has roots in Aztec mythology
•Connections to Aztec goddesses: Serpent Skirts and Jade Skirted One
•Symbolism discussed: water, white dress, screaming/wailing
•Exploration of grief and cultural implications
Global Variations and Interpretations (20:35 - 31:25)
•Similar stories found in Eastern Europe, Greek mythology, and Germanic traditions
•La Malinche: historical figure with similarities to La Llorona
•Discussion on portrayal of women as "monsters" in folklore
•Exploration of betrayal themes and societal blame on women
Female Monsters and Societal Reflections (31:25 - 42:21)
•Comparison to other female "monsters" in mythology (Circe, Lamia, Sirens)
•Debate on the definition and purpose of monsters in storytelling
•La Llorona as a reflection of societal issues and difficult emotions
•Discussion on encounter stories vs. origin stories of La Llorona
Mental Health and Modern Interpretations (42:21 - 53:17)
•Exploration of mental health aspects, including postpartum depression
•Ballet interpretation of La Llorona focusing on women's silent struggles
•Comparison to "The Yellow Wallpaper" story
•Importance of addressing isolation and mental health issues
•Call for audience engagement and sharing of personal La Llorona encounters

Vanessa 1: 0:09

Welcome. Welcome to Fairy tale flip episode 13, which. Right, 13. That's. And I. And I feel like, you know, 13 is always either an unlucky number, depending on what country you're in. In America, it's considered an unlucky number. In other places, it's considered lucky. So I guess just depending on what your thoughts are. Today, we are going to be talking about La Llorona. I am Vanessa Y. Rogers and I host a podcast called Fabric of Folklore, and my co host is Donna Lee Fields from Scaffolding Magic, which is a fantastic resource for any educators out there who need basically any type of educational resource. She has got it on her website, so it's a fantastic resource. And she also has Doorways to Learning, which is a podcast, which is on hiatus, but it's also about education and there's lots of great information on there. And every month we come together and we talk about one specific story. And this month, like I said before, we're going to talk about La Llorona last month, which was only a couple weeks ago because we recorded it a little bit late. We talked about the. The Girl who Danced With Fairies, which was a Halloween episode. And La Llorona was just as popular of a story when we did our poll. And so we decided to do the Halloween story in October, which actually we recorded in November and then. And then La Llorona for November, since it technically they. They often do plays in Mexico during Day of the Dead celebrations of La Llorona, just because they kind of go together in the type of story it is. So Donna is going to give us an overview of our story this month, and then we're going to hop into the history, origins, symbolism, all that wonderful good stuff.

Donna: 2:16

Thank you so much, Vanessa. You always introduce it with such enthusiasm. I get excited about it and I'm already excited about it. So. So thanks so much for introducing us. Yeah. And I have to say that Vanessa pronounces the title of this story perfectly, La Llorona. And then I did the videotaping of the version and I got a little crazy with the Spanish and kept pronouncing it incorrectly. So thank you, Vanessa, for doing this. Right. And I'm the one who speaks Spanish. Vanessa is, you know, just sort of winging in all these different languages. Yeah, just a little bit. A little bit. You live in San Antonio, so a lot of times influence, don't you?

Vanessa 1: 2:54

Okay.

Donna: 2:56

Is this a cherished story by most Latin American countries and now all over the world, and basically it's about a beautiful indigenous Woman who meets a handsome Spanish soldier and they fall in love or they fall in lust, we don't know. But they're together for a while. They cannot marry because a marriage between a Spaniard of high class and indigenous woman was just not done. So they actually lived together and had children, but they were forbidden to marry. So they're together when he's not on campaigns, but he's away a lot, and she takes care of the children. They had two sons in some versions, sometimes three. Sometimes there were an infinite number of children, depending on the version. One day, this beautiful indigenous woman hears that her lover is about to marry a Spanish woman of upper class, and that breaks her heart. So in this pain, she loses her sense of reality. She dresses undressed, in a white night dress and a white shawl thrown over her head. She takes, in this version, her two sons to the river, telling them that they're going down to bathe in the middle of the night, and she drowns them. When she regains her center, she realizes what she's done and wails the loss of her sons and then takes her own life. So forever after, this woman, who is now called La Llorona, the wailer, the weeper, the crier, looks for her children by different bodies of water, wailing, dunde stan misijos, where are my children? And people all over the world have seen her near different bodies of water and even on horseback, in some cases, looking for her children. She's always dressed in white, but. But when the shawl on her head is pulled back, she's seen in a skeleton form with red eyes. And some are saying that this is because it's a punishment for a crime that she's committed. And others say it's because of this eternal grief that she has and the anguish in her body. So that's the story. What do you think, Vanessa?

Vanessa 1: 4:59

Yeah, you know, my initial thoughts are, you know, it's interesting because after you become a mom, it's harder to take certain things. Things land differently, especially when there's children involved. And so this story specifically involves the drowning of her own children, which, you know, for anybody. For most people who are of a stable mental state, that is a horrible thing to think about. But when you're a mom, I think it's even worse to think about because you just kind of put yourself in those shoes, and it's unimaginable, you know, especially if you're in a normal mental state. And so, for me, this is a was. There were some lines of inquiry that I found A little bit difficult during this story. What about you? What were your thoughts?

Donna: 5:53

Oh, that's interesting. Lines of inquiry. Before you go into what I thought of the story, what do you mean by the lines of inquiry and what was more difficult to assimilate than others?

Vanessa 1: 6:04

Well, when I'm doing research for our episodes, I generally read the story and then I just start listing out lines of questions. What's important about the story? What's the significance? What are the cultural implications? What is the origin? What is the history? And then I started thinking about the mental health. And then I also went into the line of inquiry of does this actually occur? We know that this occurs. I didn't actually look up the frequency, but I wanted to look into why it occurred. What gave a mother to drown her own children? And you want to imagine that is. It doesn't happen. Right. It's impossible. That's not ever going to happen. But it does. We see it happen. It's usually a big headlines because it is. I think it is rare, but it does. And so I can tell you a little bit about what I learned about that, because first of all, most scholars, when they talk about La Llorona, they talk about it in terms of infanticide, but that's actually an incorrect term because infanticide is babies under 1 years old. And as we know, in most of the stories, she has at least two children, so likely they are older than 1 years old or at least one of them is older than 1 years old. And so when a child is murdered, it's called filicide, when they're over one. And there's two main reasons that mothers will kill their own children. And there's almost always mental health involved in these instances. But one of them was, let me see, an altruistic filicide. A mother kills her child out of love. She believes death to be in the child's best interest. For example, a suicidal mother may not wish to leave her motherless child to face an intolerable world. Or a psychotic mother may believe she is saving her child from a fate worse than death. And the second one is acute psychotic filicide. And that's when a mother is delirious, right? She's. She doesn't have. She's not in her right mind and she's hallucinating. And so those are some of the two main reasons that you see this happen today. And we are able to explain it through the use of psychiatrics or psychology.

Donna: 8:28

Okay, so that's really interesting and I love how systematic you are because you actually make a list of the things you want to research. And I don't. I just sort of do it on the. You know, fly in my. I just jump from one thing to another. And even while you're speaking about the fact that for you, it's more painful because you're thinking about the literal drought of children, which is pretty horrific. I don't have children. I never wanted children. And so things work out perfectly for me. What that means, though, is that I am less empathetic about it just because I don't have that experience. So for me, it's really simple to jump towards symbolism and say, yes, in the literal sense, absolutely horrific. And so what is this? Why is the story so popular? Not just because some women do sort of lose the capability of living in this reality that you and I are talking about now and don't know how to live with their biological children or adoptive children, we could say, is that too. So my jump to the symbolism is this is an indigenous woman who was being overrun. Literally, her people were being overrun by Spanish conquerors. And the drowning of her children. We could say, if this helps you feel a little better, we could say that it was the drowning of hope that these indigenous people had for the Spanish coming in, and the lie, the betrayal. And so she was drowning her hopes of a new future because, in fact, her people were being murdered and used as slaves. And it wasn't a really bright future. So she was trying to get rid of it. How does that feel, as a mom?

Vanessa 1: 10:04

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are other elements of it that I could look past. The drowning of the children. And there are a lot of really interesting lines of inquiry as well that I was looking at. But my initial reaction to the story is just of heartbreak and pain and not being able to understand that state of mind of being able to place myself in her shoes. But, yes, I definitely agree with what you were saying.

Donna: 10:36

It's just one way of looking at it. Again, what we're doing is we're talking about different ways to interpret different stories. And so you and I have different perspectives. And often we both have two different perspectives, so we share four of them. But that's just one thing I have. So if you can, unless you want to go into the reality of the fact that some women do find it necessary to drown their own children, we could go into the symbolism of the story. Or would you like to go into the history of the story first?

Vanessa 1: 11:05

We can go into history first a little bit and then go into symbolism. I think what do you think?

Donna: 11:11

Sure. Let's talk about history.

Vanessa 1: 11:12

Okay. So we, the conquistadors, come into Mexico. Cortez arrives in 1519, and the first documentation of La Llorona is traced back to 1550, so about 30 years later. And I found a newspaper article that references La Llorona, but it is believed that the story itself goes back much further into the Aztec mythology. And so the really wonderful thing about La Llorona is it's really an intertwining of these stories from Europe and stories from the native populations in Aztec Mexico. And it kind of evolves. Just like all stories, all folktales, they all do their own evolution. The very first published sonnet of La Llorona was in. It was by Manuel Carpio, and It was in 1883, and it became very popular. But let me talk to you a little bit about the Aztecs. Did you research any of the Aztec stories?

Donna: 12:33

I didn't, because I knew that you had. So I thought, you know, go for it, Vanessa.

Vanessa 1: 12:37

Okay. So the interesting thing is there's several goddesses that they believe it can be drawn on. But I'm going to give you two specific examples. The first one is nicknamed Serpent Skirts. I guess her skirt is made of serpents, and her name is Co.

Donna: 12:58

Vanessa 1: 12:58

Think, or something like that. And she is an earth mother goddess, and she was a priestess whose main job was to maintain the shrine on the top of a legendary sacred mountain. And she's sweeping, and at one point, feathers descend from the heavens, and she picks them up and she tucks them into her belt and it miraculously impregnates her. And she gives birth to a fully grown son who turns out to be the Aztec God of war. And he's fully armored and ready to defend her. And he jumps off the mountains and there's. He decides to start fighting his siblings who think that their mother. To defend their mother. And she begins to wail because she knows that at least one of the death of her children is coming. And she. It is considered to be one of the ten omens that the Aztecs foretold of the end of the reign of Aztecs. And so that made me. So you were talking about how you do your line of inquiry. I do have a line of questions, but then I do bounce into lots of different rabbit holes. And one of them was the ten omens. And so there were ten omens.

Donna: 14:11

Sorry, before you go to the ten omens, what I'd like to do is just point out the obvious. That this legendary Aztec creature or character Has a lot of the same elements as Medusa in the Greek. In the Greek mythology. And, you know, Medusa is now portrayed as being evil. But we're going to talk about that because I'd like to talk about female monsters and how we can. They can be seen in different lights and how La Llorona herself can be seen in a different light. But this character has the serpents. She's wrapped in serpents. In this case in Medusa, she had serpents coming out of her head. And in many spiritual communities, serpents are very powerful. They're a sign of power. And so they threatened patriarchal system. So I just wanted to add that.

Vanessa 1: 14:54

You know what, that's so interesting that you mentioned Medusa. I didn't think about Medusa at all. You know, who I thought of was Athena, because Athena is cut out of Zeus neck, I believe, and she comes out as a fully grown woman, fully armored. So not as the mother, but as the child. But I thought that connection was interesting. And I don't know, it's so interesting when you look at these creation stories, how many similarities run through them. But I had not thought of Medusa, and the story of Medusa might be one that we really need to do align it to, because it's so interesting. We do have this image of Medusa as this evil character, but really she is a victim of Athena. Like, she's cursed by Athena and none of it was her fault. We'll have to talk about another point, because that is a story that when I learned the truth of, like, the whole story, I was like, what? Poor Medusa. I felt sorry for her. She was not an evil monster before she was created into one.

Donna: 16:07

Well, that's perfect, because if we have time at the end, I really do want to go into female monsters, including Lamia, Circe. And so Medusa is another one that's always portrayed as being evil. And in fact, if we look at it from a female perspective, perhaps not as evil. And that's what I want to do with La Llorona.

Vanessa 1: 16:24

Yes.

Donna: 16:24

So let's talk about the 10 omens and then we can go on to symbolism.

Vanessa 1: 16:28

Okay, well, there's also another goddess as well, but the Ten omens that. Okay, I'm just going to name a few. But bursting into flames, the boiling and flooding of a lake, Texas, strange dreams and a weeping woman's cries. And so this is the important part, that they associate the skirt woman, the serpent skirt woman, as the weeping woman's cries as one of the ten omens. There's another woman, and she is the jade skirted one, Chali. All these names are hard to say. She's another Aztec goddess, and she fulfills other elements of the leorona legend, specifically that link to water and the infanticide or the philici that were talking about before. She is the goddess of waters, and her elder sister is the goddess of rain, is the rain God. And she was feared and caused terror because she drowned people and would overturn boats. They would do ceremonies in honor of the rain God and include her as well. And in these ceremonies, they would sacrifice children. And these sacrificed victims were brought from their mothers. And the more children cried, the more successful the sacrifice was thought to have been. And so this is an important, you know, element, because the other story that we had was the weep was just a wailing mother. And this story is. It includes the water and includes the drowning and weeping of children. And so it's kind of a combination of the two.

Donna: 18:11

Okay. And I just wanted to Repeat that the 10 omens have to do with the Aztecs foretelling the coming of the Spanish conquistadores. Yeah.

Vanessa 1: 18:19

Yes. And I think that it was mostly of the end of the Aztec empire, and it happened that the Spanish conquistadors were the end of the Aztecs empire. So let's talk about your. The symbolism that you. You went into.

Donna: 18:38

Okay, so let's talk about symbolism. Great. All right. Because I love symbolism. You know that. And we can talk about water. Let's talk about water. The white dress and the screams, for instance, because she's called the weeping woman, the wailer. And it's said in perhaps a negative connotation, in a negative way. And yet. And yet, actually, I'm going to jump a bunch of symbolism because I wanted to get to this that I just started focusing on before were talking. And that's toning. So the women are so often portrayed in movies and in TV series and as screamers. They see animal they don't like and they scream. I have to tell you, Vanessa, you tell me. I do not scream when I'm scared. There's only once I screamed recently, and I was surprised at myself. I mean, I'm 64, and it's the first time I can remember screaming. So the idea.

Vanessa 1: 19:28

Yes. If I'm surprised, yes. They let out a loud screech.

Donna: 19:34

That's actually funny. I'm glad you said that. I don't scream. So I don't think all women scream. And women are always portrayed as screamers. So I say that wailing is not such a bad thing to do. And actually, toning is a very healthy thing to do. So if we can say this woman is toning.

Vanessa 1: 19:51

Wait, can you define. Define toning? What do you mean by that?

Donna: 19:55

Okay, there's a way of toning your body and putting it in shape, and then there's voice vocal toning. And vocal toning is really just using just feeling the vibration in your soul and saying one of O and trying to do this tone as long as you possibly can. And the very vibration aligns your body, realigns your body.

Vanessa 1: 20:16

And so that's what you see in meditation. Right? People do toning? Is that what they're doing? They're centering their bodies by connecting to a sound.

Donna: 20:25

A lot of the om.

Vanessa 1: 20:26

Om.

Donna: 20:27

That's a toning? Yeah. I mean, om is a very sacred combination of syllables. But the toning itself, I mean, I don't know if you've ever done the om or toning, because you can actually feel the vibration and you feel better. So in other words, what I wanted to talk about is the wailing woman. We could see it as toning. How it's so important to let the grief out of your body instead of keeping it in. It has to do with stress relief. Relief. It improves breathing. It can enhance your immune system. You have increased energy after. And actually, in the end, you can have a better voice, but it improves vocal cords. It does. It makes you healthier because it uses more vocal cords, and so it exercises parts that maybe you don't use.

Vanessa 1: 21:17

You know, it's interesting that you mentioned this, and I did want to talk about grief and crying as well. One of the articles that I read was called Permission to Wail. And it was. And it was four women who studied La Llorona, including Norma Eliakantu, which was one of my very first guest interviews on my show, and she's from San Antonio. And they. It was four Hispanic women, and they were all talking about what La Llorona meant to them. And one of the main points that they made was that she gives voice to grief that women, especially Mexican women or women of color, feel, and they allow. She allows them to make the sound that they want to do in society that society suppresses.

Donna: 22:20

Okay, thank you for bringing that up, because that's so important and because when I was taping the version of the story itself that we both have on our YouTube channel, I actually brought up immediately the fact that we talk about her all the time and the crime that she committed. You know, she drowned her children, no matter how many there were. We don't talk about the man. We don't talk about the betrayal. We don't talk about what cut her to the soul that she would do something like that. Now, having said that, we all need to take responsibility for our actions. We can have emotions, we can wail, we can scream. What we do about that killing someone is absolutely not. That's not okay. But what happened? What about the man? It's a Spanish soldier who felt free to live with this woman, to sleep with her, to impregnate her. He doesn't seem to be taking care of the children. When he's not around, or even when he is around, and nobody condemns him in the story, we condemn her. And so, yes, she needs to wail. And if we take out the element of the children, of the story, couldn't we see more of what? That he has some responsibility. The problem in the story is that she does manifest her grief in killing her children. And so we focus on that, and we don't add in the element of betrayal.

Vanessa 1: 23:42

So now there are some variations in different places. So you talked about how it's from Mexico, but you see La Llorona all through Central America and in Southern United States as well, where a lot of especially Mexicans have come to live. And so the story has grown and specific places. But there are variations where instead of her searching out for her children and stealing other live children from riverbanks and drowning those children, she's actually searching for adulterous men. And there are variations where, in fact, she is in the middle of the river and she's calling out, and a man will say, you know, on the riverbank, oh, can I help you? And she's wailing. And so the man comes out to try and help her, and she basically, like, lures him out into the water until he drowns. And so those are my particular favorite variations. Instead of her murdering more children, she murders men. Although, you know, I don't want anyone to be murdered. But if we're gonna, you know, if we're. I would rather her not murder more children.

Donna: 24:50

Okay. And again, I love that you bring all these things up, because that element makes. Gets me to jump right to the sirens. And the sirens also are demonized by luring men into the rocks and killing them. And then we could. We're going to see the other side of the Sirens also. So when we talk about Medusa, we're going to talk about Circe and the Sirens and Lamia and really get into different perspectives, but yeah, different versions. It's usually a man, a watchman at night, and sees this beautiful white figure. And then when the veil comes off, the shawl comes off. They're scared to death and often die from fright. So. Yeah.

Vanessa 1: 25:30

Okay, so we talked about symbolism of wailing. What else? What else other symbolism do you want to talk about?

Donna: 25:38

Well, we can talk about the symbolism of water, that there's always water. She's always, almost always, as you're saying, walking next to a body of water. And water can symbolize life and fertility, but then there's the counterpart, there's the other, the belly of it, which is death of drowning. So it's kind of ironic, the two things. Water gives us life and can also take life away. The white dress. She appears in a white dress often as a bride. She could never get married. So again, it's a little ironic. And white is usually related to ghosts. But then we have the contrast of the darkness of night. And so we have white that often is, you know, the white light that often gives us comfort. But we see her at night, so there's a lot of contrast there. And the other symbolism, just for the moment, is her screaming. And it's a bad omen to say, oh my children. Now, just because of the story. And the scholars say that this could, the screams are a result of the tragedy. But it's really, the scholars now are going right to the tragedy of the Spanish conquistadores and the indigenous people at the hands of these people. So those are the three.

Vanessa 1: 26:47

So is it considered bad luck to say ay mis hijos? Is that what it is? That's in Spanish, right? Oh my children.

Donna: 26:57

Yeah, just because of the connotation, because that phrase is so known now, is tied to the story of La Llorona. So don't say, oh my children, don't. Don't do that.

Vanessa 1: 27:11

It's like, you know, there's another story that I found that sometimes gets conflated with La Llorona, but it's different. La salle segua. S E G U A. Is that how you say it? Segua?

Donna: 27:25

Huh. Yeah.

Vanessa 1: 27:27

She's a beautiful woman with mixed indigenous Spanish and she lives in Costa Rica. And the woman dated the Spanish man against the wishes of her family and was seen as a traitor. The Spanish man abused her, ended up cheating on her, and now she becomes so enraged that a curse becomes on her. And now she roams the street at night looking for men who've been drinking too much or who are womenizers and she lures them in with her beauty, but once they get close to her head transforms into the head of a horse and she kills them. And so when I found this article talking about how sometimes she gets conflated with La Llorona scares children into coming home before darkness, while La Segue scares men into staying home and not being adulterous. So I liked that story.

Donna: 28:20

Yeah, that's a. It's a different twist on the whole idea. Yeah, it's just a sort of a compilation of different ways to instill fear in mothers, in children, in men. So we usually talk about the fact that these stories have lessons in them. What is the big lesson that you would get from La Llorona? Vanessa?

Vanessa 1: 28:43

So on it. So on the surface. On the surface, the lesson that is generally garnered by the children that this is told to is to stay away from water. Right. In part, it's a cautionary tale to warn children not to get too close to water, especially if they don't know how to swim. Rivers and natural water spaces, you don't know what's in those waters, necessarily. And so things can harm children. And so it's a way to prevent your children from dying from natural causes. On.

Donna: 29:19

Okay.

Vanessa 1: 29:21

On a deeper level, there's a lot, right? There's a lot. I think that it's a story about motherhood, about womanhood, about not being respected, about not being seen, about not being allowed to be who she wants to be, right? In that she's not allowed, especially in your story, she's not allowed to be his wife. She's allowed to be respectable. Right. She's a mistress. And so there's a lot of different stories. And I think one of the things about La Llorona is that so many people get different things from it, especially because there's so many different tellings all over the world, and people get what they want from it. One of the podcasts I was listening to, kind of research, was a man, and he was talking about La Llorona. And he said, when he was talking about the story, he said he pictured the woman as being too clingy and always wanting his attention. And so she ended up pushing him away from her clinginess. And in no way, form or shape had I ever considered that narrative. And I think that would primarily be a narrative formed by a man rather than a woman, because if she's being clingy, it's because he's not being the man he needs to be in that relationship. Right.

Donna: 31:10

Attentive. Attentive, yeah.

Vanessa 1: 31:11

He's not being attentive.

Donna: 31:15

Well, that's so interesting. You know, usually we begin and you ask me right off the bat, Donna, why did you like this story? And I'm never prepared. And today I finally prepared and you did not ask me this question. So it's very absolutely appropriate because now I'm going to answer this question. That's exactly what you're saying. We get what we need from our story. And I always go to the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, the next year or so, we're going to need to really go deep within and find our wounds and heal them. And so I think that what I'm hearing is what people get out of this story in particular is what their wound is, where their wound is. So if you were to ask me now what did you like about the story? I would say I didn't like it at first, but then I reacted to her sense of betrayal and I really felt so empathetic because of her sense of betrayal. And I don't go into the whole marriage and mistress, you know, on the label things, because that doesn't matter to me. What it seemed like was that they were in love and they were in love enough to have children. And he kept going back to her. So the bond, the emotional bond was there, but he betrayed her. And so for me, yeah, I do have these betrayal wounds. And so now I'm recognizing it. And that's really good because then I can work on it. And so what I would recommend is for you, it's the drowning of children. And so many times the story is about women warning women. You need to, you're allowed to feel emotions, but be careful what you do with those emotions. And that's really an important thing to be reminded of. Recognize that other people, other women have the same emotions and you don't have to act on them necessarily. And so all of us need to take what we can from the story and say, all right, thank you. And now I'm going to explore that and heal it.

Vanessa 1: 33:01

So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the variations worldwide that have similarities to La Llorona, because this is not a one time story. This story happens in variations all over the world. And I found that really interesting. Eastern Europe, the modern Ruskala, Rusalaka is a water spirit in Slavic mythology. And they come to be after a woman drowns due to suicide or murder, especially if they had an unwanted pregnancy. And they have to stay basically in purgatory in our world. For a period of time in Greek mythology, there's the trope of the barbarian girl who kills her children after being betrayed by her lover. So that's Medea and Jason. Medea murders her children as an act of revenge against her husband Jason, who has left her for another woman. So that's right there. I mean, it's almost identical. The white woman in Germanic Slavic tradition. Basically every town in this region, Fraconia, the northern region of state, Bavaria, has a legend of the White Lady, a ghostly figure that walks about at night, terrifying people. You were talking about sirens. The Lorelei is a sailing legend, and this is also in Germany, and she is said to sink ships. Then there's the Banshee. And the Banshee depends on what region you're looking at. But sometimes she is dressed in white and she is known for whaling. Right. She sometimes it's called keening at night, and it's believed to foretell the death of a family member. Now, the most similar is an actual historical tale to La Llorona. Did you come across Bob Melenche?

Donna: 35:06

No, I didn't.

Vanessa 1: 35:07

Okay. This one is almost the story of La Llorona, except for there's no drowning. But it seems to be a representation of the feeling that La Llorona is experiencing. So La Malinche is a slave to Cortez and she bears him children, but she also aids him in, because of her language skills, she aids him in helping the conquistadors. Now, in the last episode that we talked about, when we talked about in the Legend of Popeketepetl, and we talked about how not all of the tribes in the Aztec community liked being under the control of the Aztecs. Right. Because they weren't necessarily always good to all of their people. And some of the people were happy when the conquistadors came because they thought that they were going to be saving them. Right. And so there were indigenous people helping the conquistadors to conquer the Aztecs. And she was one of them, whether she was doing it willingly or not, because she was actually a slave. But she is labeled by the Mexicans and by the indigenous as a traitor to her own people. And they laid the blame for the defeat of their civilization at her feet for this. And sometimes she's labeled as kind of the Eve of the creation story, the fact that she bore Cortez's mixed race children. It is the union of the Spanish and the indigenous. And it's like the first children of this unseemly union of These two people. And so for me, I really feel for this woman who is labeled as the betrayer of her people because, you know, a lot of times, even if you're not a slave, women didn't have their own autonomy. They didn't. Weren't able to make a lot of their own choices. And as a slave woman, of course, you know, she likely didn't have very much of a choice, and yet she is blamed for it. And so I. And I think that is such a strong representation of what Laiota represents, that the mother of this union of the people, the slavers and the slaves. Right. And she is the person that everybody blames. And yet the husband should be blamed, you know, almost as equally. He did not drown the children, but he treated her horribly. Right?

Donna: 37:47

Yeah. And even as you're speaking, I realize that most of the versions, if not all of them, that you've been mentioning. I've been mentioning has to do with the word lure. They're luring men into their sort of web, and then the men are helpless in this web to do anything, you know, to have any power. And in truth, if we use that word enough, then we automatically think of women in mist or women on the street as able to lure men in and help make them incapable of making their own decisions. I mean, if we're really going to go into it, the reason why the burka and the dress and covering the head is because men don't want to be attracted, they don't want to be tempted sexually towards a woman. So they're putting the female fault.

Vanessa 1: 38:34

I'm sorry, somehow it's the female's fault.

Donna: 38:38

Exactly. They're putting the onus on the female. And so in these stories, it's the Lord, it's. That word is putting the onus on the woman. And I just wanted to mention, because if our listeners would like us to go into this. I would love to go into this more. We have Circe, who lures men, Odysseus and other men onto her island and doesn't let them go. She turns them into pigs, if they don't do her, will have sex with her. But in fact, there's this gorgeous story. I don't know if you've ever read it. It's called Circe by Madeline Miller. Have you read it?

Vanessa 1: 39:08

I did read it, yes.

Donna: 39:10

How did you like that story?

Vanessa 1: 39:12

I really liked it. But, you know, I also did not have a lot of reference for it. So I was not super familiar with the Greek telling of Circe prior to that telling. But I. So I don't. What I'm saying is I didn't have anything to compare it to, but I liked it as a story.

Donna: 39:33

Okay, so that's really important. If you're going to read it, please read the Greek myth first, as it usually told from the patriarchal viewpoint, and then read it. It's so beautifully written. And then we have Lami, who's also from Greek mythology, and she had an affair with Zeus. And there are different ways to put it, that Hera convinced her to kill her children or she killed them. And if you look at it from another way, you'll see how Lamia really was trying to save her children. But Hera had it in for her. So the problem is we have two women there, but still, we could dissect that a little more. And then we have the Sirens, who lure men onto the island and they have no will and they die in the rocks. So I would love to go into that a little more. Obviously, you and I are both female, and so we don't have the male perspective, but there's enough of that out there.

Vanessa 1: 40:23

You know, I did have the question. That was one of my questions. What is a monster? Is she a monster? And what is the purpose of a monster? And she is portrayed as a monster in the stories. She's so, okay, before we go into this, there are two separate types of stories of La Llora, La Llorona. Currently, we're talking about the origin stories, right? We're talking about where it's from. But when you're speaking about La Llorona and many of these places in Mexico and Central and South America, you are also getting encounter stories. And in fact, I would. I would posit that you would get more encounter stories than you would get the origin stories. So people talk about how they have encountered La Llorona in water places all over the world. And so in those instances, in those encounters, she is absolutely a monster. Right? She is someone to be afraid of. She is coming for your children. She is coming for you. And so those encounter stories, she's a monster in the origin story. Yes. She does a terrible thing. Does that make a person a monster? I don't know. I don't know. But when we look at what the purpose of a monster is, and I think that you do this reflection quite a bit, because when we first met, you came on my show and talked about how you like to flip fairy tales on their head and you like to look at the villains and decide whether or not they are villains. Or they are actually the protagonist or the helper in the story.

Donna: 42:10

The heroine.

Vanessa 1: 42:11

The heroine. And so. And we talked about this in Baba Yaga, right? Baba Yaga, horrible woman. Right. But she also does help to set the heroine on their next path in their life. And it's usually a better path. Right.

Donna: 42:33

She's the impetus. Yeah, yeah. And if you. I mean, my definition of a monster is very simple. I would just go to animal. Animal instincts. You know, our. And we are animals, so a monster could just be our core animal instincts. So is that. Can we condone that? I think we have to because we are acting on our instincts. However. However we are human, which is one level above other animals. And only in that. Only in that we can be introspective. And as were talking about before, I am a great proponent of feeling the emotions, but not necessarily acting on them. So in other words, we can feel something. We don't have to say nasty things to people and we don't have to kill our children if we're going to go to that degree. And I'm not making light of that at all. So what is a monster? Maybe a human who does not take the time to reflect and be introspective. Can we forgive their actions? That's a really good question. If you're spiritual, everything is forgiven of other dimensions. So we're supposed to forgive everything? I think it's pretty hard in some cases, but yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa 1: 43:55

So I did a little research into what the purpose of a monster was in this. Reflection, a reflection of society. And this is actually just kind of a list of. Also a reflection of her, of La Llorona. And also what the purpose of a monster is. Reflection of society, exploration of grief and other difficult emotions. Personifying those elements that haunt us. Teaching tool of what happens to those who do not heed the word of God or parents or society, whatever the word is that they're supposed to be heeding an enemy whose defeat inspires us to be like the heroes of old embodiments of trials. Something that is always lurking in the shadows to remind us that we have to remain on guard. Something to entice us to explore far off lands while also deterring us from entering treacherous areas. All right. Did any of that raise anything for you?

Donna: 44:57

No. Interestingly, it didn't surprise. First time today. It didn't jog my thinking into any direction.

Vanessa 1: 45:06

Well, I did have a couple more thoughts about mental health that I didn't mention when were talking about the reasons why mothers kill their children. One of the things I found when I was doing research was a ballet that was created. I think it was called Ballet 5 8, La Llorona. And the creator of this. This ballet wanted it to be a reflection of the silent struggle so many women endure struggles, specifically postpartum depression. She relates it to now, in La Llorona, postpartum depression usually ends a year afterwards, unless it goes completely untreated, and then it can turn into something absolutely worse. So to me, postpartum, unless she had a baby, an infant, this is not quite as relevant. But there is depression that is involved with women, and postpartum depression often will not go treated, and especially during this time period. Right. And so she wanted to create this ballet that kind of reflected that La Llorona was struggling with this mental health issue. And she said approximately 50%, 15% of all women experience postpartum depression. In black and Latino women, the rates are even higher. And she specific, she, the creator of the ballet, had postpartum firsthand, and she wanted to grow the ballet and put on this ballet because she felt like that experience made her feel disconnected from the world. And she wanted other women to understand that they weren't alone when they were going through this type of depression. Now, women can go through depression at all times. And when I was reading through this, I was reminded of this powerful story. Have you ever read the Yellow Wallpaper?

Donna: 47:15

It doesn't sound familiar.

Vanessa 1: 47:17

It's a famous short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it's from 1892. And it's basically a man puts his wife on the experience and on the recommendation of their doctor, and she's feeling depressed, and so he locks her away in isolation, and that is the rest cure. And it was not effective. And so it's basically a horror story because throughout the story, like everything, like the walls, the yellow wallpaper starts becoming alive. She starts hallucinating. And I was reminded of the story because, you know, Maria, or depending on the story that you read, Maria was the name of La Llorona before she became a monster. Felt isolated, right? She was alone. We don't hear about her having any relatives around her, helping her. And so she's all by herself and wallowing in her depression. And just like in the Yellow Wallpaper, she begins to have psychosis. And so I think that this is, for me, this was an element of La Llorona that I feel like is not discussed enough.

Donna: 48:39

Well, I think that's really important, Vanessa. And I know we're reaching the hour, but I think this is a really important point. And my comment is that probably one of the reasons the story is so popular is because it is really important, because mothers do have children and they are isolated many times. And before social media, before all the technology, people didn't know that there were other women feeling the same way, other men, and men didn't know that other men were feeling the same way. And although I'm not a huge fan of technology, which is in itself ironic, since we're on technology now and I give classes and workshops online, that one of the incredible benefits is that we're realizing that things that we feel, many other people feel, and so things are a little bit normalized, and I think we might be a little quicker in getting help. And so hopefully one of the takeaways from this talk that you and I are having is it is a problem if we feel isolated. Our emotions do come up after pregnancy and we need to address them before they go to an extreme. And also that, you know, men need to take a little more responsibility for what their choices are.

Vanessa 1: 49:47

You hear that, men? Yeah, but of course, like we said before, everyone is taking the blame for what their actions are, right? We're not. Not everything is blamed on the men.

Donna: 50:00

Right? No, no, no. But we could address a little more their responsibility or lack of thereof in this story. Okay. But anyway, I don't want to digress any more than that.

Vanessa 1: 50:13

So is there anything that we missed? Is there any significance that you feel like we didn't cover? Any symbolism that we didn't touch on?

Donna: 50:22

No, I'm pretty happy with everything we covered and even a little more. And if there's anything you think of, I just feel like we've jumped around a lot, and our listeners, if they're keeping up with us, then I say thank you so much.

Vanessa 1: 50:36

Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, and just like, you know, when we're doing this research, it's easy to jump into rabbit holes and then go down one rabbit hole and then come right back up and try and find that surface level. What were talking about before, how did we go down that rabbit hole? But La Llorona was such an interesting exploration for me. I think I kept chewing on it. It was one of those tales that just kept nagging me at the back of my head, and especially after I read that article, the permission to wail. Those women really had respect for the story and in a way, didn't see her as a representation of a monster, but a representation of a female Mexican woman who was not respected or.

Donna: 51:31

Yeah, I love that. I think that's a perfect place to end this conversation, Vanessa. Yeah. Really?

Vanessa 1: 51:36

Yes. And so we love to hear from our audience members if you have had a La Llorona encounter, we would love to hear. Have you heard of any encounters?

Donna: 51:47

Not personally. Fascinating. I'm going to be on the. I'm going to be on the. You know, wait for that now.

Vanessa 1: 51:53

I know. I mean, I need to go start asking people if they've had an experience with La Lloro. And I'm in San Antonio, which has a 1. I think it is the highest Hispanic population of any large city in the US So I need to go ask around if anyone has had an encounter and start asking.

Donna: 52:13

Yeah.

Vanessa 1: 52:15

So we would love to hear if you haven't had an encounter or if someone in your family has had an encounter and where that encounter was. We also would love to hear what your thoughts are on what is a monster? Is she a monster? What is her? What does she represent? We want to hear all of your thoughts because this podcast is not just about what Donna and I think. Right. This is a podcast for you, about you, about the cultures, and we want to hear all of your thoughts. So thanks so much for joining us. And Donna and I actually haven't talked about December. I have some ideas. Maybe she has some ideas. And we will get back with you soon. Hopefully.

Donna: 53:03

I'm going to talk about the monsters in Greek mythology next. I think that's where we're heading right now.

Vanessa 1: 53:07

We'll see. I definitely want to add that onto our soon list. All right, until next time, keep the fairy tales alive.

Donna: 53:16

Thanks, everyone.