by Nan C Avery

Created on: December 18, 2011   Last Updated: December 20, 2011

The Sixth Omen – In the beginning, there was a woman weeping throughout the streets of Tenochtilan, the capital city of Mexicas, about the drowning death of her children – prior to the Spanish conquest. According to ethnohistorian James Lockhart who translated the Nahauti language, it is one of the eight omens that foretold the destruction of the Aztec world. The weeping woman shouted (or as other ethnohistorians translated, howled or cried), “O my children, we are about to go forever.” or other translations, “O my children, where am I to take you?” Miguel León-Portillo, noted scholar, Mexican anthropologist and historian, wrote, “To the natives, these marvels augured their death and ruin, signifying...the world was coming to an end..other people would be created to inhabit the earth.”

The Mexica-Azteca emperor, Motecuçoma responding to the omens have the priests imprisoned, and their wives and children killed. The Nahua people saw the "male priests as accepting of their fate without a fight. By interpreting the woman's cries as inevitable disaster, the people were “victims awaiting the end."

Jorge Klor de Alva, in the foreward to León-Portillo's “Broken Spears”, cites that “the defeated Mexicas are not altogether silenced as long as La Llorona wails.”

As with most legends and folklore, as it passes from generation to generation, it mutates to reflect changing mores. For example, the werewolf, which symbolically changed from man's inhumanity on occasion to the horror of modern bestiality, La Llorona has transformed in the last 500 years from a predictor of Mexicas demise to a siren or harlot.

Modern interpretations traditionally depict La Llorona as a selfish, vain, vengeful and bad mother by losing her man and children through her own conceit.

La Llorona As Symbol In Modern Literature

Great folklore symbols survive and are the basis of stories creating “remembrances” cultural identities. Toni Morrison's Pultizer Prize winning novel, “Beloved” is a reminder of the sacrifices made for the legacy of identity. La Llorona emerged from the water after drowning her children. In the novel, Beloved emerges, dressed in black, wandering by the shore.

In 2002, the PBS series, “American Family” presented Gregory Nava's “La Llorona”. The episodes tell three La Llorana stories. Cisco, if the viewer recalls, tells the traditional La Llorana narrative. This fills the viewer in to the background of the legend. From this tradition, he uses the legend as a symbol for the other stories that show how women “lost” their children through drug addiction and other problems.

Folklore has deep roots in modern literature. The water has strong symbolical ties to people. The traditional legend of La Llorona weeping for the loss of her children (the destruction of Mexicas by the Spanish crusaders). Rachel, in the Bible, weeping for the lost children of Israel. Both bring reminders of the history and cultural heritage.

Sources:

León-Portillo, Miguel, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Trans. Lysander Kemp, Boston Beacon Press, 1992.

Lockhart, James, ed. and translated. We the People Here: Nahuatli Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Vol. 1. Berkeley University Press, 1993.

Morrison, Toni, Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Perez, Domino Renee, There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture. Publisher: University of Texas Press. Austin, TX. 2008.

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