![]() La Llorona is sometimes conflated with La Malinche, the Nahua woman who served as Hernán Cortés' interpreter and also bore his son. The legend of La Llorona is traditionally told throughout Hispanic America, including Mexico, Central and South America. Today, the lore of La Llorona is well known in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. The villainous qualities of La Llorona, including infanticide and the murdering of one’s own blood is assumed to be connected to the narrative surrounding Doña Marina, also known as La Malinche, or Maltinzin in her original nomenclature. The most common lore about La Llorona includes her initially being an Indigenous woman who murdered her own children, which she bore from a wealthy Spaniard, after he abandoned her. Lore evolution Įarly colonial texts provide evidence that the lore is pre-Hispanic, originating in the central highlands, however La Llorona is most commonly associated with the colonial era and the dynamic between Spanish conquistadores and indigenous women. La Llorona 's falling into the trope of an “evil” or “failed” mother, having either committed infanticide or having failed to save them from drowning, can be considered a reflection of this. Social critics often consider Mexican (and Mexican-American) culture to force patriarchal standards on to women, such as being defined by their roles as mothers. The mother archetype of La Llorona has been tied to patriarchal expectations of women in Mexican and Mexican-American culture by several authors, historians, and social critics. Recurring themes in variations on the La Llorona myth include a white, wet dress, nocturnal wailing, and an association with water. In another version of the story, her children are illegitimate, and she drowns them so that their father cannot take them away to be raised by his new wife. Unable to save them and consumed by guilt, she drowns herself as well but is unable to enter the afterlife, forced to be in purgatory and roam this earth until she finds her children. One day, Xochitl sees her husband with another woman and in a fit of blind rage, she drowns their children in a river, which she immediately regrets. In a typical version of the legend, a beautiful woman named Xochitl marries a rich ranchero / conquistador to whom she bears two children. ![]() The legend has a wide variety of details and versions. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |