Latin America's "Weeping Woman": Crying by the river at night looking for her children, do not turn around or agree

There is a legend in Latin America called "La Llorona," which in Spanish means "the Weeping Woman." Children in households across Mexico, Central America, and Spanish-speaking communities in the southwestern United States have all heard of it.

Versions vary from place to place, but the core part is consistent: a woman in white clothes with very long hair walks back and forth by the river or canal at night, crying as she walks, her voice long and thin: "My children—"

The most common story is: she was once a beautiful girl who married a wealthy man. Later, the man changed his heart and wanted to marry someone else. In her anger and hatred, she threw her own children into the river, and when she came to her senses, the children had already been swept away by the water. She rushed into the river to find them, and drowned as well.

After she died, she could not ascend to heaven and was condemned to search for her children by the water, never finding them. At night, when she sees other people's children, she mistakes them for her own and drags them into the water. So parents scare their children: after dark, do not go to the river; if you hear crying, never get close, and never agree.

Some scholars say this legend predates the arrival of the Spanish. A Spanish friar in the 16th century, while recording the Aztecs, wrote that in the years before the Spanish arrived, a woman's crying was often heard at night in Mexico City, shouting: "My children, we are leaving soon..." The Aztecs took it as an omen.

Today, Xochimilco, south of Mexico City, is an old district crisscrossed by waterways. Every year around Halloween, performances of "La Llorona" are held on these waterways. There is also a folk song of the same name that has been passed down in Mexico for hundreds of years, and it was even sung in Pixar's animated film "Coco."

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