Truth and Tragedy: The Timeless Mythology of La Llorona with Irene Vásquez at University of New Mexico

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[00:00:00] Irene Vásquez: Why would Indigenous women, enslaved in the colonial period, kill their children? There was a loss, a great loss in that period of time. Families were separated and women resorted to different acts in defiance to avoid a much worse fate. And so, the La Llorona figure has to be strong. So, I think that aspect can resonate with people, but it can also produce a reaction of cruelty—“How cruel could this woman be?”

[00:00:37] Emily Withnall: ¡Bienvenidos! This is Encounter Culture from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. I’m your host and editor of El Palacio magazine, Emily Withnall.

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[00:00:55] Emily: I don’t remember not knowing the story of La Llorona. As a young child, I lived in Peñasco, New Mexico. I remember sleepovers at a friend’s house. Her family had an acequia running along her property, and we liked to run back and forth across it on a rickety old board. When dusk fell, her parents would call us inside and sometimes they would issue a warning if we stayed out too late, and especially by acequia, La Llorona might steal us. Other times on windy nights, I remember people saying that if you listened, you could hear La Llorona wailing for her drowned children.

Curiously, I never understood the story of La Llorona to be a ghost story in the traditional sense. I couldn’t have articulated this as a child, but I think I saw ghost stories as tall tales meant to delight and terrify. La Llorona was different. She had a story, a mission, a deep, never-ending grief. La Llorona was vivid in my imagination, where I saw her wearing a floating white dress, her tears and cries rushing as quickly as the acequias and rivers she walked along.

When I got older, I learned that there were many versions of La Llorona and many ways of depicting this weeping woman who had drowned her own children. I learned that the earliest version of the story could be traced back to the arrival of the Spanish in current-day Mexico, in the early 1500s.

Other versions that came much later cast La Llorona as a villain. La Llorona also began to appear as a supporting character in other stories. One of my favorites of these stories was written by the feminist queer author, Gloria Anzaldúa. Anzaldúa writes about a young girl who must venture into the bosque to find the ruta plant for a remedio to help her mother. Although the girl fears La Llorona, it is La Llorona who helps her find the plant and guides her back home.

In my conversation with Irene Vásquez, the chair of Chicano and Chicana studies at the University of New Mexico, we talk about the many versions and interpretations of the story of La Llorona. As you will hear, the story can change depending on who is doing the telling. The changing of the story over time has reflected the histories. It is connected to shifting cultural priorities or understandings and personal interpretations and connections to the figure of La Llorona, who hold so much meaning to New Mexicans and to others across the US and Mexico and throughout Central America. Please join us for our conversation.

[00:04:09] Irene: Hello! My name is Irene Vásquez and I am chair of the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at the University of New Mexico. I also serve as the director of the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute. As a faculty member, I’m engaged in scholarship that centers Chicanx and Mexican and Latino communities. And, as a teacher and a scholar, I hope to inform better our social and educational institutions.

[00:04:42] Emily: Wonderful. And where are you from? Are you from New Mexico?

[00:04:47] Irene: I was born in El Paso, Texas [pronounced “Te-has”] to a Mexican mother and an Anglo-American father, and I, I gained my appreciation for Mexican-American history from my mother, who always loved to read, although she only had a second-grade education and, for the most part, taught herself to read more advanced literature as she grew up and became an adult. And then later as a student, I noticed in high school, and by that time we were in California, that we rarely learned about our history as people of Mexican descent. And when I went to UCLA, I decided to study history. I went on to get a master’s degree in history at UC Riverside, and specifically went back to UCLA to earn a PhD in Latin American history.

[00:05:48] Emily: Wow. I really appreciate that context. And, you know, I was raised on this story of La Llorona from a young age, and I’m curious because I’ve heard so many versions of the story over the years. I’m curious if you could share the first version that you heard, maybe as a child.

[00:06:05] Irene: The first version I heard as a child was from my mother. I grew up in California in a place called Cherry Valley—rural, very small community. And we had ditches that served, you know, different purposes for our communities, and we would run up and down the ditches and play there.

And as it got later in the day, you know, from where we lived, we could hear our mother yelling to us to come back home for dinner. And so, if we got back too late, she would say, “You need to get back sooner because La Llorona comes out at night” and then told us the story of the weeping woman who walked along the ditch banks looking to steal children.

[00:06:52] Emily: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:53] Irene: That was the first one.

[00:06:54] Emily: So, you learned about it more as like a warning to stay away from the water before you heard the whole story?

[00:07:02] Irene: I think really more to get home before dark.

[00:07:03] Emily: Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Both women laugh]

[00:07:06] Irene: Because she, she knew that we were just drawn to the ditch. We could do all kinds of, you know, running and climbing and building different little forts and things that we really enjoyed doing. And so, she, she really wanted us home when she had dinner ready. But I also know that that story came to her from her mother, who actually had lived in California and was deported in the 1930s and deported to Durango, Mexico.

So, her mother had heard her versions of La Llorona from my mother’s great-grandmother, so it’s a generational story.

[00:07:46] Emily: Yeah, so, do you remember the first time you heard the whole story, you know, about who La Llorona was and how she came to be the weeping woman?

[00:07:57] Irene: So, when I was an undergraduate taking Chicana and Chicano studies classes, that was the first time I ever read Sandra Cisneros’s book, the Woman Hollering Creek. And I remember, you know, getting this notion that, that the character in there, you know, had this relationship to La Llorona—and talking about that story with people, I was in college, and people were involved in Chicano studies, advocacy efforts, and then learning, oh, there’s, you know, there’s different variations here.

And then, as I moved into my MA program and then began to teach as a substitute teacher, I began to sort of dig a little further into the story of La Llorona, and then learning, of course, that she emerges in pre-Colombian lore, in colonial literature, and then more modern literature. So, that was when I began to understand that La Llorona is a myth, a legend, and a lore.

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[00:09:10] Emily: I want to kind of dive into questions around the history and context and all of that, but before we do that, I’m curious if there is a version of the telling that you’re particularly drawn to, and if you would be open to telling it to our listeners.

[00:09:28] Irene: Well, one of the most wonderful things about the story of La Llorona is it’s timelessness and expansiveness. And I have four children, and, of course, you know, with them I didn’t really use La Llorona as a way, I think, to, to scare them or get them in line. It really was more as an academic and we would talk about, you know, different versions. But one of the, the versions I really love and I thought I would share today is, is one that my daughter shares now in her, actually, college classes.

And the setting is in the Mexica, or what we call the Aztec, society in what is present-day Mexico City. She has shared this story in her classes, and I recently had a chance to hear it. So, that was the version I was going to share with you today as one that holds meaning for me. So, her story, you know, the way that she has written it down from being shared with her from a teacher, was that there was a Mexica woman named La Primavera and that she lived in what are the Nahua or Mexica societies in the pre-Columbian period, and that she had two children. She loved them more than anything, and they all lived in the kalpulli, which was the basis of community in Aztec society. And as a family, they were dedicated to their community cultural traditions. And Primavera was married to her husband, whose name was Cholo. And they had been married, you know, at a young age and had raised their children to be very proud of their culture and ceremonial practices.

And then one day while Primavera and her daughter were weaving cloth for their community tribute—and then Cholo and Primavera’s son were out fishing—the two women hear a very loud scream that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and then Primavera stood up from where they were. They could see the neighboring village.

They saw thick fire and loud screams, and Primavera told her daughter to hide in a well and not to leave until she came back. What Primavera witnessed as she got closer to the neighboring village was a large plume of smoke, a strange white man in armor, houses being set on fire, and then she was stricken with horror and grief. And then in this state, she runs back. She runs back to find her daughter and sees her son who was sobbing and telling his mother that his father had been killed. And so, she picks her son up, walks towards the well. They climb in very slowly. And Primavera is in the well for two days before she decides to do that unthinkable act of drowning her children.

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[00:12:46] Irene: And that came about because she was reflecting on their lives, on the joys of living in their kalpulli, and then she decided on that day that she would rather have her children be dead than be slaves or in captivity. And that not long after, you know, she, she drowns herself. And so, the story is that her spirit climbs out of the well, and she’s so confused as to why her children aren’t with her, and with this sense of shame and guilt walks out and looks for her children and her spirit wanders through Mexico, crying for her children. The idea of that, of course, was that there was a loss, a great loss in that period of time, and that families were separated and that women resorted to different acts in an effort of defiance.

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[00:13:56] Emily: I haven’t heard that specific version, but it does make me think of the version that I’ve heard about La Malinche. So, I’m curious about, kind of the diversions of those. Can you talk about La Malinche and maybe what those differences are?

[00:14:08] Irene: Well, you’re, you’re absolutely right that she has been conflated with not only La Malinche, or who is also called Malintzin in the records that were produced during the colonial period, but sometimes even the Virgen de Guadalupe. And so, you, you might know, or your listeners might already know, that there are some very prolific New Mexican writers who have drawn this kind of association with La Malinche. Of course, one of our favorites would be Rudolofo Anaya, who also situates the story of La Llorona in this early period and so was a woman actually from southern Mexico who was taken as a slave or captive to Spanish conquistadores and given to them. And she becomes, you know, one of the primary guides and translators in that very early encounter between Spaniards and Indigenous peoples, and specifically the Mexica.

And so, through time, she has been interpreted in different ways, of course, by people promoting the Mexican nation and highlighting that she betrayed her country by serving as a guide and concubine and mother to Hernan Cortez’s children, and she has been reinterpreted in the modern period, right, through feminist and queer feminist authors that bring out the complications of gender typing and patriarchal and heteropatriarchal norms of society.

[00:16:04] Emily: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think Gloria Anzaldúa writes about that. Right?

[00:16:09] Irene: Yes. Gloria Anzaldúa, of course, has been a formative feminist and queer feminist author of different Mesoamerican myths and archetypes, and I think what’s been so incredibly important about her work is sort of going back to this idea that not all societies had real distinct gender typologies, and in fact, you know, she is inspired by Mesoamerican energies, we could say, or deities, that show the complexity of representations of women and the feminine in earlier societies.

And so, I think her interpretations open up our imagination. And in fact, I would say that it really is largely due to the revisioning of these archetypes and myths of Mexican and then that are later reinterpreted in Chicana and Chicano studies that have given so much agency to Chicana women, to Mexican women to really explore the kinds of stories that aim to paint very rigid cultural values and norms. And so, La Llorona in that way is, is so versatile. And now we see these very striking kinds of different interpretations of La Llorona that are really, um, meaningful, you know, to all people in different societies and cultures.

[00:17:51] Emily: We’ve talked about two very old versions of the story. Are those the oldest versions that you know of?

[00:17:58] Irene: Well, I mean, the interesting thing that happens when you, you know, try to track these figures and history is that it, it’s hard to get a handle on them. We know that in the chronicles or the narratives that Spaniards produced about pre-Columbian peoples, whether they’re Aztec or Nahua peoples, we know that there is this sort of representation of a weeping woman figure or a woman who might convey, you know, notions of motherhood or femininity. It’s hard for us to know exactly, you know, the stories that existed, but we know that among the Mexica that there were Aztec spiritual forces and, you know, we most often match to La Llorona like Chihuacoatl or Coatlicue or Toci or Tonantzin, and you know, the, the important thing about these female archetypes is that they also are reinterpreted.

It’s hard for us to go back and understand, you know, what exactly. These deities represented, but we have some ideas. I mean, archeologists and anthropologists, you know, associate them to important forces like water, fertility, regeneration, the relationship to the earth. So, we know that there were important, let’s call them feminine figures. But they also had a kind of dualistic status. They could actually embody what we think of as femininity and masculinity. They could embody those characteristics, right? And so, I think that’s probably why some people will talk about a weeping woman among different Native American societies in the Americas.

And there, there are actually—I don’t wanna get too macabre here, but there are stories in the archives where Indigenous women, and I, I’m not gonna cite the specific example here because it really requires a greater historical context to understand why would Indigenous women enslaved in the colonial period, kill their children to avoid, you know, what would be seen as a much worse fate?

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You asked about these earlier stories, and I think that. You know, we can look to the colonial records and find that women did step outside of these maternal roles to do what they thought they had to.

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[00:20:53] Emily: I am curious about what you know about how the story has changed over time, and what are some of the different kinds of more contemporary tellings of the story?

[00:21:04] Irene: Probably the one we’re all most familiar with, I think, although I’d love to hear what the stories you’ve, you’ve heard as well—but one common story is a woman, right, either Indigenous or of lower social economic rank, falls in love with a man, you know, who might be of the nobility or, you know, someone of a higher social economic rank. And she has children. And then the male lover or male figure decides to leave her for a younger woman. And in her angst and anger, you know, she decides that she will deprive him of what, at least in this story, the man might prize, right? Which are his heirs. And so, she drowns them in the river and, you know, kills herself. Or sometimes she’s killed, depending on the story, right? But haunts those areas, right, that are sort of in the barren locations or rivers, seeking to find her children. I think that that’s a, a common one. So, in the colonial and then in the modern period, there’s this emphasis on the importance of women in maternal roles, having children, being faithful to the end, and that those values are, are used and imparted in society to keep women in line. And so that, that’s the element of the story, I think, that women and feminists begin to challenge, that women have a natural state, and that is being a mother and caring for her children. And when she strays from that, she’s ostracized. So, those are part of the stories that inform, right, the more modern telling of La Llorona. And then everything’s broken apart, right, in the, during the women’s movement.

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[00:24:44] Emily: When I was a really young child, I lived in Peñasco, New Mexico, and the interesting thing is that when I first heard that story there as a child, there was no context of any of the Indigenous part of the story. In the story I heard, it was a low-class, you know, low-income woman who married a man of nobility, and then left her for a rich woman or was, like, convinced by his family that he needed to leave her for a rich woman. So, it was very much about class, not that I was aware of it as a kid, but in retrospect, very judgmental about this woman and her “how could a mother do such a thing” kind of message. For sure. So, I’m, I’m just interested to, like, hear the two old stories and the message around colonialism that’s inherent to both of those and how that gets lost over time and how the message about what a mother would or should do gets twisted over time as well.

[00:25:52] Irene: It’s very interesting because I, I think that, you know, wherever this story is told, there might be some, some common elements, but you know, from that point on, things begin to diverge. And, you know, I think this question you have about like the setting and the story of La Llorona and how that might vary is incredibly important. In fact, have you seen that film, the 2019 La Llorona film by Jayro Bustamante, which is—the setting is in Guatemala.

[00:26:28] Emily: I’ve actually never seen any La Llorona films because I’m a chicken when it comes to, like, anything that’s a little bit scary. But I am aware that there was some film that was made that there was a huge uproar about. A lot of, like, critiques about—so I don’t know if it was that one.

[00:26:44] Irene: Oh, these are very interesting, you know, films to sort of create a, not a counter, but sort of, you know, bookmark these stories and so the one you’re talking about. I remember when it came out, and my kids were like, “Oh, we’ve gotta see that, The Curse of La Llorona.”That was in 2019. And, you know, they were very excited about it ‘cause there’s something about seeing your stories on film or in the media that can be very, you know, attractive to young people. And so, they saw it and they came back: “That was terrible! The effects were bad!” One of my daughters says, “There really wasn’t a plot,” and, and I never watched it, partly because they were so critical.

But I have to tell you, I watched it for this podcast. I said, how can I not watch it? I gotta figure out what this controversy’s about. And, you know, there’s some elements. It’s very, you know, it’s a Hollywood film and the protagonist is an Anglo-American woman, I think. Or, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit—you don’t know for sure, but of course, you know, if you look up her name, she is, and it seems like she’s married a Latino man, but she’s a social worker investigating, you know, the story of abuse of these two young boys who end up being drowned. And so, it has that element, but there’s this, you know, like scrutiny on the, on the lead character, the social worker, because she’s a single mother, and so there’s those elements, right? Of, is she participating in, you know, this socially constructed norm of “woman” and “mother” in our modern society? I think that some people were probably critical, you know, because you know the director and the main character aren’t Latina or Latino. You know, there’s some stereotypical or kind of quaint depictions of the Mexican or Latino family.

I didn’t think it was horrible. I mean, I kind of saw this as a Hollywood film and this is the mainstream, and so I was. You know, I, I didn’t, I didn’t have that same reaction. It’s funny as my kids, but the, the La Llorona by Jayro Bustamante has this Indigenous element you were just talking about, which is that La Llorona emerges in this household of a former, you know, dictator who has committed these atrocities against Indigenous people and that the spirit of La Llorona is, is called through one of the Indigenous women who works in the home and it sheds light on the genocide of Indigenous people that happened in Guatemala. So, these are two very different stories and I found that one a little bit scarier—only because there’s this element of truth and tragedy that, that you know, has happened. Whereas, you know, the stories with La Llorona, I mean, they have that mythic element. And so, it is a very good film. I will recommend it if your listeners are interested!

[00:29:56] Emily: I might have to brave it because my family lived in Guatemala during the Civil War when I was a kid for two years, so we were right in the middle of that, so I might need to go watch that one.

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[00:30:08] Emily: I think that it’s really interesting how stories like this one can persist over time, and especially this one that’s so old. But I’m also curious about the ways, you know, that these stories can be misunderstood by people who aren’t within the cultural context that they emerge from, or maybe kind of co-opted or otherwise appropriated in ways that can perpetuate stereotypes or do other kinds of harm.

[00:30:46] Irene: In fact, you know, I think that that might’ve been part of, you know, why people were critical of the one particular film by Michael Chavez. This is part of the reason I didn’t wanna share the one story from the colonial archive, you know, about Indigenous women in Mexico in the 1800s. Because when you try to understand the context of the emergence and evolution of this story, I think if you’re not familiar or you don’t have that historical context, these stories can, you know, shape a person’s imagination about people who are different from them.

And so, I think that La Llorona can be used by people who are judgmental of communities of color, you know, to paint them as superstitious or unrealistic or not modern for continuing these stories from generation to generation without being critical or negative about, why would you perpetuate a story about a woman who kills her children?

Because I mean, when you think about it like that, it conveys a kind of symbolic violence and so, in that way, yeah, I think that there can be a negative reaction to myths and legends and lore, if they’re appropriated and used to stereotype people.

[00:32:26] Emily: One of the criticisms I heard about that film is the cultural misunderstandings that would lead people to just paint her as this almost one-dimensional monster.

[00:32:39] Irene: Yes, absolutely, and I was trying to get to the journal that our department recently printed, Regeneración, and there’s a story in there about La Llorona and you know, in some ways it has that sort of revisioning element that that we see in the works of Rudolfo Anaya, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros—I mean, if we think about the La Llorona figure, whatever way we might judge a mythological figure, you imagine that this figure has to be strong to go through this action that she feels will vindicate her against an oppressive or a man with abusive authority. And so, I think that aspect can resonate with people, but it can also, as you say, produce a reaction of cruelty, right? How cruel could this woman be?

And I think that the expansiveness of this story has allowed people to even take that element of this strong woman that engages in either violence or trickery to come out of what, what she sees as an unjust situation. That that too is used. There’s a very interesting twist on La Llorona in the journal Regeneración by a writer Lisa Mendoza Knecht and her story is called “Cabello, Sangre, y La Cura.” And so, it situates La Llorona in this story where a mother has to track her down and get a lock of her hair in order to protect her children from COVID. And so, the story follows her journey, her encounter with La Llorona and where it ends is that La Llorona requires something from her. And what it is that she requires from her is to go and help these immigrants who are very close to death, and they find them and they save them.

And as a result, this mother’s children are safe from the COVID virus. So, I found that [to be a] very, a very interesting twist, yeah, where La Llorona is a heroine.

[00:35:00] Emily: Right. Wow. That’s fascinating. I am super interested in that idea of, you know, not only the history of the story, but where the story could go next as this, like, very alive myth that has been carried over time and might continue to transform.

[00:35:18] Irene: Well, it’s so interesting you asked that question. So, looking into the future, what are the sorts of representations of La Llorona that that we may see reminds me of a recent photo fashion shoot we did at La Casita at UNM. It’s where Chicano and Chicana Studies is housed, and there was some talk about demolishing La Casita and the students decided, like, let’s organize a photo shoot of the buildings that were being demolished and let’s forefront, you know, our cultural representations as Chicanx, Latinx people. And so, I chose the sort of traditional depiction of La Llorona—flowing hair, white gown, and I had teardrops painted on my eyes.

And my daughter came by the photo shoot, and you know, her fashion is sort of gothic punk. And I decided, “Wow, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this juxtaposition of these La Lloronas or this La Llorona and her daughter? And the image was very striking because she was all in black and heavy makeup. And so, we sat next to each other in front of this demolition site, and I realized that the story of La Llorona, you know, it’s, it’s timeless. It has such significance to families in our community. And I think what is so empowering and what writers and storytellers of La Llorona have found is that her story can be used to speak to our present moments [gentle piano music begins with female vocals] and create a vision where we are empowered, where women are empowered, and where we see ourselves as agents of change.

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[00:37:39] Emily: I’m curious what ideas or themes you are the most drawn to in the story of La Llorona personally.

[00:37:46] Irene: I think why I am drawn to La Llorona is because it is a story that I know has existed in my family over generations and that I know can be revisited and retold. And that thread, I think, is what makes each family and community so special.

So one thing I’ll share about a song that comes from Vera Cruz, Mexico called “La Lloroncita.” What I’m really drawn to in that particular song is it discusses a person who is in prison and who’s chained and who’s in a cell. And basically the chorus is referencing La Lloroncita, and the very act of the imagination of envisioning a scene that is so different from the person’s immediate surroundings. They actually find joy in that, and freedom.

[00:38:47] Emily: I mean, as you tell all these different versions of this story, I think the through line that I’m finding and, you know, whether or not there’s judgment behind it is another thing. But the through line that I’m finding is kind of a story about what do you do in the face of the impossible. You know, what agency do you have? That’s kind of what I’m piecing together as we’ve been talking.

[00:39:12] Irene: Yeah, and I think that I would follow that with saying that I was just gonna encourage everybody to seek out their own stories of La Llorona. The power of this story, the power of La Llorona is in our own interpretation. What we make of La Llorona.

[Music returns with powerful female vocals]

[00:40:07] Emily: As the nights grow longer [music fades], we invite you to learn more about the many versions of La Llorona we discussed in this episode. Links to some of the movies and stories we mentioned appear in the show notes. Which stories about La Llorona are your favorites? What are some versions we didn’t mention in the episode? We’d love to know. Please share them with us.

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[00:41:08] Emily: Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

Our producer is Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
This season is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder and Alex Riegler with additional editing by Monica Braine.
Our recording engineers are Collin Ungerleider and Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe.
Technical direction and post-production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz.
Our executive producer is Daniel Zillmann.
Thank you to New Mexico artist “El Brujo” D’Santi Nava for our theme music.

For a full transcript and show notes, visit podcast.nmculture.org or click the link in the episode description in your listening app.

I’m your host, Emily Withnall.

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