For many reasons. We all have so many different reasons to weep.
This month, Women’s History month, I propose a re-evaluation of a legend that is one of the most persistent and deeply rooted in the Latin American collective imagination. La Llorona.
First of all, who is she? Over the centuries multiple versions of the story have found their way into our Pan-American culture, but the version you will find in BeeReaders Español tells the tale of a ghost woman, a soul in pain, who wanders up and down the streets of Mexico City, near a river, crying out over and over again, “Aaaaay, mis hijos!” in sorrow for her disappeared children, and lamenting in general the terrible fortune life dealt her. La Llorona, of humble Mexican origins, somehow got herself married to a Spanish conquistador, a man of a very different class and social status, and gave him three children. After a time, the conquistador returns to Spain, allegedly to set up their family home. When it’s all fixed up, he says, I’ll come back for you. But he never does. The months go by and our Llorona, heartbroken and broke, must get a job to make ends meet and feed her kids. The classic story of the single mother, an all-too-familiar figure in Latin America and other parts of the world.
One fine day the Spanish caballero returns, but only to scoop up the children and leave his poor wife to fend for herself, though by now she is simply shattered by this last and final blow. She dies of sorrow, but like all the members of the broken hearts club, she remains agitated, restless. She doesn’t know what to do with herself, with her pain, with her double loss. On the one hand she must endure the loss and betrayal of the husband she trusted and loved, to whom she surrendered her intimacy. And on the other hand, she must bear the loss of her children who gave her life purpose and meaning.
She dies of sorrow, but like all the members of the broken hearts club, she remains agitated, restless. She doesn’t know what to do with herself, with her pain, with her double loss.
Who among us —men and women alike— have not experienced some form of abandonment? Someone who left us alone with a broken heart? Who hasn’t experienced that insufferable need to go back and look one last time at that photograph, that letter, some little memento of the person who left us behind for someone else, sunnier skies, the great beyond? Literature is filled with reflections on this typie of situation: A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis, The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, Paula, by Isabel Allende. They all tell of that unreal, anxious state of those of us who were left behind, abandoned. We fidget, we just can’t figure out what to do with our hands, our legs, our feet – sometimes the only thing we can do is run and run until we can’t run anymore.
But we also know that after that first period of mourning, eventually we must lift ourselves up and start all over again.
I think this March of 2022 is a wonderful moment to retool this myth, to re-envision it with our students and ourselves, too.
I think this March of 2022 is a wonderful moment to retool this myth, to re-envision it with our students and ourselves, too. To ask ourselves the reason for the persistence of this particular myth, the myth of a woman who, without husband and children, cannot find a reason to live, cannot pick herself up or take care of herself. Who is reduced to a kind of purgatory, wandering through the city that was witness to her pain.
Let’s take a step back. Anyone who has listened to the astounding song of the same name by Chavela Vargas knows that, as a narrative, this story is hard to top: class conflict, a jilted wife, trans-Atlantic journeys, death. These are the ingredients of the most addictive soap operas and movies —and there are several, in fact, based on La Llorona.
But if we go beyond the specific drama of the Llorona, what else do we find? We find a kind of aura, a poetry of the helpless figure, that sad and ethereal beauty of the ghost, like those ballet dancers of the skeletal arms and legs, in their flimsy white tutus, dancing toward the dream of a prince who may or may not turn up. In thousands of ballets, plays, and films we have seen these women- and not just in Latin America.
This strikes a stark contrast with certain realities that are hard to ignore in Latin America. The figure of the mother. The grandmother. That valiant single mother who, unfortunately, is far too common a sight in our cultures. But unlike the Llorona figure, the female is quite often the strong figure in our American cultures: the one who raises the kids. the one who washes the clothes. The one who makes dinner. and who knows where the kids’ socks are. She is the one who sets rules and boundaries, but also gives hugs and kisses. Reality is quite the polar opposite of the vision that the Llorona legend transmits. In real life the female is a strong, undeniable presence in the family.
So why does this myth persist? What made it the emblematic story that has remained embedded in the Latin American collective consciousness? I don’t know. I have a few ideas. But it doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think? What might your students think?
Let’s take a moment and rethink this story, read it with our students, talk about it and reinvent it for our age. I’m not saying that we should bring it closer to reality, no. Myths aren’t about reality: the myth is a genre that consists of narratives that have symbolic relevance in a given society.
Let’s take a moment and rethink this story, read it with our students, talk about it and reinvent it for our age.
So why don’t we start working on a new kind of symbol, a new life for this age-old ghost? So many of the myths and legends of our culture have been passed down to us through a rich oral tradition that, in our classrooms, homes and communities, we ought to continue by talking, examining, and building.
I wonder what we’ll come up with…
