THE CRY...La Llorona

Are All Mothers Tempted by La Llorona?

I was speaking with a good friend of mine yesterday on the phone as her 3 year old was throwing a fit.  I could hear the screaming in the background and my friend as she struggled to control her daughter--a pretty well natured kid. 

Knowing of my work on The Cry and La Llorona, my friend told me that after having a kid she understands how Andrea Yates and Susan Smith (modern day La Lloronas) could do what they did, and that she thought that any parent who says that he/she hasn't at least once thought about wacking his/her kid was a liar.  As she put it, "Your kid knows your buttons, and sometimes they push you and push you until you're ready to crack."

I don't have any kids myself, so this was a bit hard for me to understand, though several other parents (both men and women) have told me something similar.

I know my friend won't hurt her kid, but how many parents out there will?

The La Llorona Obsession

I went to visit family for a few days in NM and gave my home town friend Steve M. and his mother a sneak preview of The Cry.

After watching the film, Steve's mom went on and on about La Llorona--the many stories she heard as a child and over the years as an adult.  She couldn't stop talking about La Llorona, alternating between moments where it was as if she was trying to convince herself that La Llorona wasn't real, mixed with moments where it was clear that La Llorona was as real to her as we were as we sat there listening to her stories. 

This obsession with La Llorona is something I see over and over when I meet people in the Hispanic community and I tell them about The Cry.  And like my friend's mother, people are often both seduced/attracted by her and repelled/terrified of her.  This is part of La Llorona's power. 

P.S.  They both loved the film. 

La Llorona, A Whore?

Annabel wrote to me:

"Did anyone hear that she was like a whore and she was at a club when she met a guy that was like the devil or something? He convinced her to drown her kids."

I've come across a few versions of La Llorona where people say she was a whore.  Though my sense is that this version developed mainly as a result of the fear that men have of her--with this version being a way of destroying the power that La Llorona is perceived to have as a woman by painting her as a slut.

I do include a version of La Llorona as a whore in my community site www.LaLlorona.com, but I decided not to represent this version in my film, The Cry. 

Is La Llorona Innocent?

M Vega wrote me saying:

"I am from Chicago, Illinois and my parents are from Guanajuato, Mexico.  The Version of La Llorona that I grew up with claimed her children were kidnapped and she is now looking for them.  Do other versions show her as innocent?"

I've come across other people who have told me stories where La Llorona is innocent.  One was from a guy in Argentina who heard that she lost her children, and desperately went searching for them.  But when she couldn't find them, it hurt her so much to see other children that she took out her own eyes to stop the pain.  This is why she takes other children, because she can't see them and mistakes them as her own.

In my film, The Cry, I was definitely influenced by the story I heard from Argentina.

Why Won't La Llorona Die?

In almost all of the stories I've heard about La Llorona, she is condemned to roam the earth forever, paying for her sin of having drowned her kid.  La Llorona is stuck in a world between life and death, and searches for children--as well as seeks her revenge--in the world of the living.

When I was doing research for my film, The Cry, along with finding true accounts of sightings of La Llorona, I also dug around looking for real-life acts of mothers taking the lives of their children (infanticide), which is what La Llorona is all about.  I was surprised to find out how common infanticide is in the U.S. (especially in Texas) and in many other countries around the world.  I was even more shocked to find out how little society seems to be doing to try to address this social issue. 

I wonder sometimes if, in part, that's why La Llorona won't die.  Perhaps she is a reminder to us of how horrifying infanticide is, and until we do something about it, she won't stop crying.