Calumet River’s La Llorona
La Llorona is widely regarded as a ghost figure in Mexican folklore although she has traveled with Latinx communities to many different places and bodies of water. Versions of her story vary but there are consistent elements.
La Llorona was a beautiful woman who fell in love and bore children with a man. She killed her children by drowning them in the river. In death, she wanders in despair crying out for her children. She seeks out children to keep with her in the afterlife, potentially stealing away those who wander too close or disobey their parents.
Versions of La Llorona posit the circumstances of her fate differently. In some, her husband is unfaithful and she kills her children from a place of vengeance. In others, the man she had them by is planning to marry another and take her children from her and she kills them in a fit of despair and fear of separation. In some stories, she regrets her actions and drowns herself as well and in others she dies at the hands of others.
Some scholars make connections between La Llorona and Aztec mythology figures like “The Hungry Woman” who wails for food, Cihuacoatl a deity of motherhood, and Coatlicue a mother figure who birthed the moon and stars.
The Calumet River is one home of La Llorona with those who have heard her terrifying and mournful cries.
Warning Stories
La Llorona is used as a cautionary tale to keep children in line so they do not get stolen by the ghostly woman. Her story can stop children from getting too close to dangerous bodies of water as well as learning to recognize dangerous sounds like that of predatory animals or oncoming weather events.
Weeping woman figures are found cross culturally in different lexicons of folklore. La Llorona specifically speaks to family separation and the pain of losing children. The first recorded version that is known of La Llorona is from around 1500, about the time Spain began to colonize Mexico.
Another story from the time period is the Pishtaco, a creature originating in South America specifically in Peru and Bolivia. The Pishtaco is a tall, pale man-like creature sometimes armed with a blade that he uses to slaughter and steal the fat from his victims. For the indigenous peoples, fat was considered sacred. Spanish conquistadors would steal fat off of corpses and use it in their medicine. There is no record of the creature prior to Spanish presence.
Stories of creatures and ghosts can aid in metabolizing experiences of violence, offering warnings not just for children not to stray too far but for whole communities and regions packaging methods of resistance in cultural signals.
Here is one timeline with sightings of La LLorona and versions of her story.
