La Llorona

Mexico and Latin America · Mexican, Chicano, and Latin American oral traditions

The weeping woman whose cries are heard near rivers at night.

La Llorona wanders waterways crying for the children she lost, and the sound of her voice is treated as a warning. Parents have used the story to keep children away from dangerous rivers after dark, but the legend also carries deeper grief: love twisted by abandonment, guilt that never rests, and water as the place where memory refuses to sink.