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Category: Día de los Muertos

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

La Llorona: Roots, Branches, and the Missing Link from Spain

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This is the second blog post in a series about La Llorona, the weeping woman who haunts Mexican and other Latinx cultures. The series will be published in time for Día de Muertos 2021. In this post, I'll show some of the story's long history, especially in Mexico. I'll give links to primary sources from the 1570s showing the story was already present among Indigenous Mexicans at that time and earlier. I'll also present what I believe is new evidence of a strong link for some La Llorona stories with Spain.

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

La Llorona: An Introduction to the Weeping Woman

Posted by: Stephen Winick

In Latin America, in Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S., and especially in Mexico, no ghost story is told as often, discussed as enthusiastically, or interpreted as widely, as the legend of La Llorona. With this introduction, AFC kicks off a short series of blogs on La Llorona stories and songs between now and Día de Muertos