The folklore of la Llorona is known not only in Mexico, but in other central and South America countries. It's origin dates back to before the Spanish conquest. The story's antecedent can be found in the Náhuatl omens.La Llorona is said to be a wailing ghost, wandering through the nights and stealing children to drown them (llorar means to cry in Spanish).
There are different explanations as to how she has become a ghost. According to one version, la Llorona was once a woman who had a happy family and two children. As time went on, however, her husband’s love and passion wore off and decided to leave her. Unable to save her husband from abandoning her, the women suffered from great sorrow. She decided to drown her two children, and she herself also died afterward.
Due to her sin of killing her own children, the soul of the woman was banned from entering heaven, until she could find the soul of her two sons, but she couldn’t. From then on, the sad soul turned into a crying ghost, haunting the lonely places and drowning other people’s children in the same river where she killed her sons.
Tears
In many cultures, tears are regarded as a sign of weakness, and are therefore deemed famine in patriarchal societies, including that of Mexico when the myth of la Llorona was first told. Therefore, naturally, this crying ghost takes the form of a woman. Despite what tears symbolize, I would like to think that la Llorona's tears made her powerful (though fearsome). Her identity as a “crying woman” has been essential in bolstering her fame in Latin American countries.
Family role
Although in this myth the family of la Llorona was completely broken, we can infer from her tragedy that the expectation for a happy family is for the husband to remain faithful to the wife, and the wife to fulfill her domestic role of taking care of children. Instead, la Llorona tragic ending was largely due to her husband’s betrayal and her consequent murder of her children.
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