Weeping Woman

La Llorona ("The Weeping Woman") is a legendary ghost prominent in folklore of Latin America. This myth has a tendency to take aspects of an urban legend and is present throughout Guatemalan culture. According to the tradition, La Llorona is the ghost of a woman who lost her children and now cries while looking for them in the river, often causing misfortune to those who are near or hear her.

Though several variations exist, the basic story tells of a beautiful woman by the name of María who drowns her children in a river as a means of revenge towards her husband, who had left her for a younger woman. She drowns herself in the river when she realizes her children are dead.

At the gates of heaven, she is challenged over the whereabouts of her children, and is not permitted to enter the afterlife until she has found them. María is forced to wander the Earth for all eternity, searching in vain for her drowned offspring. She constantly weeps, hence her name "La Llorona." She is caught between the living world and the spirit world.

Mexican parents often use this story to prevent their children from wandering out at night. In some versions of this tale, La Llorona will kidnap wandering children who resemble her missing children. She asks them for forgiveness, then drowns the children to take the place of her own. People who claim to have seen her say she appears at night or in the late evening by rivers or lakes. Some believe those who hear the wails of La Llorona are marked for death but those who escape in time are not so marked, similar to the Gaelic banshee legend. She is said to cry, ¡Ay, mis hijos!, which means Oh, my children!

La Llorona is also sometimes identified with La Malinche, the Nahua woman who served as Cortés' interpreter and mistress who bore him children and who some say was betrayed by the Spanish conquistadors. In one folk story of La Malinche, she became Hernán Cortés' mistress and bore him a child, only to be abandoned so that he could marry a Spanish lady (although no evidence exists that La Malinche killed her children). Aztec pride drove La Malinche to acts of vengeance. In this context, the tale compares the Spanish discovery of the New World and the demise of indigenous culture after the conquest with La Llorona's loss.

The Chumash of Southern California have their own connection to La Llorona. Chumash mythology mentions La Llorona when explaining nunašɨš (creatures of the other world) called the "maxulaw" or "mamismis." Mythology says the Chumash believe in both the nunašɨš and La Llorona and specifically hear the maxulaw cry up in the trees. The maxulaw cry is considered an omen of death. The Maxulaw is described as looking like a cat with skin of rawhide leather.

...
Wikipedia