![]() ![]() She waits for her son to return to her from war and weeps and mourns for him while he is gone. Her face was so black and covered with filth that she looked like something straight out of Hell’. Durán describes her as ‘the ugliest and dirtiest that one could possibly imagine. ![]() Coatlicue (she of the snaky skirt) was the mother of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war. This goddess could also be linked to the sixth of ten omens that are recorded in the codex as having foretold the Conquest: the voice of a woman heard wailing at night, crying about the fate of her children.Ī later codex by a Dominican friar, Diego Durán, details the origin myths of the Aztec gods and discusses a goddess, Coatlicue, who is often linked to or thought to be the same as Ciuacoatl. ![]() She is also described as an ‘omen of war’. The first is Ciuacoatl (Snake-woman), described as ‘a savage beast and an evil omen’ who ‘appeared in white’ and who would walk at night ‘weeping and wailing’. In the Florentine Codex, an encyclopedic work on the Nahua peoples of Mexico completed during the 16th century by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, we find two Aztec goddesses who could be linked to La Llorona. La Llorona is thought to be one of ten omens foretelling the Conquest of Mexico and has also been linked to Aztec goddesses. The origins of the legend are uncertain, but it has been presented as having pre-Hispanic roots. The legend is deeply ingrained in Mexican culture and among the Chicano Mexican population of the United States. This folk story has been represented artistically in various guises: in film, animation, art, poetry, theatre and in literature aimed at both adults and children alike. To some she is a bogeywoman, used by parents to scare children into good behaviour. She is often described as a lost soul, doomed to wander the earth forever. After realising what she has done, she usually kills herself. Her crime is usually committed in a fit of madness after having found out about an unfaithful lover or husband who leaves her to marry a woman of higher status. The infanticide is sometimes carried out with a knife or dagger, but very often the children have been drowned. Usually translated into English as ‘the wailing woman’, she is often presented as a banshee-type: an apparition of a woman dressed in white, often found by lakes or rivers, sometimes at crossroads, who cries into the night for her lost children, whom she has killed. La Llorona is a legendary figure with various incarnations. During an interview Léija declared that she was La Llorona. A victim of domestic violence, she was apparently trying to end her suffering and that of her children, two of whom died. A Mexican woman, Juana Léija, attempted to kill her seven children by throwing them into the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, Texas in 1986. ![]()
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