(dramatic music) - I'm Dr. Emily Zarka and this is "Monstrum".

La Llorona, the weeping woman of Mexico.

Varieties of this monster exist in cultures around the globe and we see in La Llorona a few common characteristics.

She is a ghost and a mother and as well always weeping because she drowned her children.

Culturally, the story of La Llorona is used to scare children into obedience.

But a ghostly woman in white sulking in the darkness is hardly original.

To understand why La Llorona looks and acts the way she does and why she is such a cultural icon in Mexico, we must look to history back to a time of Spanish conquistadors and Aztec goddesses.

La Llorona has some truly unique elements to her story and she represents the social history of Greater Mexico.

The stories of La Llorona fall into two main groups: encuentro, the first-person accounts of people who have seen the ghost; and historia, tales of how La Llorona went from regular woman to murderer and ghost.

Although her historia changes based on where the story is told and who tells it, the general tale is this.

Once there was a beautiful indigenous Mexican woman who fell in love with the man of a higher social status.

For a while they lived happily together raising their children.

Then one day, the man abandons her.

Sometimes he plans to marry a woman of his own status.

Other times he threatens to take the children.

Rage and despair drive the woman to drown her children and then she meets her own demise.

God curses her to wander as a ghost searching for her lost children so she can get into heaven.

She cries out for them in the night and in her desperation may kidnap other children mistaking them for her own.

Most scholars agree that at least some of the foundational parts of the story date well before the 16th century when the Spanish began their conquests in the Western Hemisphere.

Take this goddess for instance.

Known as the first woman in the world to the Aztecs, she appears dressed in white and carrying a cradle, walking through the streets at night weeping, disappearing into a lake or river.

Aztecs placed high value on women who died in childbirth.

They became cultural heroes and they were the only women who could achieve afterlife like the male Warriors.

But their afterlife wasn't so great.

They became night ghosts waiting at the crossroads to curse children and tempt men.

Yeah, that's a La Llorona.

In 16th century Mexico, two key things happened that shaped La Llorona into the monster we recognize today.

First, the Spanish conquistadors led by Hernan Cortes arrived and with them came the introduction of several influences.

The first was European mythology.

An influential mythological figure was Medea, the Greek enchantress who murders her own children after being abandoned by her husband.

Then there was Christianity which was injected into the myth adding God in heaven to the story.

The other major influence was a woman known as La Malinche.

During the conquest as part of a peace agreement, Cortes and his men were given 20 female slaves including Malinche, a woman born to a noble family.

Malinche made the most of a bad situation immediately becoming invaluable to the Spanish as a translator and diplomat.

She served as Cortes's personal translator and ultimately became his mistress and mother of his son.

Malinche's son was legitimized but taken away from her and sent to Spain for education.

Most historians agree that without Malinche's presence, the expedition and conquest of Tenochtitlan would never have happened which obviously makes her a controversial figure.

She has been portrayed as everything from a traitor to a victim and is referred to by many names.

Only since the 20th century has Malinche been accepted more widely as something other than a traitor.

And that's around the same time La Llorona was recognized as a symbol of resistance to traditional patriarchy by Chicana authors and others.

The parallels between La Llorona and Malinche are undeniable and they contributed to one another's folklore.

Both were abandoned by a wealthy Spaniard and were indigenous mothers whose children were taken from them.

In these stories, the children, the relationships between indigenous women and European men, and the introduction of a new religion represent the conflict between indigenous cultures and incoming Europeans.

Since then the story of La Llorona has traveled far and wide and she is known by many names.

As her myth has spread, so has her reach.

In addition to bodies of water, she is now said to haunt more urban spaces like highways and railroads.

She's been known to appear in the back of your car if you failed to give her a ride making for what is possibly the worst backseat driver I've ever heard of.

And with the myth becoming more visible in popular culture I'm sure more people will hear about her for the first time.

La Llorona's story is open to a variety of interpretations.

It can be a warning to women to choose their lovers cautiously or about the difficulty of being a single mother.

It can be seen as a criticism of female sexuality or as a metaphor for the grief over generations of indigenous Mexicans killed during the Spanish conquest.

Personally, I'm inclined to side with those who read La Llorona as a representation of the painful merging of Spanish and indigenous cultures.

She represents the religious and social history of Greater Mexico and continues to do so today.

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