A young woman dances alone among swirling couples near the Zocalo in downtown Oaxaca. She would stop dancing long enough to stare out with a chilling, angry look. La Llorona is a legendary ghost figure in Mexican folklore.
The week long fiesta of Día de Muertos is a popular time to dress like famous ghosts of regional lore.
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 Mexican 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.
(Wikipedia)
Movies, theater musicals and books about this Mesoamerican legend