La Llorana Urban Legend

Superior Essays
La Llorana is a very well-known and widespread urban legend in Mexico and has become just as prevalent in America with the Mexican-American cultural influence of the media, such as horror movies, TV series, and novels. This legend has been passed down from generation to generation as part of the tradition embedded in the Mexican culture and as a result, there are many different interpretations of La Llorana, such as what she looks like as well as what her story is. The fact is this myth is only ancient folklore and even so it has captured the minds of the public for decades. La Llorana in Spanish translates to English as the “crying or weeping woman”. The Myth has many interpretations due to the amount of retelling it has gone through, but …show more content…
The origination of the legend “La Llorona appears in mythology as the archetypal evil/good woman, a mother who, acting as a goddess, murdered her children in a sacrificial attempt to save Mexico from rapacious Spain.” (362) Based of this interpretation numerous interpretations were developed along with the modern one we know today and this is based on the influence of the time period. However, the Aztec legend derived in the 1500s the era of the New World, La Llorona was attributed to an actual living figure of that time period, La Malinche, the consort of Hernán …show more content…
If the culture promotes a tale such as this they are bound to make money from the intrigue of the public, whether it is making movies or writing novels or selling other consumer related products. La Llorana appears literally everywhere in the media today. My favorite show Grimm on NBC Networks featured an episode for the legend of La Llorona, you can probably imagine the millions of people glued to the TV screens watching that episode. The public wants to believe something exciting and abnormal might happen to them in the world and the society promotes ancient legends knowing how attractive this is in the consumer market due to the obsession with Halloween, which is actually more popular than Christmas and makes more money. If one were to search through YouTube, the music artists are even inspired by the legend of La Llorona, as apparently the madness of her story is very attractive to the present day society and well it is a business. Me and my friends have gone to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, where there was maze dedicated to the legend of La Llorona on Halloween. There is even something called a Coffee Shop of Horrors where you can purchase La Llorona Mexican coffee; does it not sound horrifyingly delicious! Just think about roasting and

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