There once was a beautiful Hispanic woman who lived somewhere in either Mexico or the Southwest of the U.S.A. She had believed that she would never fall in love again or nobody would love her because she had children.
She did end up meeting someone and they fell in love. She had hidden the fact that she had children from him for a while. Eventually, she admitted to having several children to him. He had given her the ultimatum of "him or the children".
That night she had gathered her children up and told them they were going on a night stroll. They had walked to the river. One by one she drowned them. After she had done the deed she had gotten her lover and had told him what she had done.
Horrified he rejected her.
Realizing she never should have chosen him over them she went and drowned herself in the same river. She was hoping that she would see them again. That they would all live together in heaven, but when she got to heavens gate they barred her. In order to come in, she had to find her children's souls.
She walks around at night weeping for her children. She searches and searches for them. When she happens upon a child she mistakes them as her own. Since she had forgotten what her children look like. She drags the child to the nearest body of water and drowns them when she realizes that they aren't hers.
The legend is used as a warning to children in a form of curfew and to not wander by bodies of water at night. It also varies on how or why the children die. Like the example above it was the mother, but in some versions, there is no lover and it was her husband that had done the deed or was the reason the children were killed. What is known is that she wanders trying to find her children.
Some say La Llorona had drowned her own children in a jealous rage. In order to get back at her husband for either stepping out on her or paying too much attention to the children. She then drowns herself. In this version, she searches for her children in order to go to heaven or because she regrets it.
In other's, it's the husband who kills their children by drowning them. They didn't have enough money to feed all of their children. After La Llorona found out she had drowned herself in the same body of water her children were killed in.
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