#CURSE OF THE LECHUZA FULL#

We are an Amazon affiliate.When I was a kid, sitting with my cousins around a fire at the ranch, my uncle Joe Casas told us about a predator that kept sneaking onto his land, trying to kill or steal his cattle.

La Llorona: The Weeping Woman, by Joe Hayes (in English and Spanish, great illustrations). Weeping Woman: La Llorona and Other Stories, by Alma Luz Villanueva (in English) We are an Amazon affiliate. The Legend of La Llorona, a book by RJ de Aragon (pretty comprehensive, and in English) We are an Amazon affiliate. For the Mexico Unexplained show about La Malinche please follow this link: Some connect the Malinche with La Lorona because according to some accounts, Malinche killed her kids when she found out that Cortez was betrothed to a beautiful (and younger) noblewoman from Spain. She is remembered as both a traitor or as the mother of a new race of meztizos, as she bore children with Cortez. Some people tie the story of La Llorona to the story of La Malinche, the interpreter and guide who accompanied the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortez to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The podcast host goes into more personal stories: one of a neighbor girl’s encounter with the Llorona and a suspected sighting he had with other children present. Even the City ofĪlbuquerque used the Llorona story in their “Ditches are deadly, stay away” campaign in the 1980s with signs featuring the “ditch witch” to scare off the kiddies. Like the story of La Mano Pachona, a huge hairy hand that comes out of the sky to snatch you up if you wander too far from home, the story of La Llorona is a cautionary tale to keep kids in line while parents are not there. One could argue that the whole reason for the La Llorona story is to keep kids away from potentially dangerous flash-flood situations. The story has minor variations, but the one described in the podcast is pretty basic and it does the trick. It is said that to this day, Maria still roams the arroyos and riverbeds, as an old hag, looking for her children and crying out for them, and will snatch you up if you are alone or careless. They were swept away by the current never to be seen again. She tried to reach out to save them, but it was too late.

When she threw them in the rushing water, they cried out to her as they were drowning and she had second thoughts. In a fit of jealousy, María took her two kids down to the river to drown them. Once while he was away Maria heard a story that her husband was going to leave her for a younger woman from a better family. Her husband was handsome and wealthy and was away from home a lot. She was married off to an older nobleman when she was just a teenager. There was a beautiful young girl named María who caught the attention of many men from all over the territory. The story is usually set in Spanish times.

The story always begins in a small village a long time ago and usually far away. Flash floods are common in that part of the world, so the arroyos were vital for flood control for the city.

#CURSE OF THE LECHUZA FULL#

Some were paved, especially when you got deeper into the city, but as you got closer to the mountains, the Sandias, most arroyos in the 1970s and 1980s were just dirt embankments that became full when it rained. Kids played in the mesas, which were just patches of desert in between housing developments, and in the arroyos, which the locals (gringos) pronounced “arroyas.” The arroyas were mostly waterless ditches running through the city. He lived in a primarily gringo area of Albuquerque, the far Northeast Heights, in a time when kids played mostly outside with other children.

Podcast host Robert Bitto first heard the story of La Llorona as a child growing up in New Mexico. So, what is the phenomenon called La Llorona? If you are a child growing up in any of these areas the story of La Llorona is more terrifying than any other ghost story and this story is older than anyone can remember. She haunts the canals, creek beds, rivers, arroyos and acequias of Mexico and the American Southwest. La Llorona is one of the most powerful and enduring pieces of Mexican folklore.

Curse of the lechuza