Hispanic Heritage Month

The video production of Elizabeth Toledo's performance of La Llorona is a creation of the artistic capabilities found at the Arizona Latino Arts & Cultural Center Directed by Elizabeth Toledo and Victor Ramirez Menendez of BluDreamz Media, the guitarist is Ernesto Trujillo and the dancers are Litzy Bugdud and Francisco Bermudez - Directed by Frank Ornelas of Cachito Dance Project.

The folk legend of La Llorona (the Crying Woman or the Wailing Woman) has many incarnations. But generally, La Llorona is a woman (usually Indigenous) who married a man of a higher class (usually Spanish). They have several children before he leaves her for another woman who is a member of his social class. Distraught, she drowns their children in a creek (or other body of water). Finally, she forever haunts the creek looking for her children. She weeps and wails and is dangerous because she would drown other children who wander too near the creek. The man continues to live with his new wife, forgetting all about his former family (Carbonell 1999, 53–56).

Best described as a twentieth-century Mexican urban legend, “La Llorona”—“The Weeping Woman”—has an apparent connection to ancient Aztec lore. The typical modern story, or report, tells of a woman who wails eerily at night in a certain district as she searches for her lost children. Usually it is said that she has murdered them, and often she wears white.