The “Weeping Woman” of the Rio Grande

The Rio Grande is just a dry riverbed this time of year at La Llorona park in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The area is named for an old Latinx legend common throughout Mexico and the American Southwest: La Llorona or “the Weeping Woman” usually tells of a beautiful woman with dark flowing hair wearing white robes who was brought to ruin. Often in the stories, she has children from a lover who abandons her for another, and then in a furious rage murders her offspring by drowning them. Many stories relate that her ghost haunts various waterways, looking for children to drown. The tale has been used to frighten children from playing too close to rivers.

Thus the old poem, “Don’t go down to the river, child. Don’t go there alone. For the sobbing woman, wet and wild, might claim you for her own. . . . She weeps when the sun is murky red; she wails when the moon is old. She cries for her babies, still and dead, who drowned in the water cold. . . She seeks her children day and night, wandering, lost and cold. She weeps and moans in dark and light, a tortured, restless soul. . . . Don’t go down to the river, child. Don’t go there alone. For the sobbing woman, wet and wild, might claim you for her own.