La Llorona: between Legend and Reality

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La Llorona: between Legend and Reality

The road from Guatemala City to Antigua is one of the kind that doesn't differ too much from others that brings you from the busiest centre of the country to the outskirts. It takes about 40 minutes and stretches from mountain Valle de la Ermita to the foot of three volcanoes: Volcan de Agua, Acatenango and Volcan de Fuego where Antigua takes advantage to be located. Guatemala City is a business world, where everything is fixed on commerce and industry. Actually, it is polluted with the mass of traffic fumes and black smoke that hang over streets continuously. Opening a window of a car, one faces a wave of toxic gases that penetrate into eyes, nose and mouth, providing heavy breathing and bitter taste on the tongue. Endless factories, plants, automobile centres, that surround from both sides, turn into lines of markets and shops that meet clients day and night, offering all they need and don't need. What crowds of people do in this bustle is hopeless to understand: unlikely, really do shopping, or, what is more probable, spend time together for fun. Signs and billboards supplement this picture, getting lost among each other and a net of electrical wires. Everything is mixed and disables to hear any particular sound in the persistent noise of groaning of traffic. Amounts of guatemalans have their houses around, willy-nilly becoming a part of this confusion. Their homes are almost completely hidden from the eye, but one can imagine living conditions they have to accept. Calzada Roosevelt is this, busy and exhausted, leading to the west of the country in the direction of beauty and charm that Guatemala keeps.
Outside traffic disperses, crowds of people are replaced with few street vendors, selling hand-made goods and natural products. The scene starts to change. All around acquires the ambiance of countryside, tranquil and peaceful. Hills and green forests take essential part in creating this idyll, approaching the road from every quarter. Small cabanas appear from time to time, quite simple, but pretty, built out of wood and palm leaves with improvised materials. Sometimes also babies shuttlecock here, helping their mothers about the house or playing along the road without any fear of crazy buses that pass with enormous speed in need to escape from rush of the city and bring both local people and tourists to the heart of nature.
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Night comes suddenly, cloaked in mystery. Going up and up, one feels chill inside, as the scene gives a different picture from the daytime. Massive forests fall upon, assuming mysterious colors. Houses, met on the route, are not any more friendly. Weak light of them puts the fear and makes feel creepy all over. Serpentine road seems an insidious snake that doesn't allow to make one mistake. No more person is found here, life in this place comes to a standstill.
My decision to pass this road by night is hasty. I pick up a taxi. Unexpectedly, my driver tears at full speed.
«What's happened?», I ask. Before getting the answer, I see him very nervous. He lights a match, takes to a cigarette and starts his speech without slackening the pace. «This road is not to joke, you know?» Without waiting for my answer, he continues,«She appears very often here. We're seized by fear to see her transparent figure at night, wounding in the middle of a road. A ghost of her seems eternal. But her howl is horrible like one could have never heard before.»
At this moment I realize that all I know about this character is getting to become true... La Llorona! a weeping woman, a legend that takes place in the history of Guatemala from five hundred years. Some stories say, that La Llorona was a criolla (one of unmixed Spanish descent) who was the wife of a wealthy Spaniard. In one of his trips, she falls in love with a poor mix-raced man and she becomes pregnant. She drowns her baby (probably, not only one) in the river to hide the affair, and, when she realizes what she has done, she starts to weep, reaching out her hands for it, but, vainly: the baby has disappeared before. Next day a traveller finds her at the bank and brings bad news about her death to the villagers. They bury her the same place but in the night crying sounds are heard down the river, and la Llorona's weep, «Where is my child?». All the village sees a figure of a ghost, looking for its baby in the same dress that has been put on in the grave. For her heartrending howls people start to call her la Llorona that means from Spanish «crying woman».
Till today, she appears mostly in the mountains or close to water sources, such as wells, laundry tanks, lakes, but mostly at river banks. It's possible to hear her cry especially at moonlit nights. Entire villages and towns witness her ghost and, although parents take care of their children and prohibit going outside when it is dark, actually, she appears in front of men, that is believed, to be a sign, a warning of bad news or troubles. It is said that the further she is, the closer is the ghost of her, and vice versa.
The driver overcomes the curves and shows me the road where la Llorona is often met, dressed with a long white robe, roaming up and down, so that everyone can keep an eye. Next moment, I hear a true story that can't leave anyone indifferent.
«I was on the way back home. A deep night, later than usually... I got used to toss off a glass of beer in a bar of Antigua. I got carried away by conversation with my friends and completely forgot about time. Maybe, it was about 11 p.m. when I left the bar. Taking the daily route, I was walking along a dark street, when at the cross, something made me stop, blocking the road».
He gives a deep sigh, «There was a moment when I saw all my life flow by in few seconds in my mind. I guessed that my obstacle was la Llorona...Trying to overcome it, I said bad words, hit her with legs and fists till the moment one man on the road flinged a whip to me. Thereby I got even with her».
The driver comes back home and tells his wife what has happened to him. She warns him to be very careful. Probably, la Llorona appears not only once. As he gives a whipping, she would prefer to exact revenge upon him that can be more dangerous and even fatal. Unfortunately, his wife strikes home. After a week he goes to the same bar and is found at the bank of the river next morning. His face and body are scratched by her sharp long nails. People consider him to be lucky, 'cause la Llorona leaves him his life.
It's not a single story, 'cause my driver's friends have faced more or less the same. La Llorona never stops: she visits somebody almost each night. I've got gooseflesh. Where am I going?
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In the morning I wake up in the room of the hotel. The sun struggles through a keyhole. I slip on a pair of blue jeans and a shirt and go outside. At this moment I get a feeling that time has stopped and I find myself in another epoch. La Antigua, «Old Guatemala», here you are.
Each Guatemalan knows, that the city was the third capital of the country, founded in 1543 as Santiago de Guatemala.. Now it is the most important touristic center of Guatemala and, moreover, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tumbledown by earthquake in 1773 monuments of baroque style turn the city into museum of Spanish architecture. Stone road, small colonial buildings, not higher than 2 floors, get this place appear in all its beauty, shining with various colors of landscape. Look the main square! Here is Saint Joseph Cathedral, standing out against the background of the blue sky. By 1743 it was the largest one in Central America. After 1773 earthquake, seriously damaged, it was partly rebuilt and restored. A bit over, the Arco de Santa Catalina is located, built in the 17th century, that originally connected the Santa Catalina convent to a school, allowing the cloistered nuns to pass from one building to the other without going out on the street. La Merced Church, Old Weapons museum, San Francisco Cathedral, Santo Domingo Monastery, Church and Convent of Capuchins are the most important ruins of Antigua that attract tourists interminably.
The atmosphere of holiday predominates. Streets are full of cosy restaurants and cafes, wine cellars that are like art galleries, no end of coffee houses, as plantations of coffee surround. It's typical to meet self-taught musicians, playing marimba, the most popular musical instrument that came from Antilles, to where it was brought by African slaves. It's so beautiful and touching, when male part of the family gathers all together and goes to earn money in this way that it's impossible to remain indifferent to them. Smiling indigenous people, dressed in national costumes who come from the nearest villages, provide briskly their hand-made goods: wooden beads, fandangles, hankies, shawls, mats, souvenirs and braids, ready to cry in case of your refusal to buy. The discount is great, the price can arrive to $1. An excellent gift for your friend, or yourself, and that's remarkable - almost for free.
Antigua is full of taxi, but also, according to an old tradition, cart horses are widely met. Passing through bookshops and old-fashioned internet cafes, one arrives to the Central Park, the heart of the city and meeting point. Local people here are to create a show, giving good service and entertainment: boys follow one with an offer to clean shoes, even if they are already perfect, girls sell ice-cream and lolipops. Amazingly, night life is vivid in Antigua as well: there are clubs, discos, open till the last guest, where tourists get completely drunk, dancing like in any megapolis of the world.
The place is unbelievable for its history, location, people and ambience. But coming back to la Llorona, is it a legend or reality? Why don't you go there to ask somebody about her? Will you be surprised, if you don't find even one person who has never heard about a weeping woman?

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Photos

Antigua
Arco de Santa Catalina

At Antigua market
mysterious, terrifying crosses and men

2 little babies
let fall a tear

Comments

[Philip]

Another La Llorona eyewitness
I just spent the evening with my friends, one of whom, R., is from Guatemala. He told us of how, back in his small town in Guatemala, he once saw La Llorona. This evening, he and his friend had just brought down a horse to a pasture a ways from the town, close to a river. As they left, he saw a woman bathing in the river. She had no clothes, but her hair was down past her waist. She laughed at them, and her teeth were very large. And her feet looked like the feet of a beast. He said his legs felt huge, like he could hardly move. But he finally ran! When they had run some distance, his friend told him they should smoke a cigarette, since she doesn't like the smell. R. is about 50 years old, he's lived in the states about 25 years now.

[suparna]

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[Anna Tankeeva]

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