Based on Shawn Wilson's Research Is Ceremony Indigenous Research Methods (2008), he states the following elements of the research paradigm that consists of ontology ("What is real?"), epistemology ("How do I know what is real?"), methodology ("How do I find out more about this reality?"), and axiology ("What part of this reality is worth finding out more about?") which are useful for illustrating the legacy of La Llorona and its haunting aspects os it through my family as well as from other people too.

"What is the real story of La Llorona?"

The haunting story of La Llorona became real when it was passed onto my family through my mother from my great grandparents, who lived in Juarez, Mexico. Since I was a child, I can remember this story and it seemed so real at the time. I started to ask more questions as I got older (33).

"How did I know it was real?"

As a child I believed my mother's capability of storytelling of La Llorona, she would use this story as a deterrence from bad behavior, so it was embedded in our beliefs that our mother was being a good mother instead of bad mother. She was looking out for us from being harmed or kidnapped from La Llorona. Over time, I heard it from other people, so I was curious to know more about it. I wanted to know its historical context of La Llorona (33).

"How do I find out more about this reality?"

First, I wanted to conduct a personal interview with my mother and ask her basic questions about La Llorona and how it was passed onto our family and where did she first hear the story too. Secondly, I also wanted to research cultural artifacts, literature, and scholarly articles to obtain a better understanding of its historical context and its implications (34).

"What part of this reality is worth finding out more?"

Overall, I wanted to know the historical origins and cultural legacy of this haunting story that has been retold over time by many people including one prominent scholar, There Was a Woman La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture (Pena, 2008) and I also wanted to research the cultural artifacts, particularly a film and literature, "The Curse of La Llorona" (Chaves, 2019) and Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (1972), and its implications of this haunting story of La Llorona (34).

Using Wilson's "Relational Accountability" approach will provide layers of storytelling and cumulative analysis about the history of La Llorona that has impacted many Indigenous people across the world, including my family in Las Cruces, New Mexico (97-98).

First, I will start out with a personal interview with my mother to have a conversation about her personal experiences about La Llorona and how she retold those same stories during my childhood into my young adult years before I left home to join the military. After the interview, I will explore the internet for any films of ghost hauntings of La Llorona that can be used for cultural artifacts. Additionally, I want to explore how La Llorona is protrayed through the film and how its implications of this haunting are recorded from a film director, actors, and actresses perspectives. Finally, I will use a literature review of scholarly work on ghost hauntings and how it is related to the La Llorona, my family, and my mother. Cumulatively, I will connect all the stories to get a complete, clear, and mutual understanding of the haunting story of La Llorona and its implications.

My mother was told this story by my great grandparents, who passed it onto her (Herlinda Vigil, 2024). Eventually, this story became part of our family stories around the kitchen table over meals. This story was about a weeping, wailing woman, and screaming woman looking for her missing children (Wince, 2013). My mother would tell us that she would take any children who were not behaving or listening to their parents (Herlinda Vigil, 2024). She used it to scare us by telling us to come home when the street lights came on or be home by curfew time. It haunted us as children and young adults because we did not want to be mistaken for her missing children.

At first, it was believable but as we got older, we became more skeptical about La Llorona. Later, I got more curious about it, so I was seeking other sources of this story about La Llorona and it still haunts me to this day. I would even ask my friends and other family members about it. But nobody ever had a clear answer for the historical context or origins of La Llorona.

Secondly, that is when I took special interest in it because of the historical background of the storytelling of La Llorona and how I could relate to others who heard and told this story in a lot of ways. Because of how I grew up in a Catholic home with religious grandparents from my father's side and superstitious parents on my mother's side, I was confused about religion and spirituality and it haunted me because I did not want to sin and go to hell or get taken away by La Llorona. My great grandmother who was strict and religious from my mother's side but she was not superstitious. My great grandmother lived until she was 93 and she used God and her bible into scaring us into behaving to be good. On the other hand, my mother chose to use La Llorona to scare us into behaving good (Herlinda Vigil, 2024).

Eventually, I found a book, Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, (1972). Personally, I connected with this book because in Chapter 1 "Dos," it mentions Ultima who is curandera and she is spiritual. She has a major influence on Antonio as he was growing and maturing into a man who wanted to become a priest. She reminds me of my great grandmother, she even moved in with Antonio and his family. Our great grandmother lived with my mother and my brother until she passed away.

Additionally, in Chapter 2 "Dos," of the book, there are some ghost haunting references to La Llorona which is relevant to to my story of La Llorona taking us away because in the scene Antonio is being forewarned about La Llorona that will take his soul away by the running water of the river (Anaya, 2024). His story is relevant my story because I grew up listening to those stories from my mother and I lived close to the Rio Grand river.

Over time, I learned that La Llorona was a lady who would go wandering around at night looking for her lost children around the Rio Grande River. Locally, in Las Cruces New Mexico, everyone who has heard of the story of La Llorona knew about not hanging out at the river late at night. We used to hang out at the river during the day and we even had "Senior Skip Day," at the river. At no point, did I ever hear a screaming woman like the urban legendary stories that have been told in my hometown (Erwin, 2019).

Historically, the connection between La Llorona and the Rio Grande River was well-known by the locals, so this ghost haunting story has existed in our hometown of Las Cruces for a very long time. To this day, there is a designated park area that is dedicated to the ghost hauntings of La Llorona which I plan to visit this winter when I go visit my parents (Haunted & Historic Places in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1997).

Otherwise, besides reading the book and listening to the haunting stories from my mother, and hanging out at the river, I was curious to watch, "The Curse of La Llorona," by director Michael Chaves, which is about La Llorona stalking the night and haunting a family, who is being protected by a disillusioned priest. My intent was to research how the film industry was portraying La Llorona to the audience and it was personal to me. Even though it has Westernized connotations of a ghost haunting and the story plot is different than a lot of variants of La Llorona (Walraven, 2024), but it still has the primary elements of a weeping woman, who is wandering around looking for her children along any body of water. There are plenty of references to a body of water in the film.

In the opening scene of the film, it starts out with "1673" as a timestamp of events that are about to occur in the film. There is a husband and wife with two little boys playing in the grassy open fields but it seems like a dream. Next, one of the little boys is running through the grassy field looking for his mother, so he follows the screaming and moaning of someone, he walks up to the creek of water and witnesses a horrifying event taking place. He sees a lady in white with a veil covering her face growing someone in the water, who seems to be his brother (The Curse of La Llorona, 2019).

Subsequently, the next opening scene in the films starts out with "1973" in Los Angeles City, where a mother and her children are in the kitchen eating breakfast and getting ready for school but they miss the school bus.

In the film, Anna, who is a social worker investigating "child abuse" and "truancy" issue with a mother, Patricia, who has her two little boys locked up in a safe room protecting them from La Llorona. Throughout the film, there is constant weeping sound of coming from a female character, La Llorona dressed up in a white dress trying to take Anna's children and Patricia's children too. Without spoiling the movie, there is a scene that confirms that La Llorona is chasing the children to take away. Ultimately, I was more interested in than just reading a book and watching a film about La Llorona, so I thought it would be interesting to dive into the scholarly work that has been completed on La Llorona.

According to Perez (2008), There Was a Woman La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture, in Chapter One, “A Five-Hundred-Year History Traditional La Llorona Tales,” she has researched how La Llorona is an important part of Mexican storytelling traditions of the United States and Mexican border. It is a ghost story about a “Weeping or Wailing Woman,” that is haunting the riverbanks of the Rio Grande River and other lake shores. Some know her as the mother who killed her children out of revenge and grief. She is condemned to wander around the earth in search of her children too.

Traditionally, from the Mexican ancestry perspective, it is a cultural allegory that instructs people how to live and act within established social mores.  Perez even shares her personal story how she grew up listening to other ghost stories, such as “El Cucuy,” but she also mentions the origins of these ghost stories and their cultural narratives, artifacts, and social impacts.

Most importantly, Perez makes a historical connection between the Indigenous women and La Llorona, she explains extensively throughout the chapters about the different versions of La Llorona that shows up in poetry, plays, films, books, artwork, music and even her book are considered to be cultural artifacts.

Ultimately, I plan to research how this ghost story has impacted my life, my family, my mother, and others who have heard or been impacted by this ghost haunting in various ways.

On collecting data information and conducting rhetorical analysis, I will be using three stories to explore the social storytelling aspects and impacts by interviewing my mother, studying a film for the narrative structure, themes, social and cultural context, and how these aspects worked together convey meaning or the underlying messages, and conduct close reading and rhetorical analysis on literature and scholarly work about the ghost hauntings of La Llorona.

First, from a storytelling perspective, I will interview my mother and listen to her stories about La Llorona because I want to learn more about her personal experiences and how it impacted her life growing up as a child and young adult in Mexico before she moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico as well as from the local community.

Secondly, on the film study, "The Curse of La Llorona," I will explore how director created the narrative structure, themes, social, and cultural context, and how these aspects worked together to create characterization of La Llorona.

Finally, as for the scholarly work, I will research other scholarly studies from the class lectures and reading assignments to explore the social, cultural, and political artifacts of ghost hauntings and how it is relevant to La Llorona.

Overall, I will use rhetorical analysis and annotations to identify what I have learned about the ghost haunting of La Llorona and how its implications are relevant to relational accountability between my family and myself.

Other times, my mother would tell us these La Llorona stories to scare us on being good kids, "La Llorona the va a agarrar," she would say. My brother believed it more than I did but I did not want try to prove my mother wrong if we did not come home in time or if we did not behave. I did not believe my mother because I would never hear La Llorona weeping, crying, or screaming like everyone said. She would say, " Un dia Ella the conseguira," which would scare me even more. She used to tell us stories about how she grew up without a father and mother and she was raised by her grandparents. My mother said that her grandparents used the same kind of story to scare her on being good. But she did not listen to her grandparents either.

For my mother, and her four brothers, David, Saul, Lorenzo, and Mariano, were scared of La Llorona too. They even passed on the stories to my cousins from what I found out later in life.

Historically, my great-grandparents lived in Juarez, Mexico, which is one of the major origins of La Llorona and the body of water,Rio Grande river, is part of the borderland between Mexico and United States of America. My mother shared how the Rio Grande river was a place where kids used to play in the water during the hot summer months but they would go home before sunset, so La Llorona wouldn't not take them away. It was also the river, where my uncles used to cross to go to work in the fields of Las Cruces, New Mexico to pick seasonal vegetables and fruits.

Subsequently, the next scene starts out with the subtitle of "1973" in Los Angeles City, in a home kitchen with a mother and her children eating breakfast and getting ready for school.

In order to get a better understanding of the characterization of the La Llorona and her backstory in this film, it is important to pay attention to the motifs of water, screams, motherhood, holy objects, La Llorona as media-like figure. Other themes to pay attention to is a white dress, wet dress, nocturnal wailing, and a woman who has been wronged by her husband.

Due to the limited time and space on this digital project, I will focus on the narrative structure and characterization of "Anna," who is a widowed caseworker and "Patricia," who is a traumatized mother who is trying to protect and save her children from a ghost.

In the female representation of a protagonist and antagonist characters, each character has their role in representing the story of La Llorona, such as Anna is the case worker, who is investigating a "child abuse" and "truancy," situation with a troubled and grieving mother, Patricia, who is doing everything she can to protect her children from a ghost, La Llorona.

According to Erwin (2019) blogging post, she focuses on the matter of screams and maternal grief which is always about a loss of a child. One of the first screams is when Anna, the mother of a child, Sam, is trying to save her child from drowning in water in the bathroom, when La Llorona shows up terrorizing them. Throughout the film, Anna is protrayed a struggling single and working mother who is trying her best to raise, nurture, and protect her children like any mother would in real life. This first encounter with Anna and La Llorona is significant in the film because she feels challenged by this ghost haunting on protecting her children from dangerous situations. In the drawing situation of the child is a form of protecting a child at all cost, even if it means a self-sacrificing motherly attempt to save a child.

In the film's positionally of a ghost haunting of a family is a prime example of the legendary storytelling of mothers and their protective nature about their children. Ultimately, this horrific scene is a form of abjection between Anna and La Llorona because it is showing how successful of being a mother and protecting her child is threatened by some ghost haunting that is out of her maternal exisistence and control.

Literature Review:

According to Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (1972), he is a great storyteller, and I consider this literary text as a cultural artifact is part of my childhood, young adult years, and now as my digital narrative project because it is a form of a haunted text. In this story there are characters that have a personal reflection and magical relationship with my childhood.

From the historical narrative of La Llorona, There Was a Woman La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture, in Chapter One, "A Five-Hundred-Year History Traditional La Llorona Tales," by Domino Rene Perez (2008), in her scholarly pursuit, she gives an extensive historical background and origin of La Llorona and the storytelling of La Llorona has changed over time but she focuses on the "Traditional Artifacts in the Contemporary World," by examine the cultural artifacts and representations of La Llorona.

In addition to my close readings of the scholarly articles that were covered in the class lectures and reading assignments, I focused on the historical storytelling aspects of ghost haunting scholarly articles and how these texts explain the roles of ghost hauntings, including how the creation of the sociological imaginations of ghost hauntings impact people's lives:

"Ghostly Matters" Chapter Title: her shape and his hand by Avery F. Gordon (2024)

"Haints": American Ghosts, Ethnic Memory, and Contemporary Fiction by Arthur Redding (2001)

"The Historian as Curandera" by Aurora Levins Morales (1998)

"Translating Ghosts Reading: "Cambio De Arias and "Other Weapons" as Haunted Texts" by Laura M. Kanost (2008)

Historically, La Llorona is more than just a weeping woman, who was wandering looking for her children around any kind of body of water because she had taken their lives for sacred reasons. La Llorona is a cultural icon that represented a lot of history that can be traced back to 500 years. One central theme of this existence is the time-tested storytelling that has evolved over time, she will keep existing for a long time to come. Colonization impacted a lot of women, and it continues to exist around the world. La Llorona weeps, cries, and screams for the unspoken for around this world especially in Mexico as well as other regions of South America. One of my classmates was there to give his testimonial that proves La Llorona will never go away.

During this personal journey, it shook me down to my heart and soul to confront this ghost haunting because I was concerned at first that I could not do it but with all the historical background, context, and class readings of ghost hauntings and what the stories meant to people opened my mind to take it and create some takeaway messages. It was interesting, helpful, and I answered most of the unanswered questions but one of my classmates probed my fear by asking, if it did help. I hope it did because it has haunted me for a long time.

sheet: 29 in. × 22 1/8 in. (73.7 × 56.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 2020.48.3, © 2003, Alma Lopez

Biographical Information:

I quoted her biographical information to protect the integrity of this piece of artwork. I consider this to be a cultural artifact that I found during my research that acknowledges and a dedication to the historical context and existence of La Llorona and how it represents the magnified lady in the artwork.

"Alma Lopez is a visual artist. Her work has been exhibited in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions internationally. In 2011, the University of Texas Press published her book Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López’s “Irreverent Apparition,” co-edited with Alicia Gaspar de Alba. Currently, Lopez is a lecturer in the Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and LGBTQ Studies Program at UCLA. She teaches courses on art censorship, queer art, chicanx/latinx art, public art, and digital art."

Source:

http://almalopez.com/about.html