The La Llorona legend equality meaning

The La llorona story has been passed down in the areas of Mexico, the American Southwest, Puerto Rico and Central America for hundreds of years. Even though the story tends to vary depending on which region you hear it from, they tend to all have the same themes. The legend always consist of a beautiful woman named Maria that had kids, the kids end up dying somehow, and the woman’s ghost is always found around bodies of water. According to La LLorona by Joe Hayes, Maria was a very pretty and proud woman that vowed to only marry the most handsome man. She ended up getting engaged to a handsome ranchero, and they had a couple of kids over the years. The ranchero started paying less attention to Maria, but more to his kids, and he would even go away to prairies and wildlife for months at a time without seeing her. One day he came back home on a carriage with a beautiful woman and he only acknowledged his kids, but ignored Maria. Maria got so jealous of her children getting all the attention from her husband, that she drowning them. After she realized what she had done, she drowned herself as well. The first night she is buried, her cry of “where are my children?” can be heard in the night.

The La llorona legend represents a bad women and how women are not supposed to behave towards their children. The message that the La llorona legend teaches is that no matter what sacrifice a woman has to make, no sacrifice is to big for your children, if you are a good mother. Maria in the story is depicted as a bad mother because she couldn’t sacrifice the lack of receiving attention from her husband, to just be content with being a good mother to her kids. If she had put her children first and continued to care and love them, even when her husband ignored her needs, she would’ve been considered a good mom.

Putting your children first is very difficult for some mothers to do because they are pressured to sacrifice and suffer for their families, while such pressures aren’t expected of the men. In The Women of La Raza by Enriqueta Longeaux Vasquez, Enriqueta touches on the point of this double standard between the Chicano/a men and women concerning child raising. She describes the expected responsibility of a Chicana woman for her family when her husband divorces or separates from her as,

“ In order to find a way to feed and clothe her family, she must find a job… She is probably unable to find a job that will pay her a decent wage. If she is able to find a job at all, it will probably be sought only for survival. Thus she can hope just to exist; she will hardly be able to live an enjoyable life (pg 30 La Raza).”

It is automatically assumed in the quote, as well as in the La llorona legend that it is all right the man to just leave the children anytime he feels like it and place the responsibility on the wife to take care of them. In the La llorona legend, the husband would go to the wilderness for months at a time and not see the kids, but when he returned home, the kids and the father still had a mutually loving relationship.

 

Sources:

1. http://articles.ivpressonline.com/2011-10-30/la-llorona_30340267

2. http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Llorona

4. Chicana Feminist Thought by Alma García. Pg 29-31

Coyolxauhqui : Aztec Goddess

Like the use of Aztec symbols in the Chicano movement and Chicano art, Chicanas have resurrected an old symbol from Aztec mythology: Coyolxauhqui. In An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, she is described as the evil older sister of Huitzilopochtli (the national god of the Mexicas), as well as one of the major gods of Aztec mythology. Her mother, Coatlicue (mother goddess of the earth, “Serpent Skirt”) became pregnant after tucking a tuft of feathers under her/div>

bosom. Embarrassed by this dishonor, Coyolxauhqui went ahead and lead her 400 younger brothers (a.k.a. the Centzon Huitznahua) to kill their mother at the top of the hill of Coatepec. Once there, they managed to kill their mother right as Huitzilopochtli burst from the womb, fully armored, and attacked his siblings in defense of himself. His borhters were routed, and Coyolxauhqui was decapitated, dismembered, and thrown down the hill. The battle would later be re-enacted as part of the ceremony that was the ritual of heart sacrifice practiced on a large scale at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan. Decapitated victims would be thrown down the steps along with their bodies.

The first findings of images of Coyolxauhqui occurred in 1978. A massive disk with her image carved into it was found at the base of the Templo Mayor. In Tenochtitlan, location of the Templo and capital of the Aztec empire, a depiction of her severed body (possibly the same disk that was found) was kept at the edge of the city as a warning to visitors or possible invaders. Another large sculpture of her that is presented only as the head of Coyolxauhqui, demonstrates what she represented through the images carved into her head, face, and base of the entire piece. Much of her costume and iconography appears to be derived from the patron of Xochimilco: Chantico, goddess of the hearth.

According to the researchers at the J Paul Getty Museum, the symbols on her cheeks (as seen in other images of her) are the “coyolli” (bells) which she is named after, the top disks are the symbols for gold.The closed eyes seen in the statue, depict her as being dead. The triumph of Huitzilopochtli represents the rise of the Aztec people. The symbols on her ears and mouth signify the agricultural and solar cycles, as well as the element of fire. The fire gives Coyolxauhqui themes of war and destruction. Her headdress represents her noble status, while the soft feather images carved at the back of her head indicate sacrifice–the sacrifice of the goddess for the Aztec people. The base of the statue which can’t be seen when on display, also has carvings that embody the conflict between opposites at the center of Aztec mythology and cosmology; e.g. fire and water, creation and destruction. Although she is often thought of as goddess of the moon, recent study suggests that she may in fact be the goddess of the milky way.

Additional Sources:
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/aztec/interactive/index.html
Miller, Mary Ellen., and Karl A. Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2011. Print.
Image source:
http://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/aztec/head-of-coyolxauhqui-from.html

Anarchist Queer Person of Color

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend dragged me to downtown LA to attend the annual Zinefest.  On the second floor of a small used bookstore, zine makers from around the country cramped together to sell their art.  Everyone had something to say in their small paper booklets.  Some people used their zines as a vehicle for their comics, some for their drawings.  Some for their writing, some for their photography.  It seemed mostly to me like everyone was just trying to sell something, and the stale air was making me tired and nauseous and I didn’t feel like buying.  Just as I was about to subtly try and edge us towards the exit, I heard a girl at the table to my left say that she was giving away her zines for free.  Free seemed like a reasonable price to me, so I meandered over to peruse her work.
I picked up the first thing that caught my eye.  It was a thin pamphlet, in photocopied black and white, with an anarchy symbol and the title “Anarchist Queer Person of Color” handwritten across the front.  Cautiously I opened it.  I read its intoxicating eight pages three times in quick succession.  I closed it, and looked around, wondering how my mind could have expanded so vastly without anyone around me noticing.  I read it once again, slowly, letting each of the ideas it presented bounce around in my headspace and develop.  Truthfully, the zine presented me with more questions that answers.  In light of this Chicana Feminism class I find myself in, I was left with, and am still left with, one main question: Is anarchy the natural progression of feminism, especially for women of color?

Women of color, especially queer women of color, experience oppression in many layers.  The oppression of sexism, of racism, of homophobia.  These oppressions are of course not just person to person, but systematic and institutionalized.  Everyday, we find the government encroaching on us, further exacerbating and normalizing our oppression. From the immigration laws of Arizona, to the proposed forced sonograms that will have to precede abortions in Texas, to the lack of marriage equality in several states, we can see the government stripping women, people of color, and the LGBT of their rights and of their respect.  Laws like these assume that we are incapable of rationality.  In the eyes of the law, women are too unstable to own their bodies, people of color are not to be trusted, and homosexuals are too abnormal to deserve the sanctity of marriage.  And too often, the eyes of the law become the feelings of the citizens.  As long as we live in a world where groups of people can be legislated against based on gender, race, and sexuality, we cannot be free from oppression.  People begin to forget that these things are the results of arbitrary decisions, and start to believe that they are norms that should go undisputed.

History has shown us that it takes generations of non-dominant groups to create enough force behind their ideals to change laws and thus change social norms.  The suffragists, the civil rights movement, the Bolsheviks.  But what if, instead, we did away with government and its abilities to create laws and social norms that hinder our existence as minorities?  History has also shown us that whoever is in power, whether in democracy, socialism, monarchy, or fascism, does not like to give up that power.  Dominant groups loathe the thought of officially, and therefore socially, conceding any power to non-dominant groups.  Anarchy, ideally, does away with government and the societal stratifications it creates.  Oppressed groups, like homosexuals and women and people of color, would no longer have to worry about changing the government and its laws to change the ideas of people.  Instead, they could focus on changing the oppressive ideas that people have without needing to first dismantle the government induced institutions and systems that propagate these ideas.

Like many other forms of society, anarchy is probably far better in theory than in practice.  What about criminals?  Won’t we still need laws and government for them?  Well, maybe, or maybe we’ve just become so blinded by the way that things are that we can’t think of solutions that don’t fit into the little boxes we know so well.

Anarchist Queer Person of Color Zine.  Anonymous.  2012.

Heroes Get Remembered, But Legends Never Die

La Llorona and Malinche are two women that have had many renditions of their stories.  Like many stories that are told throughout the years, there are variations of the story.  Yet, through the times, there are many parts of the stories that remain consistent throughout the different retellings.  In the stories that are told of La Llorona and Malinche the thing that remains consistent is the fact that the stories are about two women that stepped outside the dominant portrayal of women.

 

In the stories of La Llorona, she drowns her children in the water.  The reason behind this varies.  One of these reasons is that she drowns them to be with her lover, yet at the end the lover lied and she ends up wandering and looking for her children.   For the story of Malinche, she takes on the role of the interpreter between Cortez and the various tribes under control of the Aztecs.  Well for the majority of the time these stories have been used to talk down about women, either as a way to show that sexuality is bad for women or that women can be traitors.

 

Yet these stories have been reused to highlight these women’s stories and legends.  In the case of Malinche we see a woman who was sold into slavery and took a position of power during a conquest of an entire population.  While some may see her as a traitor for helping the Spanish, others have seen her as a protector.  She was the main interpreter, and either side didn’t know what each other were saying.  So she could have said things to make the conquest turn out the way it did and not worse for the population.    The conquest could have been a lot worst if it wasn’t for her. “La Malinche embodies those personal characteristics–such as intelligence, initiative, adaptability, and leadership–which are most often associated with Mexican-American women unfettered by traditional restraints against activist public achievement.” (Fox).   Malinche is seen in a positive light.  Instead of seeing her or using her as a scapegoat, writers have began to recognize her as a woman that used her intelligence, courage, and other traits to step outside the boundaries of society.  In “Victoria Moreno’s poem, ‘La Llorona, Crying Lady of the Creekbeds, 483 Years Old, and Aging,’ “we see that it is not La Llorona’s fault, but is society’s fault for taking away her unborn and born children away from her. Gloria Anzaldúa Borderlands talks about La Llorona, in which she states that the wailing is the way that she is speaks out (Anzaldúa, 49).

When I think of La Llorona I think of the quote “women should be seen and not heard”.  In her own way she refuses that saying instead of being silent she lets her anger and emotions out. Even though she kills her children she lets her emotions out.  Both stepped out of their boundaries.  While these stories at first showed what happened when women stepped outside their so called “boundary areas”, they have been re-envisioned to showcase women in a better way and the struggles that women still face.

 

Resources:

Fox, Linda C. Obedience and Rebellion: Re-Vision of Chicana Myths of Motherhood. Women’s Studies Quarterly; winter 1983, Vol. 11 Issue 4, p20-22, 3p. Print.

http://0-search.ebscohost.com.linus.lmu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=510090813&site=ehost-live&scope=site

 

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.  San Francisco: Aunt

Lute Books, 2007. Print.

La Leyenda de La Llorona

The story of La Llorona is one of those legends from Mexico that has crossed the border to the Chicano community, largely due to its support through oral history. Many members of my family and friends who know the story, originally heard it through word of mouth. I heard it first, like many other children, as a story of warning from the adults in my family. The way I heard it, a young couple who lived in a small village in Mexico, had just had two boy twins. Soon after, the man left without a trace. The woman, so upset over her husband’s disappearance, ended up drowning her newborn children in the nearby river. Eventually the grief and the guilt ended up killing her. As a result, her ghost haunted the same river where she could be heard late at night, to this day, screaming out loud, “Ay mis hijos!” If any of us or my cousins found ourselves outside, late at night, La Llorona would snatch us up as her children and drown us.

My mother on the other hand, heard it from her friends when they shared scary stories from their hometown. The story had been appropriated, as it often was, by the small city in San Luis. Thus the story was told as having happened “to a friend of a friend” who had seen her in the nearby river. She was said to be found weeping, or flying over houses in her white garb. She admitted to never having reconfirmed it within her family, although the legend was brought up later in one of her elementary school books that cited it as an example of legends in the culture and part of literature. A friend of my mom’s, from an older generation, stated that she heard a version of the story set in the Colombian era. She’d heard that the woman was an “india” who fell in love with a Spanish “general.” He did not lover her back. Thus she drowned her children thinking they were the source of his dislike. Feeling guilty for what she had done, she committed suicide. Her soul then grieved and cried for her children.

‘The Spirit of La Llorona’, a site dedicated to La Llorona, presents 4 primary versions, and a timeline linking the historical figure, La Malinche, to the tale of La Llorona. One of the versions in the site revolves around the idea of La Llorona as a virgin (invoking ideas of the Virgin Mary) who had gotten pregnant without “having been with a man.” Her father ended up throwing the baby into the river. The mother disappeared and was soon followed by apparitions in the river of a young woman holding a child, weeping, still seen to this day.

Film adaptations of La Llorona have been made, including a recently animated film from Mexico: ‘La Leyenda de la Llorona’ released on October 21, 2011. The 2007 version, ‘The Cry: La Llorona’ set, and made in the United States, has adapted its own version of the history of Malinche. This history can also be found in ‘The Spirit of La Llorona’ website. It places La Malinche as a woman who killed her own twin boys the she had had with Hernán Cortés after one of the gods told her that if she let him take them back to Spain, one of them would return to kill the rest of her people. As a matter of fact, Malinche, born at the turn of the 16th century from a noble Nahua family, was later presented as a slave to Hernán Cortés. From slave she went to translator, then mistress, and bore his son, Martín Cortés (although he had another son by another woman, of the same name). Martín Cortés sailed to Spain with his father, then back to Mexico, before being exiled to Spain where he married and eventually passed away.

Another origin given to the legend of La Llorona dates even further back in Aztec mythology with Cihuacoatl, the “woman-snake” and goddess of midwifery. She is said to have been the first woman cited near a river crying for her children, the Aztecs. It was later interpreted as an omen of the coming of the conquistadors and the massacre of the natives of Mexico.

The Spirit of La Llorona cite can be found here, I highly recommend navigating through it-
http://www.lallorona.com/La_index.asp

The recent animated film (in Spanish) –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE0a3hvBaFQ&feature=related

Additional Sources:

http://archive.suite101.com/article.cfm/history_mexico/58848

http://www.lallorona.com/1legend.html

Miller, Mary Ellen., and Karl A. Taube. An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2011. Print.

Chicano Park for the Community

Last summer immediately after school ended, I went on a California Road Trip Alternative Break through the LMU Center for Service and Action to visit a range of communities affected by various social issues. One of the places we visited was San Diego; we met up with the Enrique Morones (President and Founder of Border Angels) at Chicano Park. As the group waited to meet him, I took pictures of the historical murals (shown above) that not only beautify the park, but depict the social, political, and cultural issues and struggle for community perseverance and empowerment.

Chicano Park was founded on April 22, 1970 by the neighboring community of Barrio Logan, Brown Berets, artists, M.E.Ch.A. and other activists who confronted the police and bulldozers against the construction of the California Highway Patrol Station on the site. The community had already been displaced by the: construction of Interstate 5 and Coronado bridge in addition to the toxic industries, junk yards, lack of community facilities, proper education, social and medical services. A human chain of community members around the bulldozers was created to stop the construction. The community of Barrio Logan occupied the park for twelve days and transformed the place into a garden of plants and grass. After being forced to vacate the site, members stayed on the sidewalks updating and informing pedestrians, as negotiations were made by city council members. Promising the land for a Barrio Logan park, city councilmen authorized a contract for the development of a park that would be utilized by the community.

The murals at Chicano Park reflect the political climate of the time and the portrayal of leaders like Cesar Chavez, Che Guevara, Benito Juarez, Frida Kahlo, and Emiliano Zapata. They also depict the Mesoamerican Mexico. There are about 50 murals and some of the artists are Victor Orozco Ochoa, Mario Torero, Salvador Torres, Jose Montoya, and Sal Barajas. There is not much written about this historical and important park to the Chicano community of Barrio Logan, and the sources that I did find hardly ever reference Chicana artists who may have been a part of the struggle for the development.

Chicano park has been a site where immigrants and allies gather to embark or to end the Marcha Migrante, a march for a humane immigration reform that begins in San Diego and continues to other parts of the United States. Every year a celebration for Chicano park is organized in April by the Chicano Park Steering Committee. This year the 42nd annual celebration of Chicano Park on April 21st.

Reading and writing about it, and viewing the pictures taken by other people who have visited is much different than actually being present there. The park is literally under the Interstate 5 and Coronado bridge. Being surrounded by all the murals exerts a good energy feeling with so much history behind this park. It’s almost like a meditational site portraying images of cultural roots of perseverance.

Additional Sources:

Borderlands / La Frontera (1)

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands (1-91)

Reading assignment for Monday, March 5. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

What are the theories of the Borderlands / La Frontera? How do you see Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theories evolving out of her writings for This Bridge Called My Back?

What would your borderlands be? What intersects in your borderland location?

Aurora Guerrero, An inspirational Chicana Filmmaker



http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g7Y6RJYQ1rk#!

Mosquita y Mari is the first feature-length film by a Chicana filmmaker debuted at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It is also the latest project of Aurora Guerrero, an American director, screenwriter, and producer, who also collaborated on the film Real Women Have Curves. A critically acclaimed film that catapult the career of Mexican-American actress, America Ferrera, who played Ana, a first generation Mexican-American teenager on the cusp of womanhood. Pura Lengua and Viernes Girl are other short films created due to efforts of Guerrero and a group called LA Xicana (Chicana) filmmakers. The films have been presented around the world and are a window to the current lives of young people living in Los Angeles.

In Mosquita y Mari the South East L.A. neighborhood is highlighted, a place infused with culture, history, and language. It is also the home of many Mexican American generations full of stories worthy of being shared with the world and that are important to the Chicano/a Movement. Mosquita y Mari is a coming of age story about two fifteen-year old Chicanas growing up in East Los Angeles. It captures the struggles, adventures, and journey of the two young women that display a friendship and sisterhood that transcends all color lines. The film was a collaborative effort because Guerrero involved the community into her project and really took the time to learn the history of the city and the people. It is an important film because rarely are the struggles of Latina women depicted on the big screen. This film combats the historical and political erasure of Chicanas and women of color in society and history.

Guerrero has always been interested in learning about the stories of Chicana women. At UC Berkeley she studied both psychology and Chicano studies. She later moved and fell in love with the city of Los Angeles, a very story rich environment and the birthplace of the Chicana movement. In the past Guerrero has shared that her first inspirations were writers especially, women of color feminist writers like Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Chrystos, June Jordan, and Angela Davis. She further shared in her words “when I discovered their brave works as a freshman in college, a fierce creative seed was planted in me. It was a calling I had the moment I was stripped naked by their words.” Aurora Guerrero is creating a body of knowledge that future filmmakers and Chicanas can research and also incorporate into their own works.  She is a storyteller of her own and the experiences of Chicanas, but most of all she is achieving female empowerment.

Additional Sources:

This Bridge Called My Back (3)

Reading assignment for Friday, February 24. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

Choose a poem or essay from the anthology and decide what its theme and message is. How does the author see her position in feminism? What would she say the position of women of color is? What is her hope for the future?

This Bridge Called My Back (2)

Reading assignment for Wednesday, February 22. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.

When you were re-reading Audre Lorde’s essay, what do you thinks she sees as the master’s tools / what is the master’s house?  What is she proposing instead?

Looking at the individual contributions to the anthology, how would you make the case for them with someone who felt offended or threatened by the authors’ anger?