La Llorona. Performance-theatre on the Hispanic American myth

THURSDAYS OF VOICE AND WORD with Linda Porn and Frida Trejo

La Llorona is a scenic-audiovisual piece based on the myth of La Llorona, created in colonial times in New Spain, today Mexico, as a racist mechanism of violence against Indian and/or racialised women.

It shows the institutional, patriarchal and colonial violence exercised through racism, misogyny and maternophobia against racialised, poor mothers, infants and children, such as the Spanish State’s removal of parental authority, which entailed children being confined to juvenile centres (former orphanages of the Franco dictatorship), adopted by European families and trafficked as minors.

A Mexican Indian woman (La Malinche, the wife of Hernán Cortés) is accused of murdering her children because of her Spanish husband’s abandonment. She is painted as a murderer driven out of spite, but also because she is not European, since Cortés, after separating from her, marries a Spaniard. Colonial Mexican society turned her into la Llorona, which has served as a horror story to frighten children, dehumanising her and turning her into a monster.