Every family and culture has a story or legend that gets retold from one generation to another, even if it’s just made up. In the Hispanic culture almost every family knows and tells the story of “La Llorona”. Many parents use it as a story to make kids be good and stay out of trouble.
La Llorona is the legend of a woman who had two kids, her husband had left her and the kids, and she was really sad yet angry because he abandoned them. Sadly, days after this happened the woman made a horrible mistake that till this day she regrets.
It was a really quiet night the woman was walking by a lake with her two kids, when she remembered how she would walk there with her husband and she started getting a lot of flashbacks. Then once again she got mad because her husband left her so she pushed both of her kids into the lake and they sadly drowned. Every night she goes out and cries “mis hijos” or “my children” in English.
Parents tells their kids that if they don’t behave the scary woman will go and take them at night as a replacement of her dead kids.