How ‘La Llorona’ Subverts Guatemala’s Folkore and Interrogates Its Violent Past
Mikey Peralta Jr
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Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona is a multi-layered film that seemingly weaves silenced history, generational trauma, and folkloric horror into its narrative. As the film ventures into each of these aspects, one thing is for certain. Bustamante’s desire to advocate for human rights is genuine and necessary. Just like many Latin American countries, Guatemala is a nation built on oppression from foreigners that invaded and expelled the majority of its Indigenous population. Bustamante uses Latin America’s most famous folk tale, La Llorona, to bring awareness to another genocidal catastrophe in Guatemala by subverting several ideas.
La Llorona follows General Enrique Monteverde (Julio Diaz) and his family as the country breaks the silence of the Mayan-Ixil Genocide that occurred in 1982 and 1983. Enrique is brought to trial and found innocent due to insufficient evidence. As the protestors rile around the streets, Enrique and his family take shelter in their home. With the old servants gone, the family takes in Alma (María Mercedes Coroy) as a new maid. Not too long afterward, paranormal activities suggest La Llorona is present as the family is forced to contemplate the human rights issues unveiled during the trial.
The Use of the Term Communist
Bustamante’s Insults Trilogy is a collection of films from Guatemala surrounding derogatory terms primarily used in the country. His debut feature Ixcanul, meaning Indio, tells a coming-of-age story about an Indigenous teenager at the base of a volcano. Bustamante’s second film, Tremors, revolves around a religious man’s struggle between Catholicism and his sexuality. His final entry, La Llorona, uses the folkloric mythical being to showcase the new meaning of communism.
Throughout the film’s runtime, the idea of communism gets thrown around several times. Its multiple appearances aren’t coincidental. It’s important to note whose perspective the film is following and how the term is approached throughout the narrative. Just like the majority of horror films about La Llorona, the entity is established as the villain through the eyes of the protagonists. In La Llorona’s case, the perspective is from a military family; in other words, the friend of the State.
The first time the word communist is brought up is after Enrique is found guilty of the genocide. His wife Carmen (Margarita Kenéfic) and his daughter Natalia (Sabrina De La Hoz) are isolated in a huge room with empty white chairs. While Natalia is perturbed by the news of her father, Carmen dismisses the Indigenous woman’s testimony about her capture and assault. Carmen even goes as far as calling the elderly Indigenous women whores and prostitutes. She also comments on how they were parading themselves during the trial regardless of them being fully clothed.
Carmen is projecting her marriage problems caused by Enrique’s infidelity and womanizer tendencies as prejudice towards the Indigenous population. The final insult Carmen spews in this scene is calling everyone against the General and the State a communist as Natalia begins to question the morality of her father. This sets up the protestors and Indigenous people as the villains of the story.
In many interviews, Bustamante has given his interpretation of the word communist and how he uses it within La Llorona. While the term was adopted in North America during the 1950s, the term has slowly shifted from a political party to a group of people who could be considered enemies of the state. The protestors and Mayan-Ixil people are a unified voice of justice. This causes fear within the Monteverde family which leads to seeing them as a threat. Hence, the film’s consistent use of the term communist shows how it’s synonymous with anyone fighting for human rights.
La Llorona and Her Heroine Role
La Llorona helps display the changed word of communism through the voice of the protestors. But it also subverts many factors in Guatemalan culture with the biggest being the titular folkloric spirit.
La Llorona is a Latin American folktale that’s seen many renditions due to the time era and geographical location. Its origins date back to the pre-colonial era. Through the passage of time, the folktale evolved to fit modern culture and issues. With the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico, one version of La Llorona is tied to a Nahua woman named La Malinche, who was the real life mistress and translator of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.
While Mexico and Guatemala are neighboring countries, the correlation between La Llorona and the trope of evil women is persistent. During the Mexican Revolution, La Malinche was painted and referred to as the Mexican Eve. This signals how this Indigenous woman, as well as La Llorona, is the ultimate traitor due to offering aid and assistance to the European colonizers. In most renditions of the misogynistic tale, La Llorona is displayed as a horrible woman and mother. When she’s not drowning her children out of jealousy or grief, she’s killing innocent children and people. Her motherhood and femininity has been tainted since its conception. With his film, though, Bustamante subverts the idea of La Llorona as a traitor to the Indigenous people, a horrible mother, and a violent woman.
Role Reversal in La Llorona
Alma, whose name translates to spirit, is shown to be La Llorona by the film’s conclusion. While the first act of the film focuses on the drama of the trial, the horror elements enter the story with Alma’s presence. She’s shown as otherworldly and intimidating through the mise en scéne. Just like the past cinematic entries of La Llorona, her physical appearance is shown to cause fear and dread with her long black hair and white dress. Yet, even though she is portrayed as this ominous and fearful entity, her goal aligns with the communists in the film as she walks the dark corridors of the Monteverde’s estate.
Bustamante subverts another layer of La Llorona by switching the role of who acts upon the revenge. Some iterations of her story depict La Llorona stricken by grief due to her husband’s infidelity. This causes La Llorona to drown her children. In the film, Enrique is responsible for his own accounts of infidelity and the drownings of Alma’s children. Throughout the last two acts of the film, Alma channels all her heightened emotions of rage and grief into Carmen through the use of visions presented as flashbacks. By the film’s conclusion, Carmen is consumed by all of these emotions. In a fit of rage, grief and acceptance of Enrique’s monstrous acts, she strangles him.
Becoming The Spirit
This deed not only subverts the revenge aspect of La Llorona; it also flips the script on just who is allowed to become her. Alongside having an Indigenous woman portray the physical entity, Carmen becomes the emotional incarnation by sharing the pain and sorrow that’s associated with La Llorona. Carmen becomes La Llorona within her own rights. Bustamante foreshadows this event in the film’s opening as Carmen is the first person to weep on screen.
As the film progresses we witness Bustamante slowly adding the eerie essence associated with La Llorona to Carmen. An instance includes the way Carmen, in a white dress, appears out of the shadows to talk to Alma about her tight-fitted maid‘s outfit. The, we see Carmen’s silhouette as a ghostly figure when she leaves for a glass of water after speaking on the staircase with Natalia and her granddaughter Sara (Ayla-Elea Hurtado). Once Carmen is reshaped by the visions, she follows suit of the protesting communists by acting upon the needed justice.
Alma is a vigilante spirit. She’s the physical embodiment of retribution against the military generals who are at fault for their crimes and carnage during the massacre. Carmen becomes the emotional incarnation of La Llorona. Where once a link between an Indigenous woman and a white-passing person meant treachery, the pairing between Alma and Carmen equates to the opposite. These two women break the original tale of the evil women trope and betrayal. Bustamante refuses to continue La Llorona as a villainous character. Instead, the character of La Llorona is used to help advocate justice for the Mayan-Ixil people who have undergone borderline extinction and trauma for generations.
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