Culture
La Llorona: Ghost or Protector? You Decide
Explore the multifaceted legend of La Llorona, a figure traditionally seen as a ghost mourning her lost children, but reinterpreted as a protector in modern narratives. This episode delves into the cu...
La Llorona: Ghost or Protector? You Decide
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
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From KQED.
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In the heart of the mission district in San Francisco, at the intersection of 24th Street
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and York, there's a massive blue mural, one that will stop you in your tracks.
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Standing two stories high and 60 feet long, the intricate mural draws your eyes in with
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its depth and scale.
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It's a world of blue tones like standing in front of a waterfall and it's packed with
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figures, female figures.
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In the center, there's Chaltuteque, as to goddess of lakes and streams.
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In the background, there are women from Bolivia, women from India, women from the Mexico
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U.S. border, all standing together.
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And in the foreground, there's a woman standing apart, stretching out her hand like
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she's reaching out to you.
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A tear falls from her eye and she's holding a child in her arms as if to protect them.
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This mural is called La Yorona's Sacred Waters, painted by the Bay Area artist, Juana Alicia,
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and it's been a fixture on this San Francisco wall for the last 21 years.
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If you've grown up with the legend of La Yorona, you might be surprised to see her like
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this in this mural.
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Because in the popular telling, the one that's most common in Mexico and here in California,
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La Yorona is a ghost, the spirit of a woman who haunts watery places, whaling for her
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lost children, not protecting them.
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To understand how a traditional legend has come this far and taken so many forms, we're
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going to delve deep into the story of La Yorona.
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This story first aired in 2021, but we're bringing it back in honor of Latino Heritage
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Month and Spooky October.
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I'm Katrina Schwartz and you're listening to Bay Curious.
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Support for Bay Curious comes from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.
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From the legendary pale ale to hazy little thing, it's beer that always lives up to the
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moment.
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Visit the beer aisle to taste for yourself.
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Sierra Nevada, taste what matters.
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Please drink responsibly.
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Today, we're exploring the legend of La Yorona and how she's evolved for new generations.
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Bay Curious reporter Sebastian Minio Buccelli brings us the story.
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For many Linux people here in California, the story of La Yorona is one that you've heard
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growing up.
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Just told slightly different each time.
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My family mainly used it to, as like a scare tactic for my mom and my aunties when they
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were younger.
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That's Gabriela and because the legend is something that so many people grew up with, I asked
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her and some of my coworkers what they remember first hearing about La Yorona.
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Among all the different variations of the legend, there are common themes, the ghost of a
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whipping woman who haunts the waters and cries out for her children.
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Like my coworker, Carlos says.
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She wells this, like, misejos, misejos, which means my kids, my kids.
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And they said that she had drowned her own kids and that she would walk around the rivers
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where she had, the river where she drowned them, feeling guilty of what she had done.
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She drowns her children and they say that her soul is not rested because she also killed
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herself, you know, with Catholicism.
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That's a huge sin, suicide.
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They say that since her soul is not laid to rest, she's out there searching for children.
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And because of that, she's often made into a terrifying ghost on the lookout for new
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children and she wants to take them.
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Or maybe, as Carlos says, she's defending something.
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You know, it's looking for them pushing away anybody that threatens things that are special
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to her, like her children or rivers, because rivers, you know, both in Mexico and in the
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rest of the world can really be the lifeline of a city, of a community.
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There's also a traditional song about La Llora.
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You may have heard its song growing up or more recently in the movie Coco.
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So I'm actually Ecuadorian-American and I remember being warned by my childhood friends
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who were Mexican that if we didn't behave, La Llora would come get us.
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But if you only know La Llora from childhood stories, trust me.
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This legend goes far beyond those and it's the deep history and the evolution of the
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legend that brings us all the way to Lejorona's very different appearance on that mural in
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the mission.
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I want to know more about how the legend of La Llora got started.
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So I called up Proviso de Leticia Hernandez, a writer, artist and poet who teaches oral
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history at San Francisco State University.
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Even though there's Yorona myths throughout Latin America, I often associate it more with Mexican culture.
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And I think that's how we hear about it in California or the United States.
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For many, La Llora symbolizes Malinza, the woman who's said to have been kidnapped by
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Hernán Cortez to aid his invasion of Mexico or helped him by choice, depending on who's
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writing the history books.
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In this telling, La Llora becomes a symbol of the injustices of colonization.
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Some folks say that it starts at a conquest, others say it predates conquest with all of
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these incredibly complex and mythical Aztec goddesses and deities.
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Then you have the rendition that La Llora is associated with Guadlíque, the Aztec
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earth goddess who gave birth to the sun moon and stars.
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And that's connected to see what they're there, which is the deity of women who die in
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childbirth.
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I mean, it could get really complex there, right?
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Professor Hernández says that even if this legend predates colonization in 1519, the moment
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Hernán Cortez arrived, the way European colonizers wrote the history books about Malinza or La
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Malincha, it lays the emphasis on her as a negative force, a woman that stepped out of line.
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The way that the female figure of La Malincha has been demonized and constructed throughout
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history is problematic, especially because that narrative has been controlled by the
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heteropatriarchy and makes a woman who was most likely a victim into a villain.
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There are variations on not just who La Llora is, but what she's doing and what happened
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to her children.
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And there's a lot of mystery around it too, right?
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It's like, oh, she was scorned by a lover.
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So she drowned her children out of grief.
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But then she's grieving forever in this limbo and that kind of gets close to that whole
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bad mother narrative to, right?
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So super complicated.
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Professor Hernández's heritage is Salvadoran and she says so much La Llora's legend reminds
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her of La Sináue, a central American story that shares a lot of DNA with La Llora.
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La Sináue is a supernatural creature that takes the form of a woman cursed by the river
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god La Logue who also stalks the waters and brings vengeance upon men and children.
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If you look at the legend, it gets more problematic because it becomes more like a spirited girl
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or a woman with spirit is monstrous.
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One version is that La Logue punished her and turned her into La Sináue for being a bad
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mother and a bad wife.
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Who determines that?
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What is a bad woman?
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Why is it bad to have spirit?
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Of course, says Professor Hernández, for many people La Llora is a simple ghost story.
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And that's okay.
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Sure, I'm wearing my profile hat right now.
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But like, hey, I'm not trying to steal anybody's scary story or criticize or even patronize
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our folklore and our sayings, but it is important to know the history and the roots and also how
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to rethink it.
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And to connect us back to Juan Alicia's mural of La Llora and the Mission for a Moment,
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Professor Hernández has actually written about this artwork a bunch and how it, in her
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own words, frees the spirit of women from roles as monstrous creatures of folklore to
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warrior women of history.
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As Juan Alicia herself explains, because La Llora now contains multitudes, she can be
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used as a symbol for so many things in a mural like this.
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The issues of water and climate justice and feminism all come up racial justice, mixed
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heritage issues.
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They're all there.
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On that wall, La Llora isn't a ghost.
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She's flesh and blood.
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She's protecting a child, not threatening it.
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And remember how my colleague, Carlos mentioned, how La Llora is also known to defend the water
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she haunts?
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You could say she's playing that water protector role right here on this mural.
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Even when Juan Alicia chose to paint her mural, it's symbolic.
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First of all, it's a neighborhood that I love, but it's where the rassia is.
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It's where people were being evicted rapidly.
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Again, it's like an anchor.
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It's like a cultural anchor.
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It's like a holding on to sacred space in a neighborhood that I could no longer afford
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to live in.
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And most of my compatriots could not afford to live in either.
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La Llora can be a symbol of complex womanhood, of being torn between two worlds, but also
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of loss of many kinds.
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How people interpret her can be incredibly personal.
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Just as journalist Lena Blanco, my colleague here at KQD.
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So when I first heard the story, the figure of La Llora has like a ghost who wanders at night.
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It was never one that scared me because I've seen scary things in my life that are not
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about a ghost wandering at night wanting to steal children.
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For Lena, La Llora wasn't someone to be afraid of.
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The legend as she learned it from the works of Latin expriders and musicians was more
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of someone to learn from.
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The stories of La Llora that I gravitated to never showed La Llora as a victim, never
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showed La Llora as a vengeful spirit, but instead showed this model of someone who was
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looking within also a bridge and a connecting force between the world that is living and
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the world that is dead.
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As a queer mixed Chicana coming of age in different places, Lena said she didn't see
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something to fear in the story of La Llora.
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Instead, she saw parts of herself.
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In all the stories, La Llora wanders in the night making those sounds.
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It's because she's grieving, she's in pain, and she's showing it.
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And sometimes other people can find grief kind of frightening.
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Whether or not this mother figure La Llora lost her kids because she killed them or lost
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them because they were lost to the dark night or by colonization.
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Whatever it is, I think when someone is grieving and when someone is holding on to deep loss,
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people fear that too.
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For Lena, the way La Llora not grieves isn't scary.
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It's relatable because she knows how it feels to be misunderstood this way.
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And having experienced grief as a young kid, no one knew what to do with me.
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No one knew how to talk to me.
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Then they were like, they let me go into this fantasy world of my own to find my own ways
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of navigating through that.
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So on the other side, I lost my mom.
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She didn't lose me, but I lost my mom.
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So parts of me have gone around the world calling out for her.
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And that's why I feel the connection to someone who goes looking for their loved ones who
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are gone.
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We all do some of that.
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Just like the story of La Llora and her ships and evolves, so does the song about her.
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It takes on new words and it gets new verses.
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And this is the version Lena herself likes to sing.
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And maybe on one of these colder nights, just as the sun is starting to set, you'd like
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to head over to the mission district and encounter La Llora on that huge mural by Juan Alicia.
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If you only heard the ghost story, she might not look like what you expect.
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But if there's one thing about La Llora, is that she keeps her power to surprise.
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That story was reported by Sebastian Minio Buccelli and edited by Carly Severn.
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Tape from the interview with Juan Alicia is courtesy of the San Francisco Museum of Modern
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Art.
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It was recorded as part of their Mission Murals project, which documents the Latinx
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mural-making culture that emerged in San Francisco's Mission District during the 1970s.
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You can see the mural La Llora has sacred waters at 24th and York streets in San Francisco.
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We've also got a picture online at BayCurious.org.
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Our show is a production of member-supported KQED in San Francisco.
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Bay Curious is made by...
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Christopher Bill.
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Gabriella Glick.
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And me, Katrina Schwartz.
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With extra support from...
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Mahasuna, Katie Sprinter, Jen Chien.
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Ethan Toven Lindsay.
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And everyone on Team KQED.
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Have a great week.
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Hi Bay Curious listeners.
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It's trivia time.
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Congratulations to our August winner, Chris from San Jose.
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Now here was the question and answer for September.
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What type of fault is the San Andreas fault, which runs directly through the Bay Area?
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The answer is a strike slip fault, also called a Transcurrent,
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wrench or lateral fault.
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All right, are you ready to play October's trivia game?
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Here's this month's trivia question.
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San Francisco's 49ers hold the NFL record for longest streak of games
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consecutively scored in.
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How many games is their record streak?
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If you know the answer, submit your guests at BayCurious.org
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or click the link in the episode description.
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Anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win our prize package
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with Bay Curious and Sierra Nevada goodies.
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Our trivia quiz is made possible by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.
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Good luck.