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La Llorona
Latin America is rich with stories and legends. Many are said to have been originated from the time of the Conquistadors or the indigenous era. One story or legend that has surpass all other folklore and the times, in all parts of Latin America, is that of “the weeping woman” or best known as “La Llorona”. Her sad story is said to have originated in a small town in Mexico. It was said that in this small humble town, there lived an enchanting young girl. She was by far the most beautiful young girl in all the nearby villages. Just as her beauty was recognized through out all Mexico so to was her name. The older Maria got, her beauty seem to increase and sparkle like priceless rubies and gems. But unfortunately her heart was black and full of pride. No man was suitable and they were beneath her beauty to even be glanced by her eyes. Until one day there rode into town a dashing young stallion of a man riding on his half wild horse. Some say that he claimed to say “He thought it wasn't manly to ride a horse if it wasn't half wild”. http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html. This young man was not just handsome but wealthy and played the guitar while singing with his majestic voice. In one glance, Maria knew that this was the man she would marry. She didn’t make it easy for him to woo her. This young man would serenade beautiful melodies out side her window and present her with gifts from afar. Maria would ignore every thing the young man did to get her attention. Finally this young man conquered her love and it wasn’t long before they both got engaged and married. Years went by and Maria bore him two kids. This ...
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...in slavery by the Maya merchants. La Malinche was giving to a Spanish Conquistador after conquering a city called Tabasco. While in his possession, she learned Spanish and become Hernan Cortes personal interpreter. Eventually falling in love with Cortes and become his mistress. In this adultery relationship she bore him two sons. Eventualy She learn that Cortes was heading back to Spain with out her. Those Cusing her to comit a hanes crime of killing her two sons by the bank of a lake that “would be ome the foundation for Mexico City”. http://thehauntedinternet.com/lallorona.html..
Works Cited
1. “La Llorona- a hispanich legend.” http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html
2. Paul Harden “The Legend of La Llorona” http://www.caminorealheritage.org/PH/1207_llorona.pdf
3. “The Haunted Internet” http://thehauntedinternet.com/lallorona.html
One of the great architects in time was Andrea Palladio, who was made famous for his magnificent Villas built in Italy in the fifteen hundreds. To do so he drew from the Greek and Roman’s architecture, studying many of their finest works, to create his masterful villas. This process would develop into a style of architecture, which became known as Palladianism. This style has inspired buildings which have dominated the landscape for the last four hundred years. These buildings include: English castles, American public buildings, Swiss railroad stations, Spanish libraries, Tuscan villas and Canadian hotels. Many of these buildings are considered to be the great buildings of the world.
...ros does the same thing in “Woman Hollering Creek.” She gives strength the mythical figure that has been used to limit women. In this short narrative, she uses La Llorona to reinvent her and give her a voice.
A cultures traditional understanding on a matter often creates conflict with how the matter is understood in the modern era. Mexico, a nation with deep ties to its traditional Native American roots, knows this conflict extremely well. Specifically, Mexico’s traditional understanding of the roles of both men and women creates a heavy conflict today. One of the most significant conflicts that stems from these traditional conceptions of gender is the propagation of a patriarchal society in which women are often exploited by seemingly powerful men. Carlos Fuentes, the author of the book titled The Crystal Frontier, highlights this conflict in the numerous short stories within this book. However, the short story “Malintzin of the Maquilas” gives
In “Woman Hollering Creek,” Cisneros creates a character named Cleofilas. In this short story she describes the life of an ideal Mexican wife. Cleofilas grew up with six brothers and her father. She did not have a mother so she would watch Mexican soap operas to learn how to become a woman. The soap operas made her think that you must sacrifice for love and that she was one day going to have that prince charming like a princess.
Malintzin, also known as La Malinche, played an important and vital role in the European conquest of the Aztec Empire. During her participation in the conquest, Indians and Spaniards alike respected her. Yet in the 19th and 20th century, historians and critics labeled her as a traitor or a victim of Spanish cruelty. In this essay, I will discuss the historical legacy of La Malintzin. I argue that she was not a traitor or a victim, but one of the great “deciders” of history. Without the help of Malintzin, the conquistadors would have never gotten as far as they did. They were in awe of her as evidenced by their annals and even the survivors portrayed her as a powerful figure. In the end, we have made her what we want her to be even though the historical evidence is strong in supporting the idea of her importance in Latin American history.
A Guatemalan native, a male graduate student that I work with in my research group at the University told this story. He came from the countryside, living in a small village back home. According to him, the story of La Llorona, involving a weeping woman, arose sometime in the 1700s and became well known both at school and home. Some claimed to have actually seen the weeping woman. Some disregard it as unscientific and implausible. No one is sure of the exact origin of this urban legend. This story was told to me and another graduate student in our research group while sitting in lab waiting for the experiment results. The story began as we started sharing our own background and the culture of our own countries when the storyteller decided to make a little shift and started to tell a story told to him by his older cousin--the story of La Llorona:
In the story "Woman Hollering Creek" Sandra Cisneros discusses the issues of living life as a married woman through a character named Cleofilas; a character who is married to a man who abuses her physically and mentally .Cisneros reveals the way the culture puts a difference between a male and a female, men above women. Cisneros has been famous about writing stories about the latino culture and how women are treated; she explain what they go through as a child, teen and when they are married; always dominated by men because of how the culture has been adapted. "Woman Hollering Creek" is one of the best examples. A character who grows up without a mother and who has no one to guid and give her advise about life.
The main character in “Woman Hollering Creek” is Cleόfilas Enriqueta DeLeόn Hernández, a woman who leaves her home in Mexico to marry a man, Juan Pedro Martinez Sánchez, in Texas. Flowing behind Cleόfilas’ new house in Texas, is a stream named Woman Hollering. Cleόfilas imagines her marriage to be filled with joy and love. To Cleόfilas’ surprise, Juan Pedro is a vile husband that is both physically and verbally abusive. Cisneros brings attention to a recurrent issue within the Chicana community. According to The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, “The majority of abused women, (75%) of Mexican-American women reported spousal abuse”
For a first example of stereotypes, In “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” Judith Ortiz Cofer writes about the many stereotypes that she, as a Puerto Rican woman, has endured. She opens with a tale of how she had been publicly serenaded—on a London bus, of all places—by, as Cofer puts it, “a young man, obviously fresh from a pub” (187). Later on, she mentions a second random serenade of sorts, this time from a older man in a classy metropolitan hotel. The young man sang “Maria” from West Side Story, the older man first chose a song from Evita, then encored with a crudely-worded song to the tune of “La Bamba.” In both situations, whether it was their intention or not, their actions resulted in alienation of the author, singling her out and thrusting the stereotypes of her lineage in her face. The men may have meant well; they may have felt that what they were doing was good-hearted fun. They may have even been trying to...
“Las Casas traveled to Spain and harangued the government. In his books and articles, he demanded that the Spaniards return Indian land and end forced labor. By the end of his life, he also proclaimed a revolutionary idea: the equality of all human races,” (“The Washington Post” Gibbin). Bartolome believed in equality and in the vicinity of Columbus, he should have been the real hero. Not only did Columbus enslave Native Americans, as he punished them by cutting parts of their body off, he like every other Spaniard kept the Indians as slaves expecting taxes of gold every three months. “Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished. With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold,” (Loewen, 2).
Through the voice of Palo Alto, a mesquite tree, Elena Zamora O’Shea relates the story of one Spanish-Mexican family’s history, spanning over two hundred years, in South Texas, the area encompassing between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. As the narration of the Garcia’s family history progresses through the different generations, becoming more Mexican-American, or Tejano, peoples and things indigenous gradually grow faint. In her account of South Texas history, Elena devalues the importance and impact of Indians, placing a greater precedence on the Spanish settlers.
Hernán was the cause of the fall of the Aztec Empire. The Aztecs had their own religion and it involved sacrifice. They believed that sacrificing humans were good because, without human blood, the Gods would grow sick and eventually die. After Hernán Cortés’s arrival on the coast of Mexico, they ran into a few Indigenous groups on his way to Tenochtitlan. Totonacs, Tlaxcalans, Cholulans, and Tabascan. Three out of four of those groups they fought and after defeating the Tabascan people, one of the slaves could speak Mayan, Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs), and shortly learned Spanish. Malinche helped the Spanish as an interpreter, spy, and the key to conquering the Aztecs. When Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma (Emperor of the Aztecs) allowed them in and exchange gifts. Cortés found out about their religion, traditions, and gold. He figured if they wiped them out, he’ll bring peace to Tenochtitlan and make him wealthy. Then happened a long battle of slaughtering many Aztec warriors, one by one and even place Moctezuma under house arrest in his own palace. The Europeans brought the Smallpox epidemic to Tenochtitlan and it had wiped out 25% of the Aztec population and not only that, they cut the aqueducts to the city. Finally, the Aztecs were annihilated and the Spanish tore down the city in ruins. The Aztec Empire ceased to
‘Woman Hollering Creek’ written by Sandra Cisneros is a story of pain and sorrow of a woman, who at last sets herself free breaking her silence and stepping towards sounds. In the story main character is a young woman named Cleofilas, who is newly married to Juan Pedro and moved up to North Seguin, Tejas. She soon found out that her life was no longer like the telenovelas, which she loved to watch. She was abused physically, mentally and emotionally by her husband Juan Pedro. Ultimately she escapes this pain of abuse with the help of two godmothers Gracelia and Felice. This is a story of victory where a woman of traditional values, tolerating the abuse in silence, finally escapes hollering
Intertwined in allusions to women of Mexican history and folklore, making it clear that women across the centuries have suffered the same alienation and victimization, Cisneros presents a woman who struggles to prevail over romantic notions of domestic bliss by leaving her husband. In the story Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros discusses the issues of living life as a married woman through a character named Cleófilas; a character who is married to a man who abuses her physically and mentally. Cisneros reveals the way the culture puts a difference between a male and a female, men above women. In Woman Hollering Creek, we see a young Mexican woman, who suddenly moves across the border and gets married. The protagonist, Cleófilas’ character is based on a family of a six brothers and a dad and without a mom, and the story reveals around her inner feelings and secrets.
In Latin America, women are treated differently from men and children. They do lots of work for unexplainable reasons. Others for religious reasons and family orders and others because of the men involved. Women are like objects to men and have to obey their orders to either be rich or to live. Some have sex to get the men’s approval, others marry a rich man that they don’t even know very well, and become slaves. An important book called Chronicles of a Death Foretold is an example of how these women are treated. Purisima del Carmen, Angela Vicario's mother, has raised Angela and her sisters to be good wives. The girls do not marry until late in life, rarely socializing beyond the outsides of their own home. They spend their time sewing, weaving, washing and ironing. Other occupations include arranging flowers, cleaning up the house, and writing engagement letters to other men. They also keep the old traditions alive, such as helping the sick, comforting the dying, and covering the dead. While their mother believes they are perfect, men view them as too tied to their women's traditions. The men are afraid that the women would pay more attention to their job more than the men. Throughout the book, the women receive the respect they deserve from the men and others around them.