An allusion, a reference to an entity existing outside a literary text, gains its power by the imagery or emotion associated with its reference. The allusion to La Llorona extends throughout the novel and depends, for fullest understanding, on the reader’s knowledge of this myth found throughout Latin America and in some parts of the United States.

In most versions, La Llorona began as a woman named Maria. Enraged at her husband’s infidelity, Maria drowned her sons in retaliation, but immediately regretted the act and now wanders in search of them, crying out for her sons. (The theme of a mother killing her children to punish an unfaithful husband also appears in the legend of Medea, a myth of ancient Greece; both Euripides and Seneca made her the subject of popular plays.) Encounters with La Llorona are said to presage death or loss; if she is not trying to steal another mother’s children, she may try to murder a man in revenge. In most cases, she is feared as a malignant spirit and used as a warning, though in the novel Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (2012), La Llorona gets a more sympathetic portrayal.