“La Llorona” by Virginia Villalta.
Poem recorded/edited by Erick Galindo, and Drake Witham. This recording was made possible by a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFA), with equipment provided by Women Helping Youth (WHY).
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the tale of an aztec woman who fell in
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love with the Spaniard with green eyes
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now your honor a woman who sacrificed
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her children for everything sacrificed
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everything for her children the brown
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dirt all Mexican immigrants crossed
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blurred my mother’s vision once in
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America she fell in love with the first
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man she saw my mother and a legend mis
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hijos she’d cry as she ran to my
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Abuelita couldn’t bear 15 years of
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marriage 15 years of cheating pain abuse
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stealing why does it seem like I’ve
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heard this story before my mother and
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the legends both alike cried for their
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children their children stood and
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watched as a father left my mother
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alleged Mexican mothers and a legend all
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alike cry at night our mothers are
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legends stories and tolls of immigrant
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mothers who learned how to fight with
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the baby at their breast and a heart
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broken in their chest immigrant families
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fighting for their siempre con sus Manos
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to survive that hopefully selling
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tamales on the street will suffice I am
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here today I am here to stay my mother
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gave me her life gave me my tongue so
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I’ll know how to fight I mean lengua no
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Savai’i so this is a gift to her mama
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espera que una promesa your normal way
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now your honor underestimated humiliated
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by a world that didn’t understand a
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mother’s love my mother’s love stronger
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than any man
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my forte what gear on
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[Music]
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