Intersecciones Hispánicas: Revista de Cultura, Literatura y Lingüística
Abstract
Jayro Bustamante’s film La Llorona (2019) reimagines the Latin American myth of the weeping woman to expose the failures of state justice and propose a feminist, decolonial alternative rooted in Indigenous memory and spiritual retribution. The film follows retired general Enrique Monteverde, modeled after Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, as he is tried for genocide against the Maya Ixil people. While the courtroom scenes depict a moment of accountability, they ultimately reveal how legal institutions remain complicit in protecting power. In contrast, the arrival of Alma—an Indigenous domestic worker who embodies La Llorona—introduces a supernatural force that intervenes when the law fails. Drawing on horror conventions, La Llorona reframes vengeance as a legitimate form of justice, especially when crimes are committed against those systematically excluded from the legal process. This essay argues that the film uses the ghostly to center women—both Indigenous and upper-middle-class privileged women—as agents of historical memory and political reckoning. La Llorona critiques the patriarchal and colonial foundations of the legal system and envisions a justice rooted in gendered experience and ancestral power. By stripping the folkloric figure of La Llorona of her misogynistic connotations and reimagining her as a divine force of resistance, the film challenges official narratives and insists on the power of the dead to demand accountability. Ultimately, Bustamante uses horror to blur the boundaries between myth and history, insisting that when institutional justice is denied, retribution must come from the beyond.
Recommended Citation
Ibáñez de la Calle, Isabel. "When Justice Fails: Female Vengeance and Indigenous Memory in Jayro Bustamante’s film La Llorona (2019)." Intersecciones Hispánicas: Revista de Cultura, Literatura y Lingüística 3, 1 (2026). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/interseccioneshispanicas/vol3/iss1/13