The Geopolitics of La Llorona and Migrant Motherhood in Batwoman

This article studies the transformation of La Llorona into a figuration of the often-called “border crisis” in contemporary US media. With roots in the preconquest period, La Llorona is a legendary mother figure who steals children after drowning her own and dying by suicide. While Latin American and Latinx narratives treat her as ambivalent, I show that US television, movies, and comics refashion key elements of La Llorona’s legend to cast her as a concrete embodiment of migrant mothers’ violations of US borders. To do so, I focus on a visual text that has escaped scholars’ attention: Batwoman #1–5 (DC Comics, 2011–12) by J. H. Williams III and Haden Blackman, writers, and J. H. Williams III, artist. This comic series provides a unique opportunity: since Batwoman focuses on the eponymous character’s ability to serve the nation as a gendered and sexual subject, readers learn how La Llorona’s maternity and violation of normative family structures allegorizes her threat to the United States via her disruption of two domestic spheres—home and homeland. Her gendered wrongdoing thus merits her exorcism and expulsion. Since superhero comics, films, and television shows let viewers imagine law and order, Batwoman shows that La Llorona is not a ghost but a substantial political allegory

Geography · Geopolitics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Philippine History and Culture