Stories are not just an invaluable repository of a people’s lifestyle, but also a powerful personal method intending to see undesirable habits.
“La Segua” is actually a Costa Rican legend that chastises incorrect and free feminine conduct, including drunken and unfaithful task of males, hence strengthening gender stereotypes within a Latin-American framework. The story happens in Cartago, the old investment of Costa Rica (before it was actually transferred to San Jose in 1823).
Cartago was actually the earliest Spanish payment in Costa Rica, dating back to to 1563; the reality that the story of La Segua occurs in Cartago was significant, considering that the story are fundamentally colonial in nature, and as such, it offers both native and Spanish details which certainly supplement and conflict together.
The gist associated with tale is the appropriate. There seemed to be when a beautiful Cartaginesa (women inhabitant of Cartago) of blended Indian and Spanish blood. She is often represented as creating gorgeous white skin which contrasts along with her jet black sight and cascading long-hair. Among forms of the legend says that she fell in love with a Spanish officer which tricked the girl and out of cash this lady cardio.
The exact way he “tricked” their is not entirely clear, but there is however a definite suggestion that it present some inappropriate advances, sexual in the wild, https://datingmentor.org/escort/fremont/ as well as prohibited for a female from a Catholic group. Following the Spanish rogue have gone away, the girl moved insane, and a terrible curse befell the woman, switching the woman into a monster, forever bound to question depressed highway.
La Segua*, due to the fact beast is named, poses while the stunning girl that she used to be, and she waits by roadside for naive men that would feel riding their own ponies after a long nights heavy-drinking in town. Attracted to the wonder, they take to provide this lady a ride on their pony, but because they change, in the place of beholding the charming companion, they are available one on one with a horrendous monster because of the head of a horse and fiery reddish vision. The warning is clear: men should stay away just from heavy-drinking, but the majority notably, from appealing lonely ladies who can lure all of them away from their loved ones lifetime. Women are not exempt through the caution. So that you can not be transformed into a heinous apparition, cursed to ask yourself permanently, solitary girls must not surrender to advances of males.
Plus, La Segua’s fortune can be bad as it is, because like La Malinche, the Mexican Indian lady who offered as Cortes’s translator and fan (Cortes got the ruthless,main Spanish conquistador of Mexico), she’s betraying their individuals by falling crazy about a Spaniard, the oppressor.
Despite the reality Los Angeles Segua ended up being of mixed-blood, in a colonial perspective that will perhaps not setting the lady on a single level as people of “pure” Spanish descent. For that reason, Los Angeles Segua cannot best betray the honor of their household for the reason that her licentious behaviour, but by asleep with the enemy. After presenting this Costa Rican legend, the question regarding “Gothic” characteristics with this story continues to be. Yes, discover Gothic characteristics, eg a curse, the supernatural, fear, the beast, the naive rider on a lonely road,coming upon this awful animal which nearly scares them to passing, etc. But should this kind of legend, along with other stories which can be folkloric be considered medieval, given that they include these characteristics?
Is these stories, owned by an oral tradition, too distant to your created and then filmic traditions are thought about Gothic? I am providing two a lot more Costa Rican old-fashioned myths that’ll hopefully stimulate a discussion along these reasons.
A lot more frightening animals, drunken guys and disobedient women can be waiting for you, but before the then legend, we can all think about the issue of precisely how “Gothic” or otherwise not a legend could be, and perhaps even contemplate European examples which may express the matter significantly. *Segua seems to are derived from the term “Sihua,” indicating girl in Nahuatl. Nahuatl try a group of Mesoamerican dialects of Aztecan or Nahuan beginnings. Aztecs spoke Nahuatl, and currently 1.5 million people in Central Mexico speak a Nahuan language. There can be an Indian legend of this Sihuanaba or Segua in Nicaragua, along with they, the Sihuehuet or “beautiful woman” features a love event making use of son with the god Tlaloc. She has his daughter, in purchase to meet up with their enthusiast, the woman is an awful mom, continuously leaving the girl boy by yourself.