Legends aren’t just a valuable repository of a people’s lifestyle, but in addition a strong social mechanism going to inspect unwanted conduct.
“La Segua” was a Costa Rican legend that chastises poor and loose feminine behaviour, and drunken and unfaithful task of men, therefore strengthening sex stereotypes within a Latin-American framework. The story takes place in Cartago, the old money of Costa Rica (before it ended up being transferred to San Jose in 1823).
Cartago is the eldest Spanish settlement in Costa Rica, going back to 1563; the reality that the storyline of Los Angeles Segua happens in Cartago is significant, ever since the tale is actually fundamentally colonial in nature, and as such, it provides both native and Spanish factors which inevitably complement but also clash with one another.
The gist with the facts could be the after. There is once an attractive Cartaginesa (feminine inhabitant of Cartago) of mixed Indian and Spanish bloodstream. She actually is normally portrayed as creating gorgeous white skin which contrasts along with her jet-black eyes and cascading long hair. One of several forms of legend states that she fell in love with a Spanish policeman who tricked the lady and smashed her cardiovascular system.
The actual manner in which he “tricked” the woman is not completely clear, but there is a clear tip which present some incorrect improvements, intimate in general, and extremely forbidden for a female from a Catholic families. After the Spanish rogue had disappeared, the lady went crazy, and an awful curse befell the girl, flipping the girl into a monster, permanently destined to inquire depressed roadways.
La Segua*, while the monster is known as, poses because breathtaking lady that she was previously, and she waits of the roadside for naive boys who would feel operating her ponies after an extended nights heavy-drinking in town. Attracted to the wonder, they accept giving this lady a ride to their horse, but because they turn around, in place of beholding the enchanting friend, they come in person with a horrendous beast making use of the skull of a horse and fiery red eyes. The warning is clear: guys should avoid not just from heavy-drinking, but most significantly, from appealing depressed women that can lure them from the their loved ones lifetime. Ladies are not exempt through the alert. So that you can never be changed into a heinous apparition, cursed to inquire permanently, solitary people shouldn’t surrender to advances of men.
In addition, Los Angeles Segua’s fortune is as worst because it’s, because like Los Angeles Malinche, the Mexican Indian girl which offered as Cortes’s translator and fan (Cortes was actually the ruthless,main Spanish conquistador of Mexico), she is betraying her people by falling obsessed about a Spaniard, the oppressor.
While La Segua got of mixed blood, in a colonial framework that could not put this lady on the same amount as individuals of “pure” Spanish descent. Therefore, La Segua will not merely betray the honour of the girl family as a result of the woman licentious habits, but by sleep with the opposing forces 
. After presenting this Costa Rican legend, practical question about the “Gothic” character of the story stays. Yes, you will find Gothic details, particularly a curse, the supernatural, fear, the monster, the unsuspecting driver on a lonely roadway,coming upon this dreadful animal which nearly scares these to dying, etc. But should this legend, and other reports that are folkloric be regarded as Gothic, simply because they include these aspects?
Tend to be these legends, belonging to an oral practice, too distant to your written nowadays filmic practices to-be considered Gothic? I’ll be providing two more Costa Rican standard stories that hopefully promote a discussion along these reasons.
Far more terrifying creatures, drunken men and disobedient ladies are in store, but till the further legend, we can all think about the problem of how “Gothic” or perhaps not a legend are, and possibly also remember European instances which may clarify the problem significantly. *Segua appears to derive from your message “Sihua,” meaning woman in Nahuatl. Nahuatl try several Mesoamerican dialects of Aztecan or Nahuan beginnings. Aztecs spoke Nahuatl, and currently 1.5 million people in Central Mexico speak a Nahuan language. There is an Indian legend associated with the Sihuanaba or Segua in Nicaragua, along with it, the Sihuehuet or “beautiful lady” enjoys a love affair making use of daughter of god Tlaloc. She’s got their child, however in purchase to fulfill her partner, this woman is a poor mom, consistently leaving the woman boy alone.