Central American folklore usually goes the "exemplary punishment" route:

• Look at this woman that lost her child near a river, and is now doomed to weep forevermore
• Look at this hound bound with chains, it used to be a drunkard and now scares his fellow men into the straight and narrow
• Look at this giant stone, there lives a witch that was bamboozled by a chieftain into making love with her, and then she turned him into a peacock as a punishment
• Look at this priest that lost his head for, uh, reasons, we would know if he still had a mouth to speak
• And one of my favorites: Look at this angry monkey, we don't know what it used to do but it likes to wreak havoc and set things on fire