Teresa Urrea

Teresa Urrea was born in 1873 in the lush state of Sinaloa, Mexico, the daughter of Tomas Urrea, the patron of a large ranch and the prettiest of the Yaqui Indian ranch workers. Her mother leaves, and Teresa is brought up by an unpleasant aunt. When she is ten, all the people on the ranch pick up and move in a vast wagon train up to Sonora, since Tomas has angered the regime of Porfirio Diaz. Teresa attaches herself to Huila, the household manager and a curandera (healer and herbalist) for the family.

In Cabora, Sonora, Teresa is the life of the ranch. She is tall and has blonde in her hair, looking much like Tomas. Huila educates her and Teresa begins to help bring babies into the world, stilling the pains of the mother. Tomas finally notices her and admits that she is his daughter. He brings her into the house, educates her and dresses her. She insists on learning to read, though Huila thinks it is silly.

After being attacked by a ranch hand, Teresa is in a coma for 12 days. Her coffin is prepared, but Teresita revives. She begins healing people. Her fame spreads. Thousands visit the ranch, wanting her healing touch. The Diaz regime begins to fear that she is fomenting revolution. Indeed her father’s best friend Aguirre prints revolutionary tracts, putting her name, ‘the Saint of Cabora,’ and her photo in them. When Indians come from up in the hills, Teresa befriends them. The Catholic priest is scandalized by their reverence for her.

When the Rurales come to Don Tomas’ ranch, Tomas stands them down, but he and Teresa flee. Soldiers catch up to them and put them in prison. Teresa is covered with bites and has fever. She expects to be shot, but instead, she and her father are put on a train to Arizona. The Diaz regime calls her ‘the most dangerous girl in Mexico,’ though Teresa, in impromptu talks to her pilgrims preaches only peace.

Tomas and Teresa settle in Arizona, but many assassins come to kill them. They keep moving, enjoying American pleasures like baseball, pretty dresses for Teresa and ice cream. Aguirre draws them east to El Paso, Texas. It is a real town with paved streets. The crowd of seekers finds Teresa here, too. She cannot escape the thousands of people who come to her and does not want to. She feels it is her destiny to heal. Aguirre, however, in his newspaper uses her fame to incite revolution.

In 1896, several villages fight with photos of ‘the saint of Cabora’ covering their hearts. They are killed. Newspapermen and more assassins arrive. Tomas and Teresa go back to Arizona where Tomas buys land and begins to build another ranchita. It is high up in mining country, and Tomas tells Teresa he does not want pilgrims or sainthood in his new home. Tomas loves the country and farming. But Teresa is swept off her feet by Lupe Rodriguez. He demands to marry her, though Tomas refuses. In fact they do marry, but after only a day, Lupe publicly attacks Teresa. The townspeople put him in their jail. He is taken to an asylum, mad.

The rift between Teresa and her father does not heal. She goes to San Francisco to heal the son of a wealthy family. A group contracts her to go to St. Louis and then New York. She insists she doesn’t want money for healing, but the consortium pays for her upkeep. She spends lonely weeks with this tour, unable to speak much English, though her fame is great and pilgrims come to her. Finally she asks an old friend to come from Arizona as a protector and translator. She enjoys John Van Order’s company and they become lovers. In New York, the cream of society welcomes Teresa, making her into a fine lady.

When her contract is up, Teresa goes back to California. She and John have two daughters, Laura and Magdalena. Teresa lives with her sister in Los Angeles and then in Ventura County. At last she goes back to Arizona, where her father has died. She sets up a small clinic, but she is succumbing to tuberculosis herself. According to Luis Alberto Urrea, whose two fictionalized books about her [The Hummingbird’s Daughter, 2005; and Queen of America, 2011] detail her life, Teresa feels she has failed. “All the illusions of that life are gone. I despise the ‘saint of Cabora,’” she says. She dies in 1906 at the age of 33.

Urrea portrays Teresa as a lively character, always in control of her life, though she is humble about her abilities to heal. She smokes, drinks, dances and always insists she is not a saint. She is curious about everything and equal to it, no matter how new. By the end of her short life she has lived everywhere from a peasant hovel to fine hotels, knows the desert as well as cities. She is a mother and makes peace with her father’s people, though she does not see her father again after she leaves home in 1900. It is an extraordinary story, brought to vivid life by Luis Urrea, Teresa’s grand-nephew.