Teresa urrea la santa de cabora

In 1892, the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz exiled Teresa Urrea from Mexico. He called her the most dangerous girl in Mexico. She was only 19 years old.

Teresa Urrea was a “curandera,” or a healer, a feminist, and a revolutionary. She was born in 1873 in Sinaloa, Mexico. Her mother was Cayetana Chávez, a part-Tehueco Indigenous woman, who worked in the ranch of Don Tomás Urrea, a rich hacendado, and Teresa’s father. Cayetana Chávez was only 14 years old when she gave birth to Teresa.

Teresa grew up with her mother in separate quarters from her father’s hacienda, but when Teresa was 15 years old, her mother disappeared. She moved into her father’s ranch in Cabora in the state of Sonora. She became an apprentice to Huila, a Yaqui curandera. Teresa learned how to heal using plants and herbs.

When Teresa was 16 years old, she fell into a coma. Her family thought she was dead and built a coffin for her. Then, during the wake, Teresa woke up. She predicted that someone would die in three days. Three days later, Huila died. After this coma, Teresa fell into a trance that lasted more than three months. In an article with the San Francisco Examiner, Teresa said she didn’t remember anything that happened during this trance: “They tell me, those who saw me, that I could move about but that they had to feed me; that I talked strange things about God and religion.”

When Teresa regained consciousness, she had a miraculous power: she could heal people through touch. People began to visit her ranch to be cured. They believed she was a saint. They called her La Santa Teresa, La Santa de Cabora.

Teresa said the mediation of the Catholic church was not necessary to cure. The Catholic clergy denounced her as a heretic, an evil worker, and threatened to excommunicate any person who sought her help.

Teresa also spoke about the injustices experienced by the Indigenous people of the region—the Yaqui and Mayo Indians. After a rebellion broke out in a small town in the s

Article first published in Vol. 28 (2010-2011)

By Armando Rosales, Jr.   

Home to some remarkable people, El Segundo Barrio is one of El Paso’s oldest communities. In 1896, it was home to Teresa Urrea, one of the most important and influential women to walk the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. Aside from her healing knowledge as a curandera, she is known for her political role in the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution. David D. Romo, author of Ringside Seat to a Revolution, writes that “in many ways, the Mexican Revolution on the border began with her.” Through physical and psychological healing and political encouragement, Teresa Urrea became an inspiration to indigenous groups of Northern Mexico, as well as to people in the United States during the reign of Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, and the years prior to the Mexican Revolution.

Image caption: Teresa Urrea, known as “Teresita,” miraculously cured thousands, both in Mexico and the United States. (Photo courtesy of the University of Texas at El Paso Library, Special Collections)

On Oct. 15, 1873, Niña Garcia Nona Maria Rebecca Chávez, later known as Teresa Urrea, was born in Ocoroni, Sinoloa, Mexico, on a ranch owned by her father, a wealthy liberal rancher named Tomás Urrea. Her mother, a servant on Urrea’s Rancho de Santana, was Cayetana Chávez, a 14-year-old Tehueco Indian. Teresa spent her first 15 years with her mother and aunt, living in a servant’s hut and working on the ranch. In 1888, Teresa’s father recognized her as his daughter and sent for her to live in the main house of the ranch.

Teresa did not go to school or learn to read until she was nine years old. About this time, it appears that she began to call herself “Teresa.” Others called her by the diminutive, “Teresita.” She became an apprentice to a folk healer or curandera na

“Saint Cabora”, featured on our co-ferment label, was a historic healer who practiced in Mexico and California and brought magic to the everyday.

Taken from Boyle Heights History Blog:

Boyle Heights Historical Society Advisory Board member Rudy Martinez has again provided another remarkable aspect of Boyle Heights history with this two-part post, including a postscript, on the amazing life of Teresa Urrea (1873-1906), known as Santa Teresa de Cabora. Famed for her involvement in events with Indians in the Mexican state of Sonora and with followers of hers in Nogales, Mexico, Santa Teresa toured America, including stops in New York and San Francisco, before settling briefly in Boyle Heights in 1902-1903. This first part looks at her life until coming to Los Angeles.

On October 30, 1902, the Los Angeles Times published a brief article with the headline, “SANTA TERESA APPEARS ON THE SCENE,” describing her as a “Girl Messiah who made a sensation in old Mexico” and now living in East Los Angeles. The article also reported the “young Mexican girl” was overwhelmed by visitors at her home “on the other side of the river,” while further suggesting that they were looking for her to be “healed.” But the article hardly explored the fact that there was much more to this young woman’s exceptional life before her remarkable journey brought her to Boyle Heights in the fall of 1902, where she lived in a small house at the corner of State Street and Brooklyn Avenue (now Avenida César Chávez).

Although only marginally known today, Mexican born Teresa Urrea (1873 – 1906), who was mostly identified as Santa Teresa de Cabora, was one of the most widely followed and charismatic figures of her time. Revered as a saint by the indigenous and the poor (but not by the Catholic Church) and exiled from Mexico as a political insurrectionist before she was twenty, she lived most of her adult life in the United States. The subject of a number of boo

Teresa Urrea, often referred to as Teresita and also known as Santa Teresa or La Santa de Cábora (the "Saint of Cabora") among the Mayo (October 15, 1873 – January 11, 1906), was a Mexican mystic, folk healer, and revolutionary insurgent.

Early life

Urrea was born in 1873 in Ocoroni, Sinaloa. Her father, Tomás Urrea, was from Álamos, Sonora and owned a "rancho" in Cábora, to the northeast of Álamos. Her mother, Cayetana Chávez, was an indigenous 14-year-old ranch hand from Tehueco. Throughout her early life, which was spent in Cábora and nearby Aquihuiquichi, her father largely ignored her, and she was raised by her bitter aunt and quiet mother.

Folk icon

In the fall of 1889 Urrea had a serious illness and began to experience religious visions. When she recovered she believed she had been given healing powers by the Virgin Mary, and she soon gained a following when 1200 people camped nearby to seek healing and observe miracles. Indigenous people began to call her "The Saint of Cabora". She drew criticism from church officials for giving informal sermons in which she drew attention to clerical abuses. It was reported in the church that she was "always friendly with the sick, especially with the poor, without ever getting angry, demonstrating an exemplary humility. A heroic, she is without rest from dawn until sometimes late at night, and caters patiently and personally with the angry, touching with her hands the most nasty sores, making her bed alongside some patients who suffered from infectious diseases such as phthisis, lazarinos [leprosy], and others." The Mexican press began to cover her activities in December 1889, notably the newspaper El Monitor Republicano of Mexico City.

Urrea predicted an impending flood that would destroy all places except a few she designated. One of the designated places