Teresa Urrea (aka Santa Teresa)
Mexican Indian Midwife and Healer
This profile features common healing practice prior to formal nurse training.
Niña García Noña María Rebecca Chávez was born on October 15, 1873, in Rancho de Santana, Sinaloa, Mexico. Her father, Tomás Urrea, was a well-to-do rancher (hacendado)and her mother, Cayetana Chavez, was a Yaqui Indian (aka Tehueco) who was employed at the ranch (la hacienda). Her father was 35 and her mother was 14 — as an “illegitimate” child, she was given the name “girl” (niña) at the time of her birth, and it was not until she was a teenager when she was recognized by her father as his relation, moved into his home, received an education, and given the name Teresa.
Accounts vary as from whom Teresa learned midwifery and healing arts. Some report she acquired the practice from living with her mother, others report she apprenticed with a curandera on her father’s ranch. Consensus exists that to find refuge from the autocratic Porfirio Díaz regime in the late 1800s, the family moved to Cabora in Sonora, Mexico. It is in this location that Teresa begins to live as part of the Urrea family. In 1889 she fell into an extended illness / coma (reported by some as following a sexual attack, by others as a violent attack, and by others as an illness). Though her coffin was prepared, she revives and following her recovery she became a renowned midwife and healer “by the laying on of hands”. Reported to have been skilled at using natural remedies to alleviate pain during natural childbirth, accounts to her nephew of Teresa’s midwifery (partera) care described the pain of childbirth as replaced by the sensation of “warm honey pored over their[pregnant] bellies” News of the ‘Saint of Cabora’ spread and thousands begin pilgrimage to Cabora to receive her treatments, herbs, and care.
The free healings, guidance, and messages of justice she gave to poor Mexicans and Indians became a threat to the Porfiriato regime during that time and, when she was 18 years old, she and her father were exiled to Arizona after being accused of inciting a Yaqui rebellion. Her young adult years were spent along the Mexican/American border in Arizona, Texas, and later California, where she continued to work as a healer in Los Angeles. Gaining an increasing reputation for her healing work in the press at the turn of the 20th century, she also embarked on a speaking tour which brought her as far east as New York. Even from America, as political momentum against the Diaz regime grew in the years leading up to the eventual Mexican Revolution, she was often depicted as fomenting opposition to the regime, with some press referring to her a Joan of Arc. Though she documented her denials of serving as a leader to insurrection attempts, rumors of at least three assassination attempts were reported. Before the end of her life, she established a small clinic in Arizona, but died of tuberculosis in 1906 at the age of 33.
Dating as far back as 1900, Spanish and English works have been published on Teresa’s life as both non-fiction or fictitious accounts inspired by her life. These include but are not limited to: Santa Teresa, Teresita, Borderland Curanderos, Veredas del Olvido: Teresa Urrea La ‘Santa’ de Cabora, and The Astonishing Life of the Saint of Cabora (or La Insólita Historia de la Santa de Cabora). Notably, between 2005–2012, Teresa’s nephew published two volumes called The Hummingbird’s Daughter (or La Hija de Chupparosa) and Queen of America to capture the mix of truths and fables about his renowned aunt:
I worked for twenty years, on and off, trying to create this epic novel…I had to learn Mexican history, revolutionary history, Yaqui and Mayo cultural history, Jesuitical missionary syncretistic history, family history. I had to study with medicine people and shamans, midwives and curanderas... Teresita, aka The Saint of Cabora, was indeed a relative of mine. She was always presented to me, back in Baja California and Sinaloa, as my aunt. I hunted her story down all over the U.S. and Mexico, and even found some interesting roots for the novel in France. I learned things in sweat lodges, in kitchens, in desert outbacks and tumbledown ranchos as much or more than I learned in libraries and museums. — Luis Alberto Urrea
Further Resources
Learn more about early healing culture in Mexico and the first Mexican Nightingale schools here.
Read about the Curanderismo healing culture here.
Take a free online Curanderismo course here.
Book an appointment with a Curandera here.
Sources
The information above was sourced from the Handbook of Texas, Texas History Notebook, Wikipedia, Women and Mountains, the Boyle Heights History Blog, Teresita Urrea on Vimeo, and Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History, as well as:
Seman, Jennifer. (2017). Laying-on Hands: Santa Teresa Urrea’s Curanderismo as Medicine and Refuge at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses (DOI:10.1177/0008429817739462)
Putnam, F.B. (1963). Teresa Urrea, “The Saint of Cabora.” Southern California Quarterly, 45(3), 245–264. (https://doi.org/10.2307/41169794) which includes excerpts from a first person interview Teresa gave in The San Francisco Chronicle in 1900.
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