Urrea, Teresa (1873–1906)

Teresa Urrea (b. 1873; d. 1906), popular figure among Mexican revolutionaries. A mestiza born in Ocorini, Sinaloa, Mexico, Teresa Urrea began, around 1890, to claim divine guidance and to preach social reform from her father's rancho at Cabora in the southern part of the state of Sonora. Thousands of Yaqui and Mayo Indians, along with mestizos and whites of various social groups, flocked to hear and revere her as la Santa (saint) de Cabora. In 1892, when armed movements in her name began to wrack the region, the government deported her and her father to Nogales, Arizona, where she continued to inspire armed forays into Mexico. As fame for her healings spread, she traveled from New York to California, performing her "miracles." She died at age thirty-two, in Clifton, Arizona. Throughout her "mission" she denied fomenting revolution, although hundreds of rebels died in her name.

See alsoIndigenous Peoples; Mexico: 1810–1910.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William Curry Holden, Teresita (1978).

Briandon Domecq, La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (1990).

Paul D. Vanderwood, "Santa Teresa: Mexico's Joan of Arc," in The Human Tradition in Latin America: The Nineteenth Century, by William Beezley and Judith Ewell (1989), pp. 215-232.

Additional Bibliography

Vanderwood, Paul J. The Power of God Against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Vargas Valdez, Jesús. Tomóchic: la revolución adelantada: Resistencia y lucha de un pueblo de Chihuahua con el sistema porfirista, 1891–1892. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México: Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 1994.

                                     Paul J. Vanderwood