Teresa Urrea, healer and political figure was born in Sinaloa, Mexico in 1873. She was the illegitimate daughter of Tomás Urrea, a wealthy rancher and a fourteen-year-old Tehueco Indian in his employ. When she was sixteen, Don Tomás called Teresa to service in his home. In 1880, to escape political reprisal from dictator Porfirio Díaz, Urrea moved his family to Cabora, Sonora.

During her first few months at Cabora, Teresa lapsed into a cataleptic state that lasted over three months. When she awoke, she reported that the Virgin had visited her and told her she must use her special powers to cure and comfort people. In repeated trance-like meditations, Teresa summoned power to heal by laying her hands on the sick and crippled. Word of her miraculous cures spread rapidly and thousands of pilgrims journeyed to Cabora. She drew the masses not only because she healed but also because she gave the poor Indians a message of justice. It inspired them to rebel against the government.

In 1891, an armed rebel group of Yaqui, Tarahumara, and Mayo peasants holed up in the village of Tomochic after defeating a Porfirian armed force with the cry of "Viva la Santa de Cabora." The federales burned the town to the ground. Women and children who took refuge in the church, were burned to death. Other revolutionaries took up the battle cry and some became known as Teresistas. Teresa, herself, denied any role in inciting rebellion.

In 1892 after another guerrilla army claimed her as their inspiration, Díaz ordered Teresa and her father to be deported. They lived in Nogales, Arizona, then moved to El Paso, Texas in August of 1896. Crowds followed her in both places. Within a month in El Paso, three assassination attempts were made on her life. Don Tomás took her to Clifton, Arizona to get away from the volatile border area.

Don Tomás established a dairy and firewood business in Clifton, but soon received more income from Teresa's healings. Anglos discovered her and after a miraculous healing of the son of one of Clifton's wealthy citizens, she became the darling of some of Clifton-Morenci's most prominent Anglo women. She continued to heal many Mexicans as well.

Elena Díaz Björkquist as Teresa Urrea

Teresa married in 1900 against her father's wishes. The marriage ended on their honeymoon when her husband tried to take her back to Mexico. He shot her but didn't seriously injure her. He was found insane and sent to the state asylum. One of her patrons took Teresa to California to recuperate after her short marriage. From there she toured the U.S. and Europe with a medical show for a few years. In 1904 she returned to Clifton where she died in 1906.

She may have been an odd choice to be the pet of Clifton society, but a combination of her powers, her light skin, and her father's wealth opened doors into white social life. Anglos were willing to accept Teresa's Mexicaness and the Mexican's view that her powers came from another world. From the cultural materials that she had access to as a border person, Teresa constructed a life and a career. Embodied within that life were the contradictions that characterized the U.S. - Mexican border at that time. An illegitimate, half-Indian servant girl who came to dominate the economic and political activities of her wealthy aristocratic father, Teresa became a heroine to Mexican revolutionary peasants and a darling of the Arizona Anglos. As a Catholic, she pioneered the evangelical techniques later popularized by Protestants. She bore herself with the submissiveness revered in the Madonna, yet she was ambitious and assertive in her work. Teresa Urrea became white through a kind of adoption, yet lost none of her Mexicaness. Her posture in this "adoption" remained so passive that her people never accused of selling out.