Unveiling the life of a folk saint

"This exiled 'saint' seems to be the embodiment of simplicity, and to look into her mysterious dark eyes one would never think her capable of instigating an insurrection."

Los Angeles Times

August 1896

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Teresa Urrea was born into impoverished obscurity, the daughter of an unwed 14-year-old Tehueco Indian girl in northern Mexico. Yet by the time she was a teenager, she was known as "Santa Teresa," her name a battle cry for abused peons whose rebellion against the theft of their ancestral lands would ultimately coalesce into the Mexican Revolution.

The Porfirio Diaz dictatorship exiled her at 19. But it was powerless to halt her immortalization in the pantheon of Latin American folk saints. Santa Teresa de Cabora became a beloved Everywoman, a living incarnation of the biblical edict that the last would come first. Her precise origins were shrouded in myth or forgotten.

Until now.

In his recent historical novel, "The Hummingbird's Daughter," award-winning author Luis Alberto Urrea traces the life of this charismatic Mexican Joan of Arc -- from her origins as a folk healer to the historic explosion that converted her into a goddess of war -- against a panorama of peasants, vaqueros and revolutionaries that seems to have walked out of a Diego Rivera mural.

The story is, in part, Urrea's inheritance. Teresa was a distant relative his family called "Aunt Teresa," and he grew up steeped in legends of her exploits.

"What really brought her to life for me were the stories people told. They were full of folklore, and they were alive," Urrea, 49, began, settling into the red leatherette booth of a dark bar in downtown Los Angeles, not far from where Santa Teresa once greeted her followers.

Still, Urrea wasn't convinced Santa Teresa actually existed until someone pointed out a reference to her in a book in 1979. He began researching her for a biography, pulling up old newspaper stories and running down leads.

Years later, at a 1998 family reunion in San Diego, he met his aunt, Elba Urrea, who was also a healer. She walked him out to her car and opened its trunk, revealing a mountain of yellowed newspaper clippings and documents on the life of Santa Teresa.

His aunt was "dying of lung cancer. It was sort of her last gesture," he said. "She felt like her time was short and she wanted to pass on her legacy. 'Come back and study with me,' she said. 'I'll teach you everything.' "