River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1899-08-03
MARIA TERESA UREA.
The Mexican "Snint" Who u said 10
he Endowed with Divine
Powers.

The young Mexican girl, Maria
Teresa Urea, Who is deyoGsiy believed
by the Mexican Catholics to be en-
dowed with divine powers, is now some
where among the Iaqui Indians in
Sonora, Mexico, and, although they are
the fiercest tribe in that republic and
irreconcilable in their hostility to the
whites, they revere her as priestess
and obey her as If she were their queen.
There is something strange about San
ia Teresa" as they call her. She is a
modest, unassuming Mexican girl, the
daughter of small farmer in Sonora,
with very little education, but at an
early age she developed remarkable
hypnotic or mesmeric powers, which
cause the ignorant peasants TO look
upon her as more than human. A touch
of her hand is believed to be a cure for
every mortal evil and one of her prayers
of intercession passport to paradise
She does not claim divine power, but
confesses that she does not understand
the source of her influence. Her fam
lily were Catholics, but she has never
been strict in her observances of her re-
ligious duties. At the same time she
recognizes that there is something
within her that gives her the unusual
influence that she enjoys.
In 1896 / saw her at FL Paso, plain
looking girl of 81 or % years, in a
speckled calico dress and coarse shoes,
with black shawl thrown over her
head. Her hair fell in two braids to her
waist, and she looked much younger
than she really was. She was then liv-
ing under the care of gentleman
named Aguirre, the editor of the Mex
lean paper at El Paso, having been
compelled to leave Mexico by the au-
thorities, who accused her of trying to
incite revolution, A band of fanatics
somehow got notion that she was to
be the mother of Montezuma, the long
looked-for Mexican Messiah who is 10
liberate the poems from scrvitude and
restore the splendor of the empire that
CorteZ plundered and overthrow. Rest
less and dissatised politicians took adj
vantage of the mania, and, in the name
of Saint Teresa, organized revolution
in Sonora and attacked the custom
house and barracks at Nogales.
Mr.. Aguirre may have given the
movement some encouragement, for he
is an exile, and is wanted" by the
Mexican police. But was assured that
Teresa was not involved in any way
Trustworthy people told me that she
was just an ordinary sort of girl, with
out any special force of character or
intellect, but possessed of a mysterious
power like that of the magnetic girl
who came out of Georgia few years
ago and seemed to- have the strength
of locomotive in her slender fingers.
Santa Teresa has some such physical
popularity, which gives her mesmeric
influence over people to whom it may
be applied, and she has cured hundreds
of sick and lame and blind. The Mex
leans hang her portrait over their little
shrines beside that of the Virgin Mary,
but when we talked with her she
laughed at the suggestion of her di-
vinity, and Indignantly denied that she
was to be the mother of the redeemer
of the Aztec race. She is now living
among the Yaqui Indians in an obscure
mountain village in Sonora, which is
constantly visited by pilgrims and sick
people in search of her healing power.
w. f. Curtis, in Chicago Record