Stirring up the Dust: The Healing History of a "Curandera" in "La insolita historia de la Santa de Cabora"

Abstract

Porfirian activist whose life ended in exile in the United States. Domecq revives Urrea, rewriting her in light of contemporary historiography and feminist theory to forge a new kind of protagonist who diverges from her depiction in the primary sources. The prerevolutionary novel which first inspired Domecq, Tomochic (1893, revised 1906) by Heriberto Frias, depicts as an exploited hysteric, but insdlita historia draws a more complex portrait of a rebel, a flawed human being, and most importantly a healer of both mystical and political wounds. Just as is a curandera, or healer, insdlita historia serves as what activist historian Aurora Levins Morales calls history as curandera, a healing history. insdlita historia provides a fictitious rendering of Teresa's life; the novel begins by alternating between Teresa's experiences growing up and the adventures of a woman a century later who takes a trip to to research Teresa. Teresa's scruffy early childhood is transformed when she moves as a teenager to her biological father's ranch in Cabora, Sonora. Simultaneously, the researcher recalls fragments of data on from a research portfolio that she lost on the plane. A nameless figure, her identity gradually blends with Teresa's. This follows with La caida (The Fall) in which the researcher has fallen down the sacred hill in and has fallen off of her horse. The researcher then disappears from the story. The part of the novel tells of Teresa's three-month trance after the fall (her first death) and her subsequent transformation into a popular healer on the ranch. At this time, hundreds of pilgrims come to see the young woman they call Teresa and La Santa de Cabora and indigenous rebels battle in her name against the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship. The third section of the narrative tells of Teresa's life from her forced exile in Arizona and Texas until her second death. An epilogue concludes the novel with the apparent reappearance of the researcher, who has resuscitated from a coma and now claims to be Teresa.