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A large portion of the first El Paso Times article, written

about Teresita four days after her arrival, was dedicat-

ed to her looks:

The saintess can hardly be called beautiful,

notwithstanding the infatuation of the [El

Paso] Times reporter for this Mexican god-

dess. But then she is “interesting,” even if

she is thinner ‘n a bed slat, and wears a

philosophical air, has bright lustrous eyes,

and in more ways than one suggests the

Boston girl, the habitué of the Concord

school of philosophy. And when she substi-

tutes a black silk dress and seville lace for

that yellow, blue black polka-dotted gown,

she looks quite recherché. If now she could

only be sent off for a couple of years to one

of the east Texas seminaries for young ladies

and be taught how to flash a new dress on

an unsuspecting public every week, play

progressive euchre, learn enough French to

appear as an elegant passé dilettante in

upper swelldom...Mademoiselle Santa Teresa

Urrea would become even more of a shining

success than she is now.²⁷

Besides this backhanded compliment, the article

had very little good to say about Teresita. The El Paso

Times acknowledged that Teresita did not accept

money for healing the sick, but it accused Lauro Aguirre

and the Independiente staff of exploiting Teresita to

help them “raise funds from the credulous with which

to boom their paper much after the fashion of the

Ephesian gentlemen in the scriptures, who used a half-

witted girl as a soothsayer to enrich themselves.”²⁸

The morning newspaper grumbled about the

kind of crowd that Santa Teresa was attracting to the

Anglo section of town. Teresa’s Mexican devotees

were a real “nuisance,” the El Paso Times complained:

The “saintess” quarters on South Campbell

Street are getting to resemble the surround-

ings of a Russian free barbecue. Mexicans of

all degrees of rags and tatters, and almost no

rags or tatters at all, load up the waiting

room, jam the porch, squat around in the

yard on the adjacent sidewalk, block the

sidewalks in front of the county jail and

make nuisances of themselves generally. The

immediate vicinity of the saintess headquar-

ters does not smell over-nice: but then there

is no water in the acequia for the Aztec hosts

to bathe in. So over-nice discriminations are

hardly called for.²⁹

The El Paso Times, fearing that more “Indians”

were on their way to El Paso to visit Teresita, called

for her “to move over to the south side of the ace-

quia,” and take with her “the peons and pelados who

are thronging up onto South Campbell Street.” A

week after this article appeared, the city shut off the

water in Aguirre’s yard. Teresita and her family decid-

ed to move to the Second Ward—the Mexican section

of town also known as Segundo Barrio. Their new

abode was an adobe building on 500 South Oregon

Street which had once served as the old customhouse

and later as the Ladies’ Hospital.

But not all Anglos agreed with the El Paso Times’

delicate nose. The El Paso Chamber of Commerce

realized that the crowds Teresita brought to town

were good for business. They donated a large tent for

the comfort of her visitors and placed it opposite

Teresita’s home.

A party of prominent El Pasoans visited the young

miracle worker to discuss her healing powers. The

group included Judge Kemp, City Attorney Townsend,

his wife, and other high society ladies of the Mills, Bell

and Stanton families. The El Paso Herald reported that

25

27

El Paso Times, June 17, 1896.

28

Ibid.

29

Ibid.

José Guadalupe Posada etching of pilgrims on their way

to visit Santa Teresa. (Gaceta Callejera, 1893.)