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For eye infections Teresita used a homemade

mixture she applied to her patients’ eyes with drop-

pers. Samuel Franco, who was 12 years old when his

father took him to see Teresita while she was living

in South El Paso, recalled this method of treatment.

His eyes had been burning, red and inflamed for a

month before going to see her. He went to her for

four or five days and she would put drops of this mix-

ture in his eyes with a dropper. Franco told a historian

who interviewed him many years later that he never

had any problems with his eyes again after that until

he was 65 years old.³⁸

Teresita sometimes used a

mixture of clay and saliva as oint-

ment. Her tongue would become

very dry and white when she made

this ointment, recalled Teresita’s

closest friend, Mariana Avendaño.

Teresita’s saliva would emit a

pleasant fragrance. “When she

would wash her feet, hands or her

face, the water she used to cleanse

herself would give off a beautiful

aroma and the people would col-

lect that water in their handker-

chiefs,” Avendaño remembered.

“One day Teresa said,

‘God is every-

where,’ and

touched the wall

and made a gesture

as if to throw some-

thing toward those who

were present. When she

did this the whole room

filled up with a wonderful

aroma.”³⁹ People said that during

a healing Teresita smelled like roses.

Throughout her life the press asked

Teresita to explain her unusual powers. She admit-

ted that she wasn’t completely sure where they came

from. “I do not know. Theosophists say that some

astral body is making itself manifest through me; spir-

itualists say the spirit of some great and good person,

who has lived before me, is the source. Some doctors

say my powers are derived from purely physical or

nervous peculiarities,” she told a journalist. Teresita

rejected the label of saint that had been attached to

her. “I do not claim to have supernatural power, but

I have the wonderful will power and magnetism

strong enough to cure any and all diseases.”⁴⁰

“When sick people come to me sometimes I can

see where they are sick just as if I was looking through

a window. Sometimes I cannot,” she explained during

other interviews.⁴¹ “I do not

know what it is. It came to me

without my knowledge and

when I was in a trance. It has

remained with me. I have cured

thousands, and I expect to cure

thousands more.”⁴²

TERESITA’S FAME AS a

woman who possessed

special healing

powers began in

Sonora, Mexico,

seven years before

her sojourn in El

Paso. Teresita was

16 years old when

on October 20,

1889, she fell into

a coma.⁴³ After

three and a half

months, she was

given up for dead.

A coffin was pre-

pared and a wake

was held for her. But she suddenly woke up

from her coma.

When Teresita opened her eyes, according

to some of the awestruck mourners at the wake,

she predicted that Huila would soon die and instruct-

ed her family to save the coffin. The Yaqui curandera

died that same week. Teresita stayed in a semi-trance

28

Teresita’s method of healing.

(New York Journal, March

3, 1901.)

38

Samuel Franco, interviewed by W. Holden, Jan. 15, 1962. Holden Collection, Texas Tech University.

39

La Opinión, March 7, 1937.

40

Tombstone Prospector, November 21, 1895.

41

San Francisco Examiner, July 27, 1900.

42

“Santa Teresa Journeying Around the World,” Copper Era, February 7, 1901.

43

There are different explanations for the cause of her coma. Historian José Valadés found evidence that she suffered a traumatic seizure in Cabora

after having been raped by a mining engineer named Millán, whose romantic advances Teresita had scorned. According to Mexico City newspaper

El Monitor Republicano, her convulsive attack was instead brought about by her discovery of Millán having sex with another woman. Others

believed she had overdosed on medicinal herbs—perhaps peyote—that she had been experimenting with as part of her apprenticeship with Huila.

Finally, there is evidence that Teresita was an epileptic and had suffered at least one other major seizure in 1886 after a virulent argument between

her mother and aunt. Lauro Aguirre, who wrote a biography of Teresita, believed her seizures were cataleptic, implying rigidity of the muscles,

rather than a nervous disorder.