Читать книгу Ringside Seat to a Revolution - David Dorado Romo - Страница 43

1896: THE TERESISTA REBELLION

Rebels killed during the Teresista attack on the Nogales, Sonora customhouse in 1896. Some of the dead revolutionaries were found

ACCLAIMED CHICANO-IRISH-GERMAN-AMERICAN author Luis Alberto Urrea—a fellow research freak

whom I consider a friend—sent me an e-mail when he found out that I was going to write about Teresita Urrea’s revo-

lutionary activities in El Paso. He’s Teresita’s great-nephew and was working at the time on a historical novel, The

Hummingbird’s Daughter, that focuses on Teresita’s life before her American exile. He heard that I was looking into

rumors that Teresita, while in El Paso, not only helped prepare an uprising against the government of Porfirio Díaz but

even blessed the revolutionaries’ rifles. Luis Alberto didn’t believe that Teresita could have ever done such a thing. In

Mexico she was all about compassion and healing. She opposed bloodshed. It’s just not possible that she could have

ever blessed rifles, he argued. He warned me to be careful of what I wrote. He’s seen terrible things happen to people

who have written about her in the past. One woman who wrote a fictionalized novel about his great-aunt—with a few

passages that weren’t entirely flattering—ended up getting kidnapped in Mexico. Others have suffered serious injury. It

must be the avenging spirit of the Yaquis, who were devout followers of Teresita during her life, Luis Alberto explained.

With Luis Alberto, it’s not always easy to tell how much of his rollo—that part-college-professor and part-mixed-

blood-vato-loco spiel of his—is up front and how much is tongue in cheek. I thanked him anyhow for the warning about

the curse of the Yaquis. I assured him that I wasn’t about to libel his Great Tía. I told him I thought his Tía Abuela comes

off smelling like roses—literally.

But at the same time Santa Teresita is a lot more complex than some of the hagiographical accounts that have

38

carrying letters and photographs signed by Teresa Urrea, 1896. (Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, AHS# 44475.)