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

Brianda Domecq's La insólita historia de la Santa de Cabora (The Astonishing Story of the Saint of Cabora, 1990) revisits the tale of Teresa Urrea, or Saint Teresa of Cabora (1873-1906), a Sonoran mystic and anti-Porfirian activist whose life ended in exile in the United States. This study posits that just as the character Teresa is a curandera, or healer, the text also serves as what activist historian Aurora Levins Morales has called history as curandera, a healing history. La insólita historia carries out a number of Levins Morales' suggestions for creating remedies through stories, such as telling untold or undertold tales, centering women to change the landscape, identifying and contradicting strategic pieces of misinformation, showing agency rather than passive victimization, and embracing complexity and ambiguity. The novel thus offers a healing contribution to Mexican letters.