This essay examines the ways Teresa Urrea – a curandera or Mexican faith healer – was understood by those she healed as well as the popular presses of the turn of the century as she moved out of the US–Mexico borderlands and into urban centers of San Francisco, New York City, and especially Los Angeles. Santa Teresa’s curanderismo was a cultural refuge for ethnic Mexicans who faced an increasingly racialized and antagonistic public health system in Los Angeles. At the same time, her curanderismo – exemplified by the practice of “laying on hands” – shared epistemologies with scientific medicine and other healing modalities, such as Spiritism, allopathic medicine, and indigenous healing arts. For those who lived in the liminal space between two nations and two cultures, Santa Teresa’s curanderismo provided both practical and magical medicine for the body and spirit.
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