Teresa Chávez Aguirre de la Barrera is the titular main protagonist of the Mexican telenovela, Teresa.

She was portrayed by the late Maricruz Olivier in the original 1959 TV show, Salma Hayek (who also portrayed Claire Luna from Like a Boss and Santánico Pandemónium from From Dusk till Dawn) in the 1989 remake, and Angelique Boyer in the 2010 remake.

Biography[]

Teresa Chávez is a beautiful and intelligent young woman who desperately seeks to escape the extreme poverty of her neighborhood. Despite being beautiful and having the support and love she receives from her parents, she lives resentful of the miserable life that left her without her younger sister Rosa (Jessica Safe), so she plans to use her beauty as a method to enter the luxurious world to which she wants to belong. Not even having Mariano, a poor neighbor who loves her and is studying to become a doctor, as a fiancé, makes Teresa change and her ambitious and selfish ways.

So, studying at the luxury school where she has a scholarship, she meets Paulo, a rich young man who is very popular with all the students. Teresa, seeing in him her great opportunity to enter the world of rich she always dreamed of, breaks up with Mariano and her charms Paulo immediately, but always hiding her humble origin and saying that she is indeed very rich. Two years later, Paulo proposes marriage to her, but upon discovering Teresa's lie, ends the marriage commitment but offers her to stay by his side as his lover, Teresa refuses and then he begins dating Aída, another high school student who is in love with Paulo and Teresa's worst enemy because is jealous of her being beautiful and being able to conquer all men.

Paulo and Aída humiliate Teresa, publicly displaying her poverty and lies in front of her classmates, so she decides to get revenge on them, swears that she will never be trampled again and have what she wants, regardless of how and at what cost, and she does this by taking advantage that Ruben, Aida's father is having a love affair with Teresa's friend, Esperanza, despite him being married and Teresa uses this to annoy Aida. Teresa befriends her professor Arturo de la Barrera, a prestigious lawyer, who proposes to pay for her career by being the best student in her class and knowing she can't afford a university. Now she is dedicated to make him to fall in love with her. However, upon seeing that her best friend Aurora is in love with Mariano, she jealously, returns with him. At the same time, Teresa pushes Arturo away from Paloma, his ex-fiancé who left him years ago and now regretfully returned to win him back.

Three years later, Teresa and Mariano are engaged, but after seeing that Mariano will take a long time to make a career and wealth, she decides to definitely stay with Arturo, so he lies to him saying that she is very unhappy with her parents and that they mistreat her. Luisa, Arturo's sister, takes pity on her and takes her to live at home. There finally, Teresa successfully seduces Arturo.

Teresa finishes her career and Arturo proposes marriage to her, they get married, breaking Mariano's heart, who soon starts dating Aida after Paulo dies of a drug overdose (Because Teresa suggested to her neighbor Fito, a drugs dealer to sell it to Paulo).

However Teresa and Arturo's marriage fails because Arturo is very jealous of Mariano, with whom Teresa is still in love and Paloma tries to win back Arturo, which is why Arturo is unfaithful to Teresa with Paloma. Paloma learns that Teresa slept with Mariano before marrying Arturo, and makes an appointment with him to tell him, but when she arrives, she is hit by a pickup truck and dies in the hospital. Teresa discovers Arturo's secret and they almost get divorced, but Arturo offers her to take her to Europe to their belated honeymoon and she accepts, there she begins to feel affection for Arturo and begins to forget Mariano and falls in love with Arturo.

Time passes and Teresa has an accident that paralyzes her body to save Arturo's life. During her recovery process, Arturo and Teresa fall deeper in love, but he finds out what happened between Teresa and Mariano the day before their wedding and that she only married him for his money. Then Arturo takes advantage of the fact that he is in an economic crisis, and doubting of Teresa's love for him, he decides to test her by taking her to live in the neighborhood where she came from; she finds out about the test and accepts it because she is in love with Arturo for real. Tired of the crisis, Teresa seeks to improve her economic position to live happy again with Arturo and money, so she seduces Fernando, Luisa's multimillionaire fiancé and Arturo's best friend, who is a womanizer. Teresa takes advantage of this to drive him crazy for her and gets him to break off his engagement with Luisa days before the wedding, much to Luisa's heartbreak.

In a struggle between what she feels and her uncontrollable ambition for money, Teresa gets carried away by the latter, pretending with Fernando a love that she clearly does not seem to feel, but Oriana, Fernando's mother, is constantly opposed to her and is determined to do whatever it takes to separate them, including taking away her son's fortune. Lucía, Luisa's real best friend is also in love with Arturo, making Teresa extremely jealous of her. Teresa begins the proceedings of her divorce with Arturo, so she can marry Fernando and have the money she always wanted. She gets Fernando to sign her shares to some of his companies and she secretly sells them, and when she finally gets the money from the sale, she heartlessly dumps Fernando saying she doesn't love him.

Arturo suffers a car accident and is assisted by a peasant, who takes him to his ranch and there Arturo is seriously injured; Teresa finds out and goes looking for him. She finds him and transfers him to the hospital, where Teresa realizes that she loves him and cannot be without him.

Finally, after denying her humble roots and even saying that her parents had died, all her family and friends turn against her, leaving her alone. Teresa changes her attitude and decides to change to be a better person, donates all the money she took from Fernando to the Paloma foundation seeking Arturo's forgiveness, but he refuses. Refugio, Teresa's mother refuses to forgive her as she feels it's too early to do so and cannot be sure if her daughter's change is sincere, and Juana also refuses to forgive Teresa. After accepting that she is all alone in her house, she goes up to her room and hugs the bear that Arturo gave her; Then Arturo appears, picks her up, hugs her, and kisses her, giving her another chance.

It's unknown what happens to them later.

Trivia[]

• There are two alternate endings in Teresa:
  • In the first, Teresa after accepting she's all alone, decides to leave Arturo's house and start a new life, months later, she's seen working at a company as a secretary, and she is approached by her new boss, who asks her to meet him in his office, as she goes to his office, she unbuttons her blouse and says her motto "Between being a somebody and a nobody, I'm a somebody", indicating she's back to her manipulative and greedy ways.
  • In the second ending, Teresa goes up to her room, hugging the teddy bear Arturo gave her, when Fernando arrives, angrily blaming her for ruining his life by swindling him, getting his mother hospitalized and making him to lose Luisa and pulls out a gun and fatally shoots her. The spider bullet has a violent effect on Teresa. In pain, Teresa crawls over to the teddy bear Arturo gave her, repeatedly calling his name as she dies.
• Teresa is similar to Rubí Pérez Ochoa Ferrer, as both of them are selfish, manipulative, ambitious, and greedy gold-diggers that hated living in poverty while they had taken advantage of their friends and loved ones to get what they wanted: higher economic status and wealthy lifestyles. They had respective relationships with two men, Alejandro and Mariano (portrayed by Eduardo Santamarina and Aarón Díaz, respectively), before dumping them for not being in a higher social position and not able to reach wealthier status in time (although they eventually became wealthy medical professionals). The two women also respectively married rich men (Héctor and Arturo), both portrayed by Sebastian Rulli. They both have mothers with the same first name Refugio. They both had years-long friendships with nice, kind, generous, and friendly rich women Maribel and Aurora (both portrayed by Jacqueline Bracamontes and Ana Brenda Contreras, respectively), though they turned against them following deceptions and betrayals. They often showed no remorse for their actions on harming their loved ones and friends. However, there are differences between them:
  • Teresa genuinely loves her sister Rosita prior to her unexpected death; Rubí mistreated Cristina as she always envied her,
  • Teresa denied her humble origins; Rubí never did that as she admitted to Maribel's father about her family origins,
  • Teresa only slept with Mariano prior to her marriage with Arturo, while later seduced Fernando but never slept with him; Rubí slept with multiple men even while married with Héctor,
  • Teresa married Arturo for his wealth and money, although she ended up (truly) falling in love with him while on a trip to Europe; Rubí only married Héctor for his wealth and money while hating him ever since their civil marriage, and she still hated him even though they were traveling the world for years,
  • Teresa completed her university studies; Rubí abandoned her studies to get Héctor for herself before he marries Maribel,
  • Teresa rarely expressed anger among her enemies (at one time she angrily lashed out at Lucia for drawing a picture of Arturo's face); Rubí was almost always vulgar and often had called people names;
  • Teresa chose to personally give up her wealth after being disowned by family and friends; Rubí lost her wealth in the stock market because of Elena,
  • Teresa was more intelligent, and she had calculated plans through before executing them in action; Rubí always acted ahead before thinking, and
  • Teresa regretted her actions at the end of the telenovela; Rubí never did as she proceeded to use her niece Fernanda to plot her revenge against Alejandro and Maribel.

Gallery[]

Teresa's various actors (from left to right, Maricruz Olivier (1959), Salma Hayek (1989), Angelique Boyer (2010))