Adelina Otero-Warren

In 1881, Doña Maria Adelina Isabel Emilia Luna Otero was born into two of New Mexico Territory's older Spanish colonial families.

She was the youngest child of Don Manuel Otero and Doña Eloisa Luna.

She attended St. Vincent's Academy in Alburquerque and at the age of 11 attended Maryville College in Saint Louis, Missouri.

At the age of twenty-six, she married and became "Mrs. Otero-Warren," a name she kept for life, even though she quickly divorced.

In the late 1910s to 1920s, she was Chair of the Board of Public Health and Superintendent of Santa Fe county schools. The author of Old Spain in Our Southwest in 1936.

She moved with her family to Santa Fe when her uncle Miguel Otero was appointed territorial governor, and it is with that city that she is most closely identified.

Nina remained childless and independent after her divorce, though she helped raise her siblings after her mother's death. She focused on her professional life and politics, becoming one of New Mexico's most admired female leaders.

Under the guise of widowhood, she gained the freedom to campaign for suffrage, run for public office, serve as an appointed official, homestead land, and form a real estate company.

The matriarch of a large family of sisters, nieces, and nephews, she also led an active social life, striking up friendships with the artists and writers who settled in Santa Fe in the 1920s and 1930s.

After women got the vote, Nina wasted no time becoming the first woman in New Mexico to run for Congress, and came close to winning.

Doña María Adelina and her friend Marnie Meadors established a homestead just outside of Santa Fé Called "Las Dos" and established a real estate company in the same name.

A woman who successfully negotiated complicated cross-cultural terrain and created a life that transcended the boundaries imposed by early twentieth-century society.

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