Life Story: Nina Otero-Warren (1881-1965)

Maria Adelina Isabel Emilia Lina Otero was born on October 23, 1881 in Los Lunas in the territory of New Mexico. Her family called her Nina. Nina was a member of one of New Mexico’s most elite Hispano families. Her mother, Eloisa Luna Otero, could trace her lineage back to the first Spanish settlers of the area. Her father, Manuel Otero, was a wealthy rancher. Together the couple had three children. 

New Mexico Territory was part of the United States, but Hispano and Indigenous people made up the majority of the population until 1881. That year, a new rail line brought an influx of white settlers eager to claim land. In 1883 Nina’s father was killed by a white settler during a land dispute. Her mother remarried a wealthy English merchant named Alfred Maurice Bergere and gave birth to nine more children. 

Nina grew up on a hacienda, where she had access to every comfort. Alfred and Eloisa wanted to ensure their children were well equipped to thrive in the rapidly changing world around them, so Eloisa hired an Irish governess to ensure all of her children could speak English and Spanish fluently. In 1892 she sent Nina to a private boarding school where she received a top-notch education. Nina returned home to live with her family after graduating.

In 1897 Nina’s cousin was appointed the territorial governor of New Mexico. He appointed Alfred to a government office, and Nina’s entire family moved to Santa Fe, the territory capital. Nina enthusiastically joined the vibrant social life of the city’s elite. In 1908 she married a cavalry officer named Rawson Warren, but the couple divorced in 1910. Because divorce was considered scandalous, Nina told all but her closest friends and family that her husband had died. She used the last name Otero-Warren for the rest of her life. Congress gave New Mexico permission to apply for statehood in 1910. Nina threw herself into the campaign, focusing on two issues in particular. The first was keeping Spanish in New Mexico’s schools. Congress wanted to require all New Mexico public schools to teach in English. Nina and other elite Hispanas felt like this was an attempt to erase their heritage and campaigned to ensure public education in New Mexico would be bilingual. In their writings, they proudly bragged about their ties to the earliest Spanish settlers, ignoring the harm their ancestors had done to Indigenous communities.

The second issue was women’s suffrage. There was no organized suffrage movement in New Mexico, but a number of women’s clubs decided that the creation of a new state constitution was an excellent opportunity to secure the right to vote. Nina participated in suffrage meetings and signed petitions urging the state constitutional convention to include women’s suffrage. In both these causes, Nina’s family connections, wealth, and her English and Spanish last name opened doors that other Hispanas did not have access to.

New Mexico became a state in 1912. The new state constitution protected the rights of the Spanish-speaking population and granted New Mexico women the right to vote. But women were only allowed to vote in school elections. Eager to secure full suffrage, Nina joined the National Women’s Party (NWP) to fight for a women’s suffrage amendment to the US Constitution. 

Nina established an NWP chapter in Santa Fe. She was welcomed by the NWP leadership, because as a Hispana, she understood what it would take to pass a suffrage amendment in the southwestern US. For example, she knew that Hispanos would be a deciding factor in the vote,  so she insisted that all suffrage materials in New Mexico be printed in Spanish and English. 

In 1917 the New Mexico Board of Education appointed Nina interim superintendent of Santa Fe country schools. This was one of the few elected positions women could hold in New Mexico, so Nina decided to officially run the following year. Following family tradition, she ran as a Republican. She defeated her male opponent in 1918 and served in the role for the next twelve years. During that time, she championed bilingual education for Hispanic and Indigenous children.

Nina also ran an ongoing campaign to convince the senators and representatives from New Mexico to vote for the suffrage amendment. In 1919 she resigned her position with the NWP to become the head of the Republican Party Women’s Committee in New Mexico. When Congress passed the suffrage amendment on June 4, 1919, Nina sent a letter to every member of the New Mexico State Legislature urging them to ratify immediately. She also encouraged women to attend the ratification hearings to remind the legislators what was at stake. Nina personally met with Republican state legislators to persuade men who were reluctant to ratify. Her hard work paid off. On February 21, 1920, New Mexico became the thirty-second state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. The amendment was officially ratified on August 18, 1920.

Nina was elected the vice chair of New Mexico’s Republican Party in September 1920. She got right to work on an amendment to the New Mexico State Constitution that would grant women the right to hold public office. This amendment passed in 1921, and Nina ran for Congress in 1922. She was a well-known power player in New Mexico politics with a long track record of building alliances with white and Hispanic voters. During her campaign she met Mamie Meadors, who became her companion for the rest of her life. Nina had a lot of support, especially from Hispano voters, but she lost the election. During her campaign the news leaked that she was divorced, and this may have been too scandalous for the general public. 

After this setback, Nina had a long, successful career working to preserve the unique cultural heritage of Spanish-speaking and Indigenous people in the US. In 1923 she was appointed the superintendent of Santa Fe’s schools for Indigenous children. She advocated for integrating Indigenous art and culture into the curriculum, a progressive position for the time. In 1930 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Nina to oversee the federal literacy program in New Mexico. In 1941 he sent her to Puerto Rico, where she established a Spanish and English literacy program for adults. 

Nina retired from public service in the late 1940s. She opened a successful real estate business with Mamie in 1947 and worked until her death on January 3, 1965.

• cavalry: Soldiers who fight on horseback.
• Congress: The branch of the US government with the power to create laws and declare war. 
• hacienda: A large plantation with a manor house.
• Hispana/Hispano: People descended from Spanish settlers in what is today the southwestern US. 
• National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA): Founded in 1890, this organization was the largest women’s suffrage organization in the US and instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. 
• New Mexico Territory: An area put under US supervision in 1850, after the US had won the US-Mexico War. It included the present-day states of New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado.
• Nineteenth Amendment: Passed in 1920, this amendment to the Constitution outlawed voting discrimination on the basis of sex.
• ratification: The action of signing or giving formal consent to a law, making it officially valid. 
• suffrage: The right of voting; in this era, suffrage often referred specifically to women’s suffrage, or the right of women to vote.