Nina Otero-warren

Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren is an educator, politician, and suffragist. She was born in 1881 in Los Lunas, New Mexico.  Nina attended Maryville University in Saint Louis, Missouri from 1892 to 1894. After this, she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico when her uncle Miguel Otero was appointed territorial governor of New Mexico of New Mexico. There, she married Lieutenant Rawson Warren in 1908, although this marriage was short. She had no children, but 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.

            In 1914, she worked for women’s suffrage in New Mexico when Alice Paul’s Congressional Union (forerunner of the Woman’s Party) sent talented organizers into the state. Nina soon rose to leadership ranks in the state Congressional Union, rallying support among both Spanish and English speaking communities. She was the niece of the popular head of New Mexico’s Republican Party, which helped in her political career. Because of these connections and also Nina’s patience, she was able to win the favor of the head of New Mexico to convince them to pass the 19th amendment, which allowed women the right to vote.

 From 1917 to 1929, Nina Otero-Warren served as one of New Mexico’s first female government officials. She served as Santa Fe Superintendent of Instruction and also as a chair of the State Board of Health. By 1922, she won the Republican Party nomination to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. A few years later she was appointed as state director of the federal Civilian Conservation Corps by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Nina’s life was not all based around politics. She supported efforts to preserve historical structures built in Santa Fe and in Taos. She also had close relationships with many artists, writers, and intellectuals who were in that area in the 1930’s and 1940’s. She also renewed interest in Hispanic and Indian culture. She supported the respect of these cultures.

Nina eventually purchased a large ranch outside Santa Fe that she liked to call “Las Dos.” In the 1930’s her house which overlooked the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, attracted visitors and inspired artists and writers. She continued her life at Las Dos as a businesswoman, educator, writer, and political activist until her death in 1965.