While she was best known in her native state of New Mexico, Adelina Otero-Warren became a trailblazer for women’s voting rights throughout the country. Now her image will be featured on a new quarter dollar coin, a testimony to her importance as a Latina in American history.
Born in the village of Los Lunas near Albuquerque in 1881, Otero was a mover and shaker in the early push for women’s rights. As a leader in the suffragist movement, she advocated for the state to ratify the 19th Amendment to legally grant women the right to vote in the United States. That stance didn’t make Otero-Warren very popular with many men in that era, and in 1921 she lost in a bid to become the first Latina member of Congress. But that didn’t discourage her feisty nature.
Otero-Warren would also lead the New Mexico chapter of the National Women’s Party and spearhead the publishing of voter information in both English and Spanish. As superintendent of public schools in Santa Fe county, she fought to allow Spanish to also be spoken in the classroom. The lady that family and friends called “Nina” battled just as hard to improve the living conditions of rural Hispanic and Native American communities. Otero-Warren died at the age of 84 in the same house where she grew up in Santa Fe, and in many ways paved the path for today’s Me Too movement.
The new quarter coin will have Otero-Warren’s name and image next to Yucca flowers (the New Mexico state flower) and the slogan, “Voto para la mujer.”
