To Speak for the Spanish American Women

Abstract

In 1912 New Mexico entered the union as the forty-seventh state. When national suffragist leaders announced their new drive for a constitutional amendment with the 1913 Washington suffrage parade, New Mexican women took notice. Supporters of women’s right to vote in New Mexico understood the need to work for a federal solution, and therefore the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with its primary focus on state legislation, held less promise than the new Congressional Union. Nina Otero-Warren exemplified the elite Hispanic women who became suffrage work leaders in the former Mexican territories of New Mexico and California.