Adelina Otero-Warren

Adelina "Nina" Otero-Warren (1881–1965) was a woman's suffragist, educator, and politician in the United States.

Born on October 23, 1881, by the name Maria Otero-Warren Isabel Emilia Otero in her family’s hacienda “La Constancia”, close to Los Lunas, New Mexico, Otero-Warren was born into aristocracy, both from her matriarchal side and patriarchal. Otero-Warren had an older brother, Eduardo who lived from 1880 to 1932 and a younger brother, Manuel who lived from 1883 to 1963, and nine half siblings.

Her mother was Eloisa Luna, a descendant of the Luna family. The Lunas were one of the first settlers in New Mexico arriving in 1598 during the Onate settlement. Eloisa was the third child born to Antonio and Isabella Luna, and like the rest of her siblings was also educated at a Catholic school in New York.

Her father, Manuel B. Otero, was also a descendant of longtime settlers. The Oteros originally from Spain migrated to New Mexico in 1786 and were equally well established. Manuel was well-educated, both in Washington D.C. at Georgetown University and in Germany at Heidelberg University. Manuel died during a quarrel against a band of Anglos who questioned his property ownership at the age of twenty-three leaving his daughter fatherless at the age of two.

Otero-Warren’s mother remarried after the death of her first husband to Alfred Maurice Bergere an Englishman who had descendants in various parts of Europe. The businessman migrated to New Mexico in 1880 and worked for the Spiegelberg brothers’ mercantile enterprise. This marriage helped merge political and economic agendas between Anglo’s and natives which Otero-Warren came to value.

Eloise was an activist for social and educational developments, in the early 1900s she became the director of Santa Fe’s board of education. She was framed as the mother figure of Santa Fe, and she opened her home to political exchange. Like Otero-Warren later emphasizes, her mother too focused on the importance of education, improving schools locally and more specifically cared for those who are poor and sick. Eloise, Otero-Warren’s mother and first influential role model died in 1914.

In 1892, Otero-Warren was sent to a private Catholic school, Maryville College of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis, which she claimed influenced her social consciousness. "this was moved from previous author to this section" Otero-Warren attended Maryville University in Saint Louis, Missouri from 1892 to 1894.

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