LAS DOS, NEW MEXICO

Nina Otero-Warren was a true early feminist.

As a resident of a home in the Las Dos subdivision, Charlotte Whaley writes, that homesteader “Nina Otero-Warren, a descendant of Spanish conquistadores, was herself a pioneer.  Suffragist, educator, politician, homesteader, writer, and business entrepreneur during the early decades of the twentieth century, she was on the forefront of the first wave of feminism in the country her ancestors explored and settled three hundred years earlier.” Nina and her sister, Anita ran were?? for school board superintendents and worked on behalf of children for over 16 years.

Nina was the eldest daughter of the Luna and Otero families who played a prominent role in developing the largest sheep ranch in North America in the 1800s located around Las Lunas, New Mexico. They created an interactive society between the indigenous and hispanic cultures. They relied on the agricultural sophistication of the indigenous pueblo Indians, and brought their sheep to the area so that ranch hands who sought this way of life would profit and flourish. 

The Luna-Oteros shaped the New Mexico Territory. Miguel A. Otero was one of the last Territorial Governors and Solomon Luna was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1910, helping to draft the NM State Constitution. Soloman Luna’s sister, Eloisa Luna was Nina’s mother and her father, Manual B. Otero was called, “The prince of New Mexico."  GET LINK TO THE NM MUSEUM AND ELOISA’S PHOTO.

Changes came rapidly to New Mexico after the arrival of the railroads in 1881, the year Nina was born. The Anglos – referring to all US immigrants whose nationalities were other than Indian, Spanish or Mexican – began taking over in the name of progress. In fact, Nina’s father, Manual B. Otero was shot and killed by a railroad squatter on the family land when Nina was only four years old. (See Nina Otero-Warren of Santa Fe for details of the family’s story, published in 1994, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque) Eloisa remarried at the age of 18 to Alfred M. Bergere who moved the entire family to Santa Fe in an effort to support family members in the initial years of statehood.  Alfred Bergere was a registrar for Santa Fe County and when he discovered that Nina, his step daughter, wanted to homestead a section of land, he found two sections (1,257 acres) only 12 miles northwest of Santa Fe for Nina and her friend, secretary, and supporter, Mamie Meadors. Hence the name, “Las Dos or The Two!”