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Forgotten Foremothers

Profiles of lesser-known heroines in the fight for women’s rights

Early in her youth, Aurora Lucero-Whie Lea and cousin Nina Otero-Warren began speaking and organizing politically as Congress debated the terms of the New Mexico Territory’s statehood. Nuevomexicanos like Aurora, those of Hispanic heritage originating in the Santa Fe area, treasured their unique culture, including their language. At age 16, in 1910, she gave a speech arguing against the recent proposed stipulation that all office holders in New Mexico must be proficient in English.

 

“It is claimed by some of those who passed this act that the Spanish-American will become a better citizen by depriving him of the use of his vernacular,” young Aurora said. “In resorting to such a course, it would seem that the contrary effect might be produced in him by the unwarranted interference of congress with his natural rights, and instead of becoming a better, he might be made a worse citizen. Yet the Spanish-Americans of New Mexico have never been bad citizens. ... 

 

“To single out New Mexico, then, for such unprecedented treatment, at the very moment that she is welcomed into sisterhood, is not only a gratuitous insult to the intelligence of her people, but it is also a proceeding as untenable in principle as it seems to be outrageous in its intent.” At the time, local governance was done almost entirely in Spanish. Therefore, an English-only stipulation could deny this new state its own trusted people and voice.
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Aurora Lucero-White Lea

 

Readers of the Santa Fe New Mexican opened their newspapers on Saturday, Nov. 2, 1912. On page 2, Nan O’Niel started her Society column with a poem. 

 

“We all get up at peep of day

And fret and fume and stew,

While father lays the breakfast cloth

And makes the coffee too

He always gets his fingers burned

I would not dare to quote

The things he says around the stove,

When mother goes to vote.”

 

Election day lay ahead and writer Nan looked forward fondly to days with “no more stumping this year, no more election literature or buttons or badges, no more comments in the papers, no more bets. We will be a quiet world again for a time.” But for now, the speeches continued and “men and women working in behalf of woman’s suffrage” in Wisconsin and other states across the nation were “making a final splendid effort to convince voters of the state that the word ‘male’ should be stricken from the clause dealing with the subject of the right to vote.”

 

She shared anecdotes from other states of suffrage advances or follies, such as the “society women of Los Angeles and San Francisco” even daring to reveal their “correct ages” in order to register to vote, “although they did it in the down town district where they thought none of their friends would see the bulletin.”

 

“And what have we done in New Mexico?” Nan asked. New Mexico, she asserted, did not want suffrage. “Perhaps we are not ready for it yet; perhaps we would not like to tell our ages; and perhaps again, the women of New Mexico have simply not thought of it.”

 

Or perhaps a fourth option: Nan was simply asking the wrong people, for there were many, many women in New Mexico who had been thinking of suffrage—and more—for a long time.

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In the land that was then called the New Mexico Territory, newlyweds Juanita Romero and Antonio J. Lucero welcomed baby Aurora on Feb. 8, 1894. In the following years, Aurora would gain six younger siblings: Antonio, Jr.; Delia; Julia; Edmundo; Elenor; and Arturo. 

 

The Luceros were a well-respected and well-connected family. As a single man, Antonio had worked as a clerk in a dry-goods store before becoming the editor of La Voz del Pueblo, a Spanish-language print. He then spent a few years teaching Spanish at nearby high schools and universities. 

By 1915, Aurora was deeply involved in New Mexico’s politics, so she was among the “150 Santa Fe Suffragists,” who marched to demonstrate outside Thomas’s home. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported on the planned march the day before, stating “A deputation of women suffragists…will descend upon United States Senator Thomas Benton Catron at his residence here tomorrow afternoon at 3 o’clock and attempt to convince him he should give his support to the constitutional amendment for equal suffrage. Immediately preceding the invasion of the Catron home, the suffragists, in automobiles, will parade the principal streets.”

 

Alongside advertisements for Star Chewing Tobacco, the newspapers reported the events of the “invasion” the following day, giving small glimpses of the back-and-forth between the suffrage activists and the senator. Thomas’s arguments were often rooted in Biblical text. “He discussed the status of man as compared to that of woman, and quoted from the Bible that story concerning the eating of the forbidden fruit... He said it was his belief that woman’s place is in the home to bear children and man’s place is to go out in the world and earn a living for his wife, his children, and himself. The very necessity of this work imposed upon man led him to a rougher exterior, a hardier character; whereas, woman was the tenderer of the two.” 

Page 7 of the Santa Fe New Mexican on Oct. 22, 1915 recounted the events of the rally outside the home of Senator Thomas Catron

One of the march’s organizers, Ella St. Clair Thompson (called only “Mrs. Thompson,” in the press coverage) had a reply. “In this age of sordid commercialism, do you not think that if you got a little tenderness into politics you would be a great deal better off?” The paper reported that “this sally was roundly applauded by the eighty kid-gloved hands for several seconds.”

 

Thomas said, “you give the ballot to woman and you will pull man down!”

 

Ella replied, “I have a better opinion of man than that.”

 

By many reports, Aurora and her cousin Nina also spoke, giving voice to the Spanish-speaking and bilingual women of New Mexico. They were part of a significant contingent of Hispanic women represented that day. 

 

In Suffrage in Spanish: Hispanic Women and the Fight for the 19th Amendment in New Mexico, Penn State History professor Cathleen D. Cahill wrote, “The 1915 Santa Fe suffrage parade is a good example of American women's cooperation across ethnic lines. ... They had designated four women—two Anglos and two Hispanic women, the latter Aurora Lucero and Arabella Romero—to give speeches formally asking the Senator to support the federal amendment when he returned to Washington.”

 

No one can speak to the unnamed or unknown who may have been influenced that day, but Thomas himself was unmoved. In 1917 he wrote in “Article On Woman Suffrage,” “Most of the women who vote in the woman-suffrage States do so in self-defense, or at the earnest appeal of the male members of their families, and not because they want the ballot. ... [I]t is unjust to place the burden on a majority of women in order that a few aggressive, forward, notoriety-seeking women can get into politics, some of whom resent the fact that they were created women and not men.”

 

In 1916, Aurora relocated about 100 miles east to Tucumcari, NM to, as newspaper briefs reported, she “will have charge of the Spanish in Tucumcari schools.” In 1919, at age 25, she married George White. Together, the couple would have one daughter, named Dolores. In 1925, Aurora earned a bachelor’s degree from New Mexico Normal University, and just two years later, she would join the faculty in the Spanish department.

 

While teaching Spanish, she pursued a master’s degree in Spanish literature, completing it in 1932. Her master’s thesis, and most of her writing for the remainder of her life, focused on Spanish folk tales, dramas, plays, and preserving the Nuevomexicano literary heritage. In 1935, she and fellow folklorist Cleofas Martínez Jaramillo, founded La Sociedad Folklorica, an organization to preserve the traditions of her ancestors. She wrote “Folk-Dances of the Spanish-Colonials of New Mexico” in 1937, followed by “Folkways and Fiestas” in 1940. She translated historical works into English and penned essays about folk traditions. 

 

In 1947’s “New Mexico Series 1: Los Hispanos,” she shared “five essays on the folkways of the Hispanos as seen through the eyes of one of them.” “Nuevo Méjico (New Mexico) once belonged to the Republic of Mexico,” she said in the foreword. “The people, who were of Spanish descent, were Mejicanos (Mexicans); that is, citizens of Mexico. In 1849, when General Kearney effected the ‘Bloodless Revolution,’ the area of land known as New Mexico passed into the hands of the United States. The people, then, became Americans; that is, citizens of the United States. Linguistically and culturally they were Hispanic, since they continued to use Spanish, their native language, and to live in the Hispanic tradition.”

 

Through its pages, Aurora guided the reader through the intimate traditions surrounding baptisms, weddings, wakes, religious practices, and fiestas. “In the days of the sheep kings and cattle barons, fiestas were celebrated within the patron’s (master’s) estate,” she wrote in the publication’s final paragraphs. “Today it is possible for villagers to visit in town frequently; it is also possible to visit each other’s villages at regular intervals. Most villages are visited by a priest at least once a month. Political candidates, and other visitors, motor to and from the villages in one day. Young people go away to school in town and return with ideas of their own as to their wedding fiestas... Slowly, imperceptibly, vital changes are taking place in the life of the Hispanos.”

 

In 1934, when she became assistant superintendent for the New Mexico Department of Education, she was able to bring her scholarly passion for folklore to the curriculum for the entire state, ensuring the youth of New Mexico retained a connection to their Hispanic roots. She worked as a teacher and an administrator until her retirement in 1960. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper that reported on so many events and turns in her life, Aurora died in 1963, at age 69. 

 

La Sociedad Folklorica, the organization Aurora helped found, now has a Facebook page and holds festival events to this day. In February of 2020, finally settling the debate held on Thomas Catron’s doorstep, representatives from New Mexico introduced House Memorial 1, “Recognizing and celebrating the women’s suffrage movement and centennial adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Aurora and cousin Nina are listed by name as “New Mexican women [who] fought tirelessly for women’s right to vote in local, state and national elections.” 

 

Her nephew Donald L. Lucero, who, like his aunt, earned multiple degrees (though his were in the field of counseling and psychology) sketched a short biography of his aunt for Alexander Street. “She was 40 years older than I and I was crazy about her,” he wrote. “She had a small pot-belly stove in her kitchen near which she'd sit, shoeless—her hose rolled down to her ankles—looking for just the right note, among the many notes resting in her lap, working on a new project. I thought of her as an accomplished historian and anthropologist and I wanted to be just like her.” 

 

 

Sources:

Speaking While Female: Plea for the Spanish Language by Aurora Lucero-White Lea

Wikipedia: Aurora Lucero White Lea, Hispanos of New Mexico

League of Women Voters: Digital Maine: Article on Woman Suffrage Introduced in United

State Senate by Hon. Thomas B. Carton Senator from the State of New Mexico

Alexander Street: Biographical Sketch of Aurora Lucero-White Lea

Santa Fe New Mexican: Nov. 2, 1912; Oct. 20, 1915; Oct. 21, 1915; Oct. 22, 1915; July 21, 1963

Las Vegas Optic: Aug. 31, 1916

New Mexico Secretary of State: NM’s First Secretary of State

Enabling Act for New Mexico, June 20, 1910

National Park Service: Suffrage in Spanish: Hispanic Women and the Fight for the 19th Amendment in New Mexico by Cathleen D. Cahill

New Mexico Legislative: HM1