Sylvia Acosta
Paula Garcia
Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche
Doña Teresa de Aguilera y Roche was the aristocratic, educated, and outspoken wife of New Mexico governor don Bernardo López de Mendizábal. Both were accused as sorcerers and judaizers—Christians who practiced Jewish rituals—and brought before the Holy Office of the...
Susan “Susie” Parks
During the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), the United States, particularly citizens in the southwestern states, kept a close watch on events across the border. In 1912, the army established a military post near the small village of Columbus, New Mexico, to protect...
Dorothy McKibbin, “Gatekeeper of Los Alamos”
Dorothy McKibbin was the first person to greet newly arriving scientists, workers, and their families on their way to “The Hill,” the top-secret headquarters for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. Hired by Robert Oppenheimer as a secretary in 1943, her office at 109...
Women of Shakespeare (Emma Marble Muir, Rita Wells Hill, Janaloo Hill Hough)
In southwestern New Mexico, two miles south of Lordsburg, a small vestige of a town called Shakespeare survives as one of the state’s well-known ghost towns. Were it not for three women, the town would have faded into oblivion both physically and in memory. Emma...
Emiteria “Matie” Martinez Robinson Viles
Around Las Vegas, New Mexico, Matie Viles is a well-known name because of the Viles Foundation, the scholarship fund she started in 1959 to help high school graduates pursue higher education. Widowed in 1950, she and her husband had owned and operated the Mountain...
Evelyn M. Vigil, Phan-Un-Pha-Kee (Young Doe)
In 1583, approximately two thousand people lived in the Pecos Pueblo, one of the most heavily populated pueblos. By 1838, disease and raids had drastically reduced the population. The last remaining seventeen Pecos residents packed up their belongings and relocated...