These people from Santa Fe history represent the many colorful political figures who balanced high hopes and pragmatism, often with mixed results.

Pedro Bautista Pino

By 1812, after more than 200 years of Spanish colonial rule, New Mexicans wanted more financial help from Spain but felt neglected by their far-away European masters. New Mexico sent representative Pedro Bautista Pino to Spain to ask the parliament for aid. Pino, later described as the most able statesman born in New Mexico, delivered a written report lobbying the Spanish crown for money to stimulate agriculture, industry and commerce and to develop teachers, writers, lawyers and doctors. Its national power in decline by that time, Spain was not willing or able to come through.

SOURCE: FOREIGNERS IN THEIR NATIVE LAND BY DAVID J. WEBER


Mariano Martínez de Lejanza

Quality of life has been part of the Santa Fe agenda for a long time. The frontier was very much a matter of day-to-day survival, but in 1844 Gov. Mariano Martínez de Lejanza had the foresight to look beyond the routine affairs of the day to imagine a community of the future. He created a large park south of Rosario Chapel, established a public school, helped young men pursue advanced military training and planted cottonwoods on the Plaza. His tree-lined avenue leading to the Rosario park was a space that even in 1844 had quite a modern feel. Santa Feans gathered there to enjoy entertainment provided by musicians, acrobats and rope walkers.


Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven

Energetic yet generous with her time, Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven made friends easily but never stopped pushing them to do the right thing. She had a full life that stretched from 1910 to 2006, summarized by her biographer this way: "Concha became a college student in Washington, D.C., a state legislator in New Mexico, a faculty wife at the University of New Mexico, the boss-lady of a 100,000-acre ranch, a widow, a board member of 60 or more organizations working to make the world a better place, a champion for women and the handicapped and Hispanic culture and the arts and the poor." Winning an election in 1937, she represented the sixth generation of her family to serve in the Legislature. She came to Santa Fe as the youngest member of that body and later was the first woman in America to be a legislative majority whip. She built a strong pro-education legislative record, and today her name graces a state office building.

SOURCE: CONCHA! BY KATHRYN M. CóRDOVA


Miguel Trujillo

Native Americans won the right to vote in 1924 through federal legislation, but New Mexico and four other states continued to deny voting rights in state elections. That changed in August 1948. Sitting in Santa Fe, a panel of federal judges ruled that the voting ban constituted discrimination based on race. The man who won the right to vote was Miguel Trujillo of Isleta, a World War II veteran, university graduate student and head teacher at Laguna Pueblo. He died in 1987. Trujillo succeeded in 1948 where a similar legal challenge had failed just a month earlier. In that case, a class action originating at Tesuque Pueblo unsuccessfully sought to force the Santa Fe county clerk to list the plaintiffs as qualified voters.

SOURCE: NATIVE VOTE BY DANIEL MCCOOL AND OTHERS


George Julian

The loose association of bankers, lawyers and politicians known as the Santa Fe Ring operated in the shadows. George Julian showed that bringing backroom deals into the open was the best safeguard against corruption. President Grover Cleveland sent Julian, an ex-Indiana congressman, to New Mexico to investigate land fraud. He found that indeed a ring representing business and political interests had been stealing property from the heirs to Spanish and Mexican land grants. Not only did he report his findings to Washington, but he also in 1887 published the story in a national magazine, naming the ringleaders and detailing their misdeeds so that the whole country might learn of the scandal. The Santa Fe Ring soon faded from the scene.


Frank Chavez

Politics escalated from dirty to deadly in 1892 when a rising politician was gunned down on a dark street outside his home. The victim was Frank Chavez, a popular Democrat and tough former sheriff who had enemies. "The brutes have murdered me," he cried as he fell, adding to the mounting evidence that thugs operated in Santa Fe to do politicians' dirty work. The murder had political overtones. In that election year, the issue was statehood, and New Mexicans were to decide which approach best served them in making their case in Washington: the aggressive, abrasive style of Republican Thomas B. Catron or the gentle persuasion of Democrat Antonio Joseph. The Chavez assassination raised doubts whether political debate could ever be civil or the rule of law ever prevail. The case also proved that justice could win in the end, when three years later a jury convicted a gang of five of the killing.

SOURCE: THE FAR SOUTHWEST BY HOWARD R. LAMAR


Pedro Perea

The struggle for statehood lasted 60 years and survived half a dozen major setbacks. Several of the strongest champions of statehood died before New Mexico finally became the 47th state in 1912. Pedro Perea was one of those fathers of statehood who didn't live to see his dream fulfilled. He died in 1906. College educated and successful as a rancher and Santa Fe banker, Perea won election as delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1898, a critical time in the statehood debate. At the time, prejudice in Congress and the Eastern press blocked statehood for a territory that was heavily Hispanic, Spanish-speaking and Catholic. The able Perea was credited with breaking down the prejudice and ignorance about New Mexico.

SOURCE: "NEW MEXICO'S FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD" BY MARION DARGAN



Soledad Chacón

Although the state was slow to ratify the amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920, New Mexico voters two years later anointed Soledad Chacón as the nation's first Hispanic woman to win a statewide election. After winning the office of secretary of state at the young age of 32, Chacón arrived in Santa Fe with the added distinction of being the first woman in the country to hold that office. Within a decade, two other Hispanic women followed in her footsteps to become secretaries of state. Chacón died prematurely at
46 in 1936.

SOURCE: "SOLEDAD CHáVEZ CHACóN" BY DAN D. CHáVEZ