Who was concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven?

Answer 1

Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven was an American politician and activist. She served as the Secretary of State of New Mexico from 1923 to 1926, making her the first woman to hold statewide office in the state. Ortiz y Pino de Kleven was also involved in various social and political organizations, advocating for women's suffrage and Native American rights.

Answer 2

New Mexico's history has been full of fascinating, energetic, and resourceful women-artists, anthropologists, homemakers, pioneers, healers, scientists, and educators. These women, who often worked under difficult and unusual circumstances, helped to shape New Mexico and their impact is still evident today. In celebration of Women's History Month, the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art is creating an exhibition in honor of one of these women: Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven.

Born in Galisteo in 1910 to a prominent New Mexican ranching family, Concha was at the forefront of the women's rights movement in New Mexico for much of her life. Encouraged and mentored by her father, José Ortiz y Pino, at the age of 26 she became the third female to serve in the New Mexico state legislature. But even before then she had embarked upon a remarkable path to support and encourage the education and economic improvement of her fellow New Mexicans.

In 1929, Concha started the Colonial Hispanic Crafts Society of Galisteo to teach traditional New Mexican crafts to local residents. Concha's sister, Mela Ortiz y Pino de Martin, taught embroidery, Concha taught weaving, and she hired an expert in colonial crafts to teach additional courses. She arranged to sell the students' products in Leonora Curtin's Native Market in Santa Fe. Although the program lasted only a few years, during that time the New Mexico Department of Vocational Education sent six people for training, and, using her model, Brice Sewell started the State vocational education programs in traditional arts that continued for the next several decades.

Fulfilling a vow made by one of her Pino ancestors, Concha ran for state congress in 1936 and served for six years. In 1941, she became the first female Majority Whip in any state legislature in the country. In her three terms as a legislator she helped to establish the Equalization Fund that distributed education funds evenly among rural and urban areas of New Mexico; she introduced the first bilingual legislation in the state to ensure that Spanish be taught in all the public elementary schools; and she sponsored legislation giving women the right to serve on juries.

After her marriage in 1943 to Victor Kleven, a law professor at UNM, Concha dedicated her life to many humanitarian efforts. She worked tirelessly for women's rights, benefits for the disabled, education, and the arts. Three different presidents appointed her to national organizations for humanitarian aide and she was a long-time member of the Santa Fe Arts Commission. Appointed to the National Commission on Architectural Barriers by President Lyndon B. Johnson, she helped to create the legislation for handicap-accessible parking. While overseeing the Ortiz y Pino family ranch and bringing it back to financial stability, she restored one of the state's oldest moradas on the ranch property.

In many ways a thoroughly modern woman, Concha was also very traditional. A devout Catholic, she was a member of the cofradía of La Conquistadora and the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre. She donated a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the town of Villanueva near her family's ranch and restored the shrine after it had been vandalized in 1972. Determined not to let her family's ties to Spain be forgotten, on many formal occasions she wore the elegant mantón, mantilla and peineta adopted by upper class women of Spain. Concha epitomized both the aristocracy of Spain and the resourcefulness of the colonial pioneers; she was a thoroughly New Mexican woman.

"Life is so interesting if you don't sit on it...The worst thing, to me, is the accumulation of goods that don't help anyone..."

Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven