ERNESTINE DURÁN EVANS

TEACHER • LEGISLATOR • SECRETARY OF STATE

From an El Rito Ranch to the State Capitol

“I enjoyed winning, and I am back in the Capitol again.”
— Ernestine Durán Evans, speaking in Santa Fe, 1975

ROOTED IN EL RITO

Ernestine Durán Evans was born in Colorado in 1917, but the place that shaped her was El Rito, New Mexico. She grew up on her family's ranch, the daughter of a rancher and a schoolteacher, in a community where agriculture, education, family and public responsibility were closely intertwined. She attended the Spanish American Normal School in El Rito, the institution that eventually became Northern New Mexico College, earned a teaching certificate and began her working life as a teacher at a lumber camp.

Her beginnings were far removed from the offices of state government. There was no obvious path from an El Rito ranch to one of New Mexico's highest elected offices. Her career instead developed through education, personal tragedy, persistence and an extraordinary willingness to enter public life when circumstances demanded it.

AN UNEXPECTED ENTRANCE INTO POLITICS

Ernestine married fellow teacher Alcadio Griego. When Griego died while seeking election to the New Mexico Legislature, Democratic leaders asked his young widow to take his place in the campaign.

She agreed.

And she won.

Official historical election records place Ernestine Duran Evans—then serving under her married name Griego—in the New Mexico House of Representatives in 1941–1942. It was the beginning of a public career that would eventually extend across nearly four decades.

Her entry into politics is important to the El Rito story because it was not the conventional rise of a professional politician. She began as a rural schoolteacher and young widow from northern New Mexico. Yet when an unexpected opening placed public responsibility before her, she accepted it.

LEARNING STATE GOVERNMENT FROM THE INSIDE

After her legislative service, Evans steadily accumulated experience in the machinery of New Mexico government. During World War II she worked as an administrator at a military hospital. In 1945, she joined the New Mexico State Land Office, and in 1953 she became a finance manager for the state Board of Education. She later served as an administrative secretary to two governors and worked with the Legislative Council.

These years are essential to understanding her later success. By the time Evans sought statewide office, she had already spent years learning how New Mexico government actually operated—education, land administration, budgeting, legislation and the governor's office.

Her public service also extended into higher education. In 1971 Governor Bruce King appointed Ernestine Durán Evans to the New Mexico Highlands University Board of Regents, along with Ben Roybal and Tom Wiley, during an important period of change at the university.

FROM EL RITO TO STATEWIDE OFFICE

Evans made her greatest political mark when New Mexico voters elected her Secretary of State.

She served two consecutive two-year terms from 1967 through 1970. After four years out of the office, she ran again and returned to the Capitol, serving another four-year term from 1975 through 1978. The New Mexico Secretary of State's official historical roster confirms all three terms.

Her return was something she clearly relished. Speaking to a national conference in Santa Fe in 1975, Evans reminded delegates that she had previously served as Secretary of State, had been away for four years, had decided to run again—and had won.

For a woman whose early life centered on an El Rito ranch and a teacher-training school in a small northern New Mexico village, reaching statewide elected office once would have been remarkable. Returning to it years later demonstrated that her political success was no accident.

A RARE HISPANIC WOMAN IN AMERICAN POLITICS

The significance of Evans's career becomes much clearer when viewed nationally.

A federal report examining Hispanic women's political participation noted that immediately before the November 1976 election, only three women of Hispanic heritage in the entire United States held elective public office at the state level. Ernestine Durán Evans, then New Mexico Secretary of State, was one of them.

The same report found that between November 1974 and November 1976, 45 women held statewide elective office nationwide—and only one was of Hispanic heritage. That woman was Ernestine Durán Evans.

Her story therefore belongs to more than New Mexico political history. It forms part of the much larger history of Hispanic women breaking into positions of governmental authority in twentieth-century America.

SHE NEVER LEFT NORTHERN NEW MEXICO BEHIND

Political success did not erase the northern New Mexico world from which Evans had come. In 1986 she published Turquoise and Coral, a collection rooted in the people and experiences of northern New Mexico.

That detail provides an especially fitting conclusion to her El Rito story. The ranch, village, teachers, families and culture of northern New Mexico were not merely the background to a political career. They remained part of the way she understood herself and the state she represented.

WHY ERNESTINE DURÁN EVANS MATTERS

Ernestine Durán Evans represents an extraordinary bridge between rural El Rito and twentieth-century New Mexico government.

She began as the daughter of a ranching and teaching family. She studied at El Rito's Normal School. She became a teacher herself. Personal tragedy unexpectedly carried her into electoral politics. From there she moved through the Legislature and state administration until New Mexico voters entrusted her with one of the state's highest offices—not once, but repeatedly.

Her journey makes the title of this panel almost literal:

From an El Rito ranch, Ernestine Durán Evans went to the State Capitol—and helped govern New Mexico.