Cleofas Martínez Jaramillo

Cleofas Martínez Jaramillo (6 December 1878 – 30 November 1956) She co-founded La Sociedad Folklόrica de Santa Fe (Folklore Society of Santa Fe), playing a vital role in preserving Spanish culture and tradition in New Mexico.

Early life Cleofas Martinez was born 6 December 1878 in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, one of seven children born to Julian Antonio Martinez and Marina Lucero de Martinez. They later moved to Denver.

Some critics have viewed Jaramillo's account as one-sided, noting the exclusion of the state's Native American people and culture.

Of Jaramillo and her peers, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and Adelina Otero-Warren, feminist critic Tey Diana Rebolledo has written that they were "remarkable for their concerns and their production at a time when most Hispanas/Mexicans had little education, or if they were educated, little leisure or encouragement to write." She added that:They did so against the overwhelming dominance of Anglo culture and language, and against the patriarchal norms of their own culture. Their narratives are valuable not only because they preserve accounts of folk life but also because, in particular, they recorded the details women considered important, details rarely included in male narratives. Thus we are able to glimpse something of the female experience usually left out of history.

Death and legacy Jaramillo's last work, her memoir, was published in 1955 and has been described as a "classic work of Southwest literature." She died in El Paso, Texas, on 30 November 1956.

Rose Rodriguez-Rabin, has described Cleofas Jaramillo as leaving an "estimable legacy", and as a folklorist who "in her own fashion reclaimed the lost traditions and customs of her people".