Fabiola Cabeza de Baca

Fabiola Cabeza de Baca was an American educator, nutritionist, and writer who spent decades as an agricultural extension agent serving Hispanic and Pueblo communities in New Mexico. Born into a prominent New Mexican family descended from the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, she was fluent in Spanish, English, Tewa, and Tiwa, and she became the first extension agent in the state who spoke Spanish and the first agent assigned to work with Pueblo communities. In 1931 she published Historic Cookery, the first book to document New Mexican recipes with exact measurements, which sold more than 100,000 copies and helped popularize chile cooking nationally; her 1954 book We Fed Them Cactus chronicled four generations of Hispano life on the New Mexican land.