In 1911, Maria Guadalupe Evan­geli­na de Lopez took to the streets of Cal­i­for­nia, stand­ing atop her car in the plaza, advo­cat­ing for wom­en’s suf­frage in Span­ish, mak­ing her a unique voice in the move­ment. Known sim­ply as Maria, she was a prod­uct of the San Gabriel Val­ley, where her father, a Mex­i­can immi­grant and black­smith, had orig­i­nal­ly bought an adobe house by the San Gabriel Mis­sion. Unlike the tra­di­tion­al image of women at the time, Maria, or Lupe as she often went by, was high­ly edu­cat­ed, like­ly the first Lati­na pro­fes­sor at UCLA, where she taught Span­ish and encour­aged stu­dents to engage with their her­itage.

Her edu­ca­tion­al pur­suits and adven­tur­ous spir­it led her to trav­el abroad alone, giv­ing lec­tures on her expe­ri­ences in the Andes. After her father’s death in 1904, she returned to her child­hood home, host­ing hol­i­day teas and fos­ter­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty among her stu­dents. Mari­a’s activism extend­ed beyond edu­ca­tion; she par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous women’s clubs, work­ing to elect the first female pres­i­dent of the Cal­i­for­nia Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion and dis­trib­ut­ing pam­phlets advo­cat­ing for suf­frage. Her pam­phlets bold­ly ques­tioned the delay of wom­en’s right to vote, empha­siz­ing that both women and men, along with the state, required the inclu­sion of women in democ­ra­cy.

An arti­cle fea­tur­ing Maria appeared in the *Los Ange­les Her­ald*, in which she argued for the equal­i­ty between men and women. Lat­er, as World War I loomed, Maria decid­ed to take action and trav­eled to New York to train as an ambu­lance mechan­ic, even begin­ning her stud­ies in avi­a­tion. She expressed excite­ment about help­ing her coun­try, will­ing to make sac­ri­fices on the front lines.

By 1918, Maria was dri­ving ambu­lances in France dur­ing WWI, car­ry­ing out a task that blend­ed brav­ery and com­pas­sion. She and her team defied expec­ta­tions, run­ning towards dan­ger to assist wound­ed sol­diers rather than flee­ing. Mari­a’s act of hero­ism did not go unno­ticed; she received a com­men­da­tion from the French gov­ern­ment for her courage. When the war con­clud­ed, she returned home, mar­ried a French pro­fes­sor, and con­tin­ued her lega­cy of hos­pi­tal­i­ty and edu­ca­tion in her fam­i­ly home, ensur­ing the his­to­ry of her con­tri­bu­tions lived on.