Women’s Study Group Celebrates 70 Years

One of New Mexico's oldest operating women's clubs will ring in the new year with a 70th anniversary celebration. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by Distil Beer, wine and Spirits, and Durango Motor Company. I'm Connor Shrieve. Las Buquinistas Study Club celebrates its 70th year in existence in the new year.

Basically since 1954, these ladies get together, they select a theme for the year, they study about it, and they take turns giving presentations and hosting these events.

Las Buquinistas translates to the bookworms and 70 years later, the assembly remains committed to its academic roots. The organization picks one topic to explore each year. This year, artificial intelligence. Each member chooses a study area within the subject to present to the group. Mary Culpepper has been a member since the 1950s.

Having been active in the group for a long time, as I got a family, I got too busy. Oh, I think that it's anytime you, are with people who are interested in knowing something, and you can enlarge on it a little bit, you're ahead. There's too much to know these days.

The group votes to accept new members whom other members nominate. The process keeps membership small. Originally, the group needed to be compact enough to fit everyone in members' living rooms for meetings.

Sort of the, the women's study clubs as they came about, that's where we have the public library in Farmington, the public library in Aztec. That was the Arturian Club that met in 1909. And again, they're looking not only among themselves and doing things, but they're looking for ways to better the community. And again, one of the things that we did today was we made a donation to the library in honor of the first library in Farmington

Vice President Joan Monninger says Las Buquinistas remains a tribute to the Women's Club movement that empowered women in the early to mid 20th century.

It really hearkens back to what was the women's club movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. And these were different clubs that were being formed, really because women had limited access to education opportunities. They didn't have seats of power in their communities in terms of how political and social decisions were made. They couldn't vote. And so what you see coming out of a lot of these groups under that umbrella of the Women's Federation is more access to power.

Las Buquinistas meets twice a month and will hold 14 artificial intelligence presentations before moving on to a new subject. Monninger appreciates the learning model.

I like the comradery of the women. Again, I'm not originally from here, so getting together with a lot of these ladies who've been here a long time, they are smart. They know things, they know the community. They're always just a wealth of information and stories. And so I really love hearing the stories from them.

Discover more about Las Buquinistas and its history through the Four Corners Historical Society. You can learn more about this story and others online at FarmingtonLocal.News. Thanks for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I'm Connor Shrieve.