Delfina Cuero

Delfina Cuero (ca 1900 – 1972) was a Native American writer of the Kumeyaay people.

The daughter of Vincente Cuero and Cidilda Quaha, she was born in Xamca (later known as Jamacha). The Kumeyaay people, whose traditional lands straddle the Mexican border, were displaced from the San Diego area by an influx of non-native settlers. Her family eventually moved to Baja California in Mexico. After her father abandoned his family, Cuero married Sebastian Osam because her mother said the family needed a man to provide food for them. The couple had five children who survived. Her husband died when their oldest child was eleven and Cuero was forced to provide for her family. She worked as a domestic worker for non-native people. When she tried to return to California during the 1960s, the United States government denied her access because she had no documentation to prove her place of birth. With the help of anthropologist Florence Connolly Shipek, she wrote an autobiography The Autobiography of Delfina Cuero which was published in 1968. The book helped document her California residency claim and Cuero was allowed to return to southern California in 1967. She died there in 1972.[1][2]

Her autobiography provides an important record of the history of native Americans in southern California and the impact of westward expansion in the United States on people whose traditional homeland straddles the United States' border with Mexico.[2]

References
  1. Ruiz, Vicki L; Korro, Virginia Sánchez (2006). Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia. pp. 185–86. ISBN 0253111692.
  2. Sonneborn, Liz (2014). A to Z of American Indian Women. pp. 55–56. ISBN 1438107889.

Further reading
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