In Conversation with Viola Romero

Viola Romero is the great-great granddaughter of Lucía Martínez, whose story is just one of many highlighted in Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West, 1812-1924 (https://petitioningforfreedom.unl.edu). Viola's great-great- grandmother leveraged a habeas corpus petition in July 1871 against her former captor, who was trying to keep two of her daughters from her. Lucía Martínez's remarkable petition documented Indigenous women’s resistance to coercive legal regimes and her historic measures are featured in a number of scholarly publications. It is her petition that sparked the Petitioning for Freedom project, prompting inquiry into the thousands of habeas petitions other marginalized people filed to challenge interpersonal confinement as Lucía did, in addition to carceral and institutional detention. Drawing on Katrina Jagodinsky’s historical research, Martínez's relatives nominated her to the Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame and she became one of few Native women honored in that venue.