Estela Portillo Trambley

Estela Portillo married Robert Trambley, a salesman, at seventeen, and they had six children; she took courses at Texas Western College while raising them and earned her degree in 1956. She later chaired the English department at El Paso Technical High School for six years. She began writing in the late 1960s, after her youngest child, Robert Keith, died at one year old. Her first book was poetry, Impression of a Chicana, and her first play, The Day of the Swallows, appeared in 1971.

What the plaque says

Estela Portillo Trambley (1926-1998), an El Paso native, was an award-winning fiction writer, playwright and poet known for her vivid portrayals of strong and independent Mexican and Mexican American women in Texas and its borderlands. Recognized as one of the first "Chicano Renaissance" authors, Trambley earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature from the University of Texas at El Paso. She taught high school in El Paso for more than 40 years, including over two decades as a teacher of home-bound students. An internationally-acclaimed author, she lectured extensively at universities across the United States and Europe. Trambley's contributions to the arts and to higher education are an important part of El Paso's artistic legacy. She was co-founder of Los Pobres, a bilingual theater in El Paso. Her plays premiered in many theaters across the country, including the Chamizal National Memorial Theater and the Chicano Theater of El Paso Community College. In 1972, Trambley became the first woman to win the Premio Quinto Sol, a prestigious literary prize recognizing the work of Chicano and Chicana authors. In the 1960s, she hosted "Stella Says," a political radio show. She also directed and wrote "Cumbres," a television cultural program, in the 1970s. Trambley contributed to Chicana literature in its formative years and was the inspiration for many writers who fought gender stereotypes. "Look at all the women in my stories," Trambley told an interviewer in 1982. "They're very independent; they create their own universes; they are very unorthodox. They aren't held down by rules and regulations." (2014)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chamizal National Memorial — steps away
  A park on land the Rio Grande once put in dispute, where a century-old border quarrel between the United States and Mexico was settled by treaty and a new concrete channel.
• Magoffin Home State Historic Site — 1.4 mi
  A U-shaped adobe of the 1870s in central El Paso that joins Mexican building to an Anglo plan, closed for restoration through 2027 while its visitor center stays open.
• Ysleta Mission (Corpus Christi de la Ysleta del Sur) — 9.2 mi
  The Tigua mission church at Ysleta, rebuilt in 1908 around the walls, bell and Santo Entierro that came through fire, its interior painted with rain clouds and corn.
• Tigua Indian Cultural Center, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo — 9.9 mi
  The cultural center of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, the Tigua nation that has lived in the Mission Valley of El Paso since 1682 and keeps its own history here.

More markers nearby

• Franklin Canal — 0.6 mi
• Henry C. Trost — 0.8 mi
• Urbici Soler — 0.8 mi
• Victoriano Huerta — 0.8 mi