Maria Gertrudis "Tules" Barceló (c. 1800 â€" January 17, 1852),
commonly known as "La Tules," was a saloon owner and master gambler in
the Territory of New Mexico at the time of the U.S.-Mexican War.
Barceló amassed a small fortune by capitalizing on the flow of
American and Mexican traders involved with the nineteenth-century
Santa Fe Trail. She became infamous in the U.S. as the Mexican "Queen
of Sin" through a series of American travel writings and newspaper
serials before, during, and after the war. These depictions, often
intended to explain or justify the U.S. invasion of Mexico, presented
La Tules as a madame and prostitute who symbolized the supposedly
immoral nature of the local Mexican population.Barceló may have been
born in the state of Sonora, Mexico around 1800 but one correspondent
of the time, Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune, argued in
his book Narrative of the Texasâ€"Santa Fe Expedition that she was
French, referring to her as Madame Toulouse. Not much is known about
her early life or her family. Shortly after Mexico won its
independence from Spain in 1821, Barceló, her parents, a brother, and
two sisters moved to the remote northern territory of New Mexico.On
June 23, 1823 Barceló married Manuel Sisneros at the Church of Tome.
The priest who performed the ceremony referred to her as "Doña," a
title given to women of quality and high social standing. Much
attention would later be given to the fact that she was four years
older than her groom and four or five months pregnant at the time. The
couple had two sons, both of whom died as infants. Fiercely
independent, Barceló retained all of her own property throughout her
marriage and was known by her maiden name.In 1825, Mexican authorities
fined Barceló for operating a gambling salon for miners in the Ortiz
Mountains. Sometime over the next ten years, Barceló relocated to
Santa Fe and opened a more ambitious saloon at the center of Santa Fe,
New Mexico. She went by the nickname "Tules," a Spanish diminutive of
"Gertrudis." Some authors have connected this to the Mexican Spanish
word tules, meaning "reeds," with suggestions that it referred to "the
curvaceousness of her figure" or possibly to "her thin frame." Maria Gertrudis Barceló Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter