Hispanic Heritage A B C

Hathaway School, Oxnard, Ca Hueneme School District, Back to School Night Sept 26, 2007 celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month

View sarah_puglisi's map

Taken in (See more photos here)

I read this great piece...it was discussing "Why Teach 'Culture' in Schools?"
For me this is a bit like asking, "Why do we need to teach art?"
However if I can place a little piece here it might be helpful...

From Education World:

Today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 44 million people in the United States are of Hispanic origin. That's about 14 percent of us!

Teaching of the contributions of Hispanic Americans, and learning about the cultures from which they come, will be the focal point of many classroom activities and discussions in the weeks ahead as students across the United States recognize Hispanic Heritage Month -- September 15 to October 15.

But why teach about Hispanic heritage? Or, for that matter, why teach about any heritage?

Clearly, teaching about the contributions of Latinos can only help to build the self-esteem and the pride of those who identify themselves as Mexican-American or Cuban-American or Puerto Rican-American or . . . .

But, even more importantly, it is essential that all students learn to understand the ethnic diversity that is our country, according to Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (Banks and Banks, 1992). Integrating the cultures in the social studies classroom helps develop "ethnic literacy" in all students. Developing ethnic literacy fosters pride in one's own culture and a respect and appreciation for the uniqueness of others.

Many Hispanic Americans trace their roots to the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas -- including the Arawaks (Puerto Rico), the Aztecs (Mexico), the Incas (South America), the Maya (Central America), and the Tainos (in Cuba, Puerto Rico and other places). Some trace their roots to the Spanish explorers -- who in the 1400s set out to find an easier and less costly way to trade with the Indies. Other Latinos trace their roots to the Africans who were brought as slaves to the New World. For purposes of the U.S. Census, Hispanic Americans today are identified according to the parts of the world that they or their ancestors came from, including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Spain, or the nations of Central or South America.

Pretty important to my work, ethnic literacy, where my Sheltered Immersion Students are able to trace their roots to Hispanic Heritage and assimilate into their new world life.

Here is a little list of a few books I've read on this very important topic:
Multicultural Education by James A. Banks
Beyond Heroes and Holidays by Enid Lee
We Can't Teach What We Don't Know
Becoming Multicultural Educators by Geneva Gay
Cultural Diversity and Education: Foundations, Curriculum, and Teaching (5th Edition) by James A. Banks
The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities (Multicultural Education Series) by Sonia Nieto
We Can't Teach What We Don't Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools (Multicultural Education (Paper)) by Gary R. Howard
Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education (5th Edition) by Sonia Nieto

So to kick off (bit late) on this blog here are some folks I appreciate.
More to Come:

A is for:

Isabel Allende

Author
Born: 8/2/1942
Birthplace: Lima, Peru

The daughter of a diplomat, best-selling author Isabel Allende spent her childhood in South America, Europe, and the Middle East. As a teenager she returned to her family's native country, Chile, where she became a writer and television host, but fled in 1975 following a military coup. Allende published her first and most acclaimed novel, House of the Spirits, in 1985. She has lived and worked in the U.S. since 1988.

Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Alvarez, Luis Walter

Alvarez, Luis Walter, 1911–88, American physicist, b. San Francisco, grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1932, Ph.D. 1936. He was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of a large number of residence states (subatomic particles that have very short lifetimes and that occur only in high-energy nuclear collisions), which was made possible through his development of the liquid-hydrogen bubble chamber (see particle detector). He also helped develop the ground-control approach system for aircraft in the 1940s and played an important part in the Manhattan Project, where he suggested the technique for detonating the implosion type of atomic bomb. A member of the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, Alvarez held the patents for more than 30 inventions, including three types of radar systems. His autobiography, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist, was published in 1987. He; his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez,. 1940–, b. Berkeley, Calif.; and others proposed that unusually high levels of iridium at the boundary between Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks indicated a major meteor impact with the earth about 65 million years ago and that this might be the cause of the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

B is for:

Baez, Joan

Baez, Joan (bīpstr;ez, bä'–) [key], 1941–, American folk singer and political activist, b. New York City. Baez began singing traditional folk ballads, blues, and spirituals in Cambridge, Mass., coffeehouses in a clear soprano voice with a three-octave range. She made folk music, which had been largely ignored, popular. Baez's records were the first folk albums to become best-sellers. Her later albums include several of her own compositions, e.g., “Song for David” and “Blessed Are.” Among the first performers to urge social protest, she sang and marched for civil and student rights and peace. Since the late 1960s she has devoted time to her school for nonviolence in California and has performed at concerts supporting a variety of humanitarian causes.

See her autobiography, Daybreak (1968), and her memoir, And a Voice to Sing With (1987).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007,

Basquiat, Jean-Michel

Basquiat, Jean-Michel (bäs"kē-ät') [key], 1960–88, American painter, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Born into a middle-class Haitian and Puerto Rican family, he was a 1980s art star whose rise and fall were rapid, dramatic, and emblematic of the era. A rebel, high-school dropout, and part of the downtown New York scene, he was influenced by the violence of street life, the variety of African-American life, multiculturalism, and the emerging hip-hop culture. He was also strongly influenced by the life and work of Andy Warhol, who became his mentor, and by the work of such artists as Picasso, Matisse, and Cy Twombly. Basquiat started as a graffiti artist, making images and writing slogans on the walls of buildings and on painted T-shirts, found-object assemblages, and paintings. In the early 1980s he was “discovered” by the art establishment, and his vigorously spontaneous works in paint, collage, and crayon on unprimed canvas, featuring crude, angry, and rawly powerful figures and graffitilike written text, were much sought after by collectors. He died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. By the early years of the 21st cent. he was hailed as one of the finest American neoexpessionists of his era.

See biography by P. Hoban (1998); studies by R. Marshall (1992), L. Emmerling (2003), and M. Mayer, ed. (2005).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Rubén Blades

Birth: July 16, 1948 in Panama City, Panama
Occupation:singer

Rubén Blades has three very distinct careers that rarely, if ever, meet. As a Grammy Award-winning musician and salsa singer, Blades has released several salsa albums, including Buscando America,Escenas,Mundo, and Siembra, one of Latin music's most popular albums. As a popular Hollywood actor, he has appeared in such films as The Milagro Beanfield War,The Devil's Own,The Cradle Will Rock, and All the Pretty Horses. As an activist and politician, Blades has long been a champion of human rights issues. When he ran for president of Panama in 1994, he placed a respectable third.

Blades was born on July 16, 1948, in Panama City, Panama. He was the second of five children of Anoland, a piano player and nightclub singer, and Rubén Blades Sr., a musician, basketball player, and police detective. His paternal grandmother, Emma, was a cultured, free-spirited woman who played a major role in the boy's childhood. He grew up during the rock 'n' roll heyday of the 1950s and 1960s listening to Elvis Presley and the Beatles, but the family also listened to the American jazz of Dizzy Gillespie, Glenn Miller, and Duke Ellington, and to Latin American artists such as Beny Moré, Perez Prado, and the Orquesta Casino de la Playa. Blades idolized Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, who recorded the hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?," because Lymon was only 14 when he led the group. He wrote a letter to Lymon, asking to join the group, but Blades's mother, who wanted her son to concentrate on his education, did not send the note, but bought him a guitar instead. His visions of America were formed by the idealistic TV show Father Knows Best.

Earned Law Degree

Blades got his first shot on stage as a last-minute replacement for the lead singer in his brother's rock-cover band, the Saints. Although he dreamed of playing in a band, the sobering 1964 Panama Canal riots led Blades to concentrate more on politics and his education. Though he continued to pursue his interest in writing socially conscious lyrics and singing Latin music, he pursued a law degree at the University of Panama.

When his university closed due to political unrest in Panama in 1969, Blades took a trip to New York City. There he witnessed Latin Americans living successfully in the States. Many of them, including Tito Puente, Machito, and Willie Colón, were making their way as musicians. He recorded his first album, De Panama a Nueva York: Pete Rodriguez Presenta a Rubén Blades, in 1970. The album did not sell well, and when the university was reopened, Blades resumed his education, earning a law degree in 1972. He worked as an attorney, performing with local bands in his spare time.

Blades's father, a member of the government secret police, was accused by General Manuel Antonio Noriega of spying for the American CIA. He refuted the charges, but moved to Miami with his family in 1973. Blades moved to New York a year later, and first worked for the Panamanian Consulate while trying to break into the salsa scene. He did so literally by taking a job in the mailroom of New York's leading salsa record label, Fania Records. It was there he got his big break, and began singing with Ray Baretto's traditional salsa band. He made his debut at Madison Square Garden with the band in 1974.

Recorded Most Successful Salsa Record

Blades met and began collaborating with the Bronx salsa musician Willie Colón in 1976. With Colón as arranger for Blades's songs, they released Willie Colón Presents Rubén Blades in 1977. Their album Siembra was released in 1978 and was considered the most popular salsa album in history, selling over three million copies. The album also produced a hit single, "Pedro Navaja," that "defied radio formats and yet has become the biggest-selling single in salsa history," according to Billboard. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Blades explained that the album became a hit "Because the people who bought it weren't just the dancers. They identified with the stories as much as the rhythm." Blades forged a new brand of salsa known as "salsa conciente," or salsa with a socially conscious message. Blades was chosen to tour with salsa greats Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco, and Tito Puente as part of the Fania All-Stars group. A longtime fan of the silver screen, Blades got a chance to try acting in 1981 in The Last Fight. The film was a commercial failure, but the experience opened doors for Blades.

After five years and four gold records, Blades ceased collaborating with Colón in 1982 to focus on his own work, launching his solo group, Seis del Solar, or "Six from the 'Hood." The group was an unusual blend of traditional salsa and jazz, rock, doo-wop, and various Latin beats. Seis del Solar became very popular in Latin communities, but crossed over into the mainstream with Buscando América, the first salsa record released on a major record label, Elektra/Asylum. While most popular salsa albums are driven by dance and party tunes, Buscando América contained songs that were serious and often political. On the album Blades sang about slain human rights advocate Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and about the rampant kidnappings in South America, and criticized the Panamanian dictatorship of General Manuel Antonio Noriega. The song "El Tiburón" criticized the United States' actions in Central America, and caused an uproar in Miami's Little Havana community. The song was banned from radio stations, and Blades wore a bulletproof jacket while performing it in Miami. Regardless, the album sold 300,000 copies in its first five months, earned a Grammy Award nomination, and was listed on Time magazine's list of the year's top ten rock albums. After the album, Blades announced he was taking a year off to complete his master's degree in international law at Harvard University, which he did in 1985. He also co-wrote, acted, and sang in the independent film Crossover Dreams, playing a small-time salsa singer who wants to cross over into the mainstream.

Socially Conscious Yet Danceable Music

While Buscando América was grounded in social commentary, Escenas, released in 1985, was based on personal relationships. It included a duet with Linda Ronstadt, "Silencios," and the album earned Blades his first Grammy Award. Seis del Solar's 1987 album, Agua de Luna, contained songs inspired by the works of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Marquez. His 1988 album, Nothing But the Truth, was his first album in English, and featured performances by such popular singers as Sting, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, and Lou Reed--a testament to how well known Blades himself had become. The album was strong on social issues. Tunes such as "The Letter" address AIDS; " Salvador" laments human-rights violations; and "Ollie's Doo-Wop" is a sarcastic ditty about Oliver North's involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1989 Blades added a seventh member to his group and changed the name to "Son del Solar," or "Sound of the 'Hood," and released the Grammy Award-winning album Antecedente. Blades earned his third Grammy for La Rosa de los Vientos in 1997.

While he was maintaining a busy recording and touring schedule, Blades was also building his career as a film actor. He appeared in Robert Redford's The Milagro Beanfield War as Sheriff Bernie, who tries to maintain peace between the citizens of a small village in New Mexico and the development company that is trying to build there. Though Blades received strong reviews for his part, the essentially Latin film was criticized because it was directed by an Anglo. His role as a convicted murderer in the HBO movie Dead Man Out was praised by critics, and earned him cable TV's ACE Award. Actor and director Jack Nicholson wanted Blades for his film The Two Jakes, and planned the film's shooting schedule around the musician's touring dates. In 1991 Blades played Petey the bookie in Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues. Also in 1991, Blades played opposite Christine Lahti in Crazy from the Heart, a romantic comedy that addresses racial prejudice. He received an Emmy Award later that year for his role in The Josephine Baker Story. Blades has always tried to avoid being typecast in stereotypical Hispanic roles, such as those of the drug dealer or criminal.

Ran for Panamanian Presidency

Blades is active in many human rights campaigns involving his native Panama, but he has also backed international causes. He appeared with Bono of U2, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Springsteen, and other musicians in the anti-apartheid music video " Sun City" that debuted on MTV in 1988. In 1991 Blades traveled to Panama and founded the Movemiento Papa Egoró, which translates roughly as Mother Earth Party, or Motherland Party. The party vowed to fight hunger, unemployment, and drugs in Panama, and Blades ran for president of Panama on the party's ticket. He wrote and recorded his own campaign song, "The Good Seed," which declared that "change is coming." Though early polls favored him, Blades came in third in the election, a respectable showing for a non-politician. The Papa Egoró party, however, managed to win seven representational seats in the government.

Some critics have suggested that Blades might have been more successful in his bid for president of Panama had he not moved to Hollywood and married a blonde, blue-eyed, North American actress, Lisa Lebenzon. As Blades has achieved more mainstream success and popularity, there have been critics who have accused him of selling out. "Deep down, [Blades] knows he's forgotten his friends, his people, his country, his music, and himself," Leon Ichaso, the director of Crossover Dreams, was quoted as saying, in Rubén Blades. His supporters contend that while Blades has crossed over into the mainstream, he has taken his audiences with him, not left them behind.

Blades's later records became more world-inspired, exploring Celtic, Arabic, and Hindu influences in music. On Tiempos, released in 1999, Blades collaborated with the Costa Rican jazz group Editus to create a pan-Latin sound that he filled out with European classical music. He originally conceived of Mundos as a way to marry Irish and Latin sounds, but ended up making "a kind of map, where I began in the Northeast part of Africa, from Ethiopia, and I took that path to Asia Minor," he is quoted as saying in Billboard. "I crossed part of Turkey, what today are independent Russian republics. I crossed toward Europe and then I jumped to America. During that voyage, I integrated these sounds." Washington Post music critic Fernando Gonzalez wrote: "Blades crosses cultural borders to borrow whatever he feels he needs.... When it works, the sum effect is illuminating."

In 2003 Blades won a Latin Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Tropical Album for Mundo. In 2005 he won another Grammy Award for Best Salsa/Meringue Album, for Across 110th Street, with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. He was also honored in 2005 with the ASCAP Founders Award, given to songwriters who have made pioneering contributions to music. In that same year, Berklee College of Music awarded Blades an honorary doctoral degree.

Blades has been minister of tourism for Panama since 2004. Describing this position, he told Sandra Marquez in People, "The bureaucracy drives me crazy. I didn't have a boss for, like, 30 years. But I feel that I am trying my best to help my country."

C is for:

Chavez, Cesar Estrada

Chavez, Cesar Estrada (sā'sär āsträ'&thstrok;ä shä'vez) [key], 1927–93, American agrarian labor leader, b. near Yuma, Ariz. A migrant worker, he became involved (1952) in the self-help Community Service Organization (CSO) in California, working among Mexicans and Mexican Americans; from 1958 to 1962 he was its general director. In 1962, he left the CSO to organize wine grape pickers in California and formed the National Farm Workers Association. Using strikes, fasts, picketing, and marches, he was able to obtain contracts from a number of major growers. In 1966 his organization merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee of the AFL-CIO. Chavez also launched (1968) a boycott against the table grape growers, mobilizing consumer support throughout the United States. In 1972 the United Farm Workers (UFW), with Chavez as president, became a member union of the AFL-CIO. Chavez expanded its efforts to include all California vegetable pickers and launched a lettuce boycott, as well as extending his organizational efforts to Florida citrus workers. His successes in California were sharply diminished, however, as the result of a jurisdictional dispute with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters over the organization of field workers. In 1973 the Teamsters cut heavily into UFW membership by signing contracts with former UFW grape growers, but Chavez renewed the grape workers' strike. In 1977, the two unions signed a pact defining the types of workers each could organize. Membership in the UFW later fell, in part due to disputes between Chavez and his followers, some of whom accused him of nepotism.

See J. E. Levy, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa (1975); R. Franchere, Cesar Chavez (1988).

• Cesar Chavez
• Timeline: Cesar Chavez
• Julio Cesar Chavez
• Cesar Chavez Biography (Activist)

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Cesar Chavez

1927–1993

Chavez and the Farm Workers Movement

• Biography: Cesar Chavez
• Timeline: Cesar Chavez
• Migrant Labor

Labor Movement

• Timeline: Labor Movement
• History: Labor Unions
• National Labor Organizations
• Labor Unions in the U.S.
• Strikes
• Picketing
• Boycotts
• Collective Bargaining
• Hunger Strikes

Leaders

• Hispanic Leaders and Activists
• Labor Leaders

Related Websites

• The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Struggle
• United Farm Workers

Sandra Cisneros
1954-

Genre(s): Poetry; Essays
Award(s):
National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 1982, 1988 American Book Award from Before Columbus Foundation, 1985, for The House on Mango Street
Paisano Dobie Fellowship, 1986 First and second prize in Segundo Concurso Nacional del Cuento Chicano, sponsored by University of Arizona Lannan Foundation Literary Award, 1991
HD.L, State University of New York at Purchase, 1993 MacArthur fellow, 1995

Born December 20, 1954, Chicago IL.
Education:
Loyola University, B.A., 1976;
University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, M.F.A., 1978.


With only a handful of poetry and short story collections, Sandra Cisneros has garnered wide critical acclaim as well as popular success. Drawing heavily upon her childhood experiences and ethnic heritage as the daughter of a Mexican father and Chicana mother, Cisneros addresses poverty, cultural suppression, self-identity, and gender roles in her fiction and poetry. She creates characters who are distinctly Latina/o and often isolated from mainstream American culture by emphasizing dialogue and sensory imagery over traditional narrative structures. Best known for The House on Mango Street, a volume of loosely structured vignettes that has been classified as both a short story collection and a series of prose poems, Cisneros seeks to create an idiom that integrates both prosaic and poetic syntax.

"Cisneros is a quintessentially American writer, unafraid of the sentimental; avoiding the clichés of magical realism, her work bridges the gap between Anglo and Hispanic, " remarked Aamer Hussein in the Times Literary Supplement. Born in Chicago, Cisneros was the only daughter among seven children. Concerning her childhood, Cisneros recalled that because her brothers attempted to control her and expected her to assume a traditional female role, she often felt like she had "seven fathers." The family frequently moved between the United States and Mexico because of her father's homesickness for his native country and his devotion to his mother who lived there. Consequently, Cisneros often felt homeless and displaced. She began to read extensively, finding comfort in such works as Virginia Lee Burton's The Little House and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Cisneros periodically wrote poems and stories throughout her childhood and adolescence, but it was not until she attended the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop in the late 1970s that she realized her experiences as a Latina woman were unique and outside the realm of dominant American culture. Following this realization, Cisneros decided to write about conflicts directly related to her upbringing, including divided cultural loyalties, feelings of alienation, and degradation associated with poverty. Incorporating these concerns into The House on Mango Street, a work that took nearly five years to complete, Cisneros created the character Esperanza, a poor Latina adolescent who longs for a room of her own and a house of which she can be proud. Esperanza ponders the disadvantages of choosing marriage over education, the importance of writing as an emotional release, and the sense of confusion associated with growing up. In the story "Hips, " for example, Esperanza agonizes over the repercussions of her body's physical changes: "One day you wake up and there they are. Ready and waiting like a new Buick with the key in the ignition. Ready to take you where?

D is for:

Darío, Rubén

Darío, Rubén (rOOben' därē'ō) [key], 1867–1916, Nicaraguan poet, originally named Félix Rubén García Sarmiento. A child prodigy, he gained a thorough knowledge of Spanish and French cultures through reading; it was then widened during many years abroad in both South America and Europe as diplomatic representative of various Spanish American countries. He was particularly influenced by the writings of the French Parnassians. Darío was the leader and founder of modernismo, emphasizing perfection of form, musical expression, and an ineffable sadness related to that of French symbolist poetry. His influence on contemporary Spanish and Spanish American writers was enormous. Azul [blue], written in 1888 when he was 21, revolutionized the whole of Spanish syntax and metrics; it was followed by Prosas profanas (1896), a departure from pure form and content to grace, beauty, and exoticism. Cantos de vida y esperanza [songs of life and hope] (1905) is concerned with the future of Spanish America. El canto errante [the wandering song] (1907) shows Darío's elegance strengthened by considerable power and technical mastery. His profound work “Poema del otoño” [autumn's poem] (1910) is often considered his masterpiece.

See his Selected Poems (tr. 1965); biography by C. D. Watland (1965); studies by C. Jrade (1983), P. Pearsall (1984), and S. Ingwersen (1986).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

E is for:

Eguren, José María

Eguren, José María (hōsā' mārē'ä egOO'rān) [key], 1882–1942, Peruvian poet. Originally devoted to modernismo, Eguren avoided its excesses and wrote terse, musical, and sometimes obscure poems. His strange images, symbols, and dreamlike visions were wrought into a framework of formal perfection. Simbólicas (1911), La canción de las figuras (1916), and Poesías (1929) are his best-known collections.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

F is for:

Fuentes, Carlos

Fuentes, Carlos (kär'lōs fwān'tās) [key], 1928–, Mexican writer, editor, and diplomat. He was head of the department of cultural relations in Mexico's ministry of foreign affairs (1956–59) and Mexican ambassador to France (1975–77). Much of his fiction, which generally deals with themes of Mexican identity and history and often focuses on politics and sex, is a synthesis of reality and fantasy, transcending the limits of time and space (see magic realism). His works include La región más transparente (1958; tr. Where the Air Is Clear, 1960), Las buenas conciencias (1959; tr. Good Conscience, 1968), Cambio de piel (1967; tr. A Change of Skin, 1968), Terra Nostra (1975, tr. 1976), Una familia lejana (1980; tr. Distant Relations, 1982), La Campaña (1990, tr. The Campaign, 1991), Años con Laura Díaz (1999; tr. The Years with Laura Díaz, 2000), Instinto de Inez (2001, tr. Inez, 2002), and Silla del Águila (2003, tr. The Eagle's Throne, 2006). His nonfiction books include The Buried Mirror (1992), a study of Spanish and Latin American cultural history, and This I Believe (2005), an alphabetically arranged combination memoir, manifesto, and literary essay. Fuentes has also written numerous essays and short stories.

See biographies by W. Faris (1983) and A. González (1987); studies by R. Brody and C. Rossman, ed. (1982), K. Ibsen (1993), R. L. Williams (1996), C. Helmuth (1997), and M. Van Delden (1998).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

G is for:

Jerry Garcia

musician
Born: 8/1/1942
Birthplace: San Francisco

Arguably one of the most famous rock and roll musicians of all time as lead singer and guitarist of The Grateful Dead. Famous for their mesmerizing live performances, and intriguing blend of pop, rock, bluegrass and folk, The Grateful Dead reached its full expression in albums such as Workingman's Dead (1970), American Beauty (1970), and Blues for Allah (1975). Garcia was a productive musician and songwriter who worked with The Dead, on solo recordings, in other bands, and in numerous guest roles. The Ben and Jerry's ice-cream flavor Cherry Garcia is named for him.

Died: 8/9/1995

Fact Monster/Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ernesto Galarza

labor organizer, historian, professor, activist
Born: 1905
Birthplace: Nayarit, Mexico, near Tepic

When Ernesto Galarza was eight, he and his parents migrated to Sacramento, California, where he worked as a farm laborer. Excelling at school, he became one of the first Mexican-Americans from a poor background to complete college, after which he received a M.A. from Stanford in 1929, and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in 1944. Galarza returned to California, where—at the height of the Cold War and McCarthyism—he organized unions for farm laborers, joining the effort to create the first multiracial farm worker union. While this effort failed, it created the foundation for the United Farm Workers Union of the 1960s. He wrote several books, most notably the 1964 Merchants of Labor, on the exploitation of Mexican contract workers, and the 1971 Barrio Boy, about his own childhood. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

Died: 1984

H is for:

Oscar Hijuelos

Writer
Born: 1951
Birthplace: New York City

Oscar Hijuelos is the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A second-generation Cuban American, Hijuelos grew up in New York and earned a master's in creative writing from City College. In 1983 he published the novel Our House in the Last World, the first of his rich explorations of memory and family life. Hijuelos earned a Pulitzer for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), the story of Cuban musicians in New York in the early 1950s, when Latin music first swept the United States. His fifth and novel, Empress of the Splendid Season, was published in 1999.

I is for:

Isaacs, Jorge

Isaacs, Jorge (hôr'hā ē'säks) [key], 1837–95, Colombian novelist. The son of a prosperous Englishman and a creole, Isaacs witnessed the ruin and premature death of his parents and the despoilment of his estate by civil war. He fled to Bogotá, where he won critical acclaim with a book of poems (Poesiás, 1864). His masterpiece, María (1867, tr. 1890), a melancholy romantic novel, won immediate success and was widely imitated. His finely drawn characters and colorful accounts of local customs are complemented by a masterful picture of the landscape of the Cauca valley. Isaacs was named consul to Chile and occupied several government posts, but died in poverty.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press.

Ibarbourou, Juana de

Ibarbourou, Juana de (hwä'nä dā ēbärbOO'rOO) [key], 1895–1979, Uruguayan poet also called Juana de América. One of the most popular poets of Spanish America, she caused a sensation with the exuberant and lilting sensuality of her lyrics in Aguas de diamante (1919) and Raíz salvaje (1920). Her early works also include the introspective La rosa de los vientos (1930). Oro y tormenta (1956), in which she uses biblical themes, reflects her increasing preoccupation with suffering and death. Chico Carlo (1944) contains her memoirs. Her work is collected in Obras completas (3d ed. 1968).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

J is for:

Juana Inés de la Cruz

Juana Inés de la Cruz (hwä'nä ēnās' dā lä krOOs) [key], 1651–95, Mexican poet. She is considered the greatest lyric poet of the colonial period. A beautiful and intellectually precocious girl, Juana was a favorite at the viceregal court before entering a Mexican convent at the age of 16. Forced to study outside the university, she devoted herself to amassing a fine library, and made her convent into a center of religious and social life in Mexico. Her classical erudition and her scientific curiosity led to reprimands from her superiors. The bishop of Puebla published one of her studies but—under the pseudonym of a fellow nun—criticized her for neglecting religious duties. Sor Juana answered these objections to the education of women in a spirited autobiographical letter (1691; tr. 1982) that became a classic. Her lyric poetry, mystical in inspiration and influenced by Spaniards Góngora and Calderón, won enduring fame. Her masterpiece is Primer sueño, a metaphoric interpretation of a dream and of awakening. Sor Juana sold her books and devoted her last years to the spiritual life. She died trying to help the convent victims of an epidemic.

See selected poems tr. by M. S. Peden (1985) and F. Warnke (1987); studies by O. Paz (tr. 1988) and G. Tavard (1991); critical essays ed. by S. Merrim (1991).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

K is for:

Frida Kahlo

Artist

Born: 6 July 1907

Died: 13 July 1954

Birthplace: Mexico City, Mexico

Best known as: Mexico's most famous woman artist

Frida Kahlo is one of Mexico's most famous artists and also something of a feminist icon, celebrated for her passionate indomitability in the face of life's trials. She's best known for her daring self-portraits depicting the suffering she experienced in her personal life. As a child Kahlo had polio; at the age of 18 she broke her right leg and pelvis in a horrific bus accident, leading to a lifetime of chronic pain. Partially immobile after the accident, Kahlo began painting in the late 1920s. She married famed muralist Diego Rivera in 1929 and together they travelled to the United States, staying in Detroit and New York City in the early 1930s. In the late 1930s Kahlo had exhibitions of her paintings in New York City and Paris and associated with some of the most famous painters in the world. Kahlo and Rivera were both known for their extramarital affairs (Kahlo supposedly was a lover of Leon Trotsky) and in 1940 they divorced for a short time before remarrying. During the '40s Kahlo gained international recognition for her colorful and sometimes gruesome paintings (as well as for her bold public persona), but she continued to have health problems. She died in 1954 just after her 47th birthday.

Extra credit: Kahlo was portrayed by actress Salma Hayek in the 2002 film Frida. She was also portrayed by Ofelia Medina in the 1984 film Frida, Naturaleza Viva.

Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

L is for:

Latina's in NASA

López Velarde, Ramón

López Velarde, Ramón (rämōn' lō'pās vālär'&thstrok;ā) [key], 1888–1921, Mexican poet. One of the major poets of Mexico, he deeply influenced the work of later poets, notably Xavier Villaurrutia. Although his poetry sometimes shows the influence of modernismo, he was one of the first poets to rebel against its labored aestheticism. His excesses are the result of a passionate quest for originality. It was his masterful treatment of the Mexican landscape, the contrast between the traditions of the countryside and the turbulence of the city, and his own anguished struggle between ascetic leanings and pagan sensuality that give his lyrics their peculiar tension, expressiveness, and drama. His first work, La sangre devota [the devout blood] (1916), was followed by Zozobra (1919). El son del corazón [the sound of the heart] and Poemas escogidos [selected poems] (1935) were published posthumously.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

M is for:

Mario Molina

chemist, Nobel laureate
Born: March 19, 1943
Birthplace: Mexico City

At the University of California at Berkeley in 1973, Molina and Sherwood Rowland began researching chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), then widely used in refrigerators, spray cans, and cleaning solvents. They discovered that the release of CFCs could destroy the ozone layer in the stratosphere, allowing more ultraviolet light to get through to Earth and potentially increasing the rate of skin cancer. Their efforts led to CFC production being banned in most countries, and they received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

MONTOYA, Joseph Manuel

(1915—1978)

Senate Years of Service: 1964-1977
Party: Democrat

MONTOYA, Joseph Manuel, a Representative and a Senator from New Mexico; born in Penablanca, Sandoval County, N.Mex., September 24, 1915; attended Regis College, Denver, Colo.; graduated from Georgetown University Law School, Washington, D.C., in 1938; admitted to the bar in 1939 and commenced the practice of law in Santa Fe, N.Mex.; elected to the State house of representatives in 1936, reelected in 1938, and was majority leader in 1939 and 1940; member, State senate 1940-1946, and served as majority whip; lieutenant governor 1947-1951; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1950 to the Eighty-second Congress; member, State senate 1953-1954; lieutenant governor 1955-1957; elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-fifth Congress, April 9, 1957, by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Antonio M. Fernandez; reelected to the three succeeding Congresses and served from April 9, 1957, until his resignation November 3, 1964, having been elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, November 3, 1964, to complete the unexpired term of Dennis Chavez for the term ending January 3, 1965, and at the same time elected for the six-year term ending January 3, 1971; reelected in 1970 and served from November 4, 1964, until January 3, 1977; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1976; died in Washington, D.C., June 5, 1978; interment in Rosario Cemetery, Santa Fe, N.Mex.

Mistral, Gabriela

Mistral, Gabriela (gäbrēā'lä mēsträl') [key], 1889–1957, Chilean poet whose original name was Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She was a teacher in and director of rural schools in Chile before she attained wider acclaim as an educator. Mistral was noted for her revision of the Mexican school system under José Vasconcelos. Subsequently, she served as Chilean consul in various European and Latin American cities and represented her country at the League of Nations and the United Nations. The mystery of childbearing, the sorrow of a tragic love, and a burning desire for justice are recurrent themes of her fluent and lyric verse. The early Sonetos de la muerte [sonnets of death] (1915) is considered one of her finest achievements. Desolación (1922), Tala (1938), and Lagar (1954) are three of her major volumes. Selected Poems, translated by Langston Hughes, was published in 1957. In 1945, Mistral received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Latin American to be so honored.

See studies by M. C. Preston (1964) and M. C. Taylor (1968).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

N is for:

Antonia Coello Novello

physician and former U.S. surgeon general
Born: 8/23/1944
Birthplace: Fajardo, Puerto Rico

Novello served as surgeon general under President George H. W. Bush from 1990 to 1993. She focused on publicizing the dangers of smoking and teenage drinking, expanding AIDS education, and improving health care for women, minorities, and children.

Novello was born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico with a chronic colon condition that caused her severe pain until it was corrected surgically when she was 18 years old. The experience inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. She earned a BS (1965) and an MD from the University of Puerto Rico (1970). Novello and her husband, Joseph Novello, a U.S. Army flight surgeon, moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. She interned, did her residency, and completed a fellowship at the University of Michigan Medical Center, specializing in pediatric nephrology.

The couple then headed to Washington DC, where Novello fellowed at Georgetown University Hospital from 1974 to 1975. She took a position with the National Institutes of Health in 1978, eventually becoming deputy director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She received a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in 1982.

In 1993, she left her post as surgeon general and went to work for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Fact Monster/Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

O is for:

Orozco, José Clemente

Orozco, José Clemente (hōsā' klāmān'tā ōrō'skō) [key], 1883–1949, Mexican muralist, genre painter, and lithographer, grad. Mexican National Agricultural School. He became an architectural draftsman and in 1908 turned to painting. With Diego Rivera he led the renaissance of modern Mexican art. Orozco's work is bold in execution, often brilliant in color, and deals compassionately with social themes, especially human versus machine. From 1917 to 1919 and from 1927 to 1934, Orozco was in the United States. Much of his work is true fresco painting, executed directly on wet plaster, such as his 1930 mural Mankind's Struggle at New School Univ., New York City. His work in the United States also includes Prometheus (Frary Hall, Pomona College, Calif.) and Epic of Culture in the New World (Baker Library, Dartmouth College). There are also several fine murals in Mexico, such as those at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City and at Guadalajara in the university, governor's palace, and cultural institute.

See catalog by J. Hopkins (1967); autobiography (tr. 1962); M. Helm, Man of Fire (1953, repr. 1971).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Ochoa, Severo

(sāvā'rō ōchō'ä) [key], 1905–93, American biochemist and educator, b. Spain, M.D. Univ. of Madrid, 1929. After teaching at the universities of Madrid, Heidelberg, and Oxford, he came to the United States in 1940. In 1954 he was appointed chairman of the department of biochemistry at New York Univ. He became an American citizen in 1956. With Arthur Kornberg he received the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the synthesis of ribonucleic acid (RNA), an organic compound that carries hereditary qualities in all reproduction.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Oña, Pedro de

Oña, Pedro de (pā'&thstrok;rō &thstrok;ā ō'nyä) [key], 1570?–1643, Chilean poet. Having been born in Latin America, he is considered Chile's first national poet. His poetry is both epic and religious. Inspired by La aravcana, by Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, he wrote the epic Arauco domado (1596; tr. Arauco Tamed, 1948). Other works include El vasauro (1635), a religious poem, and El Ignacio de Cantabria (1639), a pious work celebrating St. Ignatius of Loyola.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

P is for:

Paz, Octavio

Paz, Octavio (oktä'vyō päs') [key], 1914–98, Mexican poet and critic. A diplomat, he lived abroad many years. Paz's books—revealing depth of insight, elegance, and erudition—place him among his generation's ablest writers. His works include the poetry collections La estación violenta (1956), Piedra de sol (1957), Alternating Current (tr. 1973), Configurations (tr. 1971), Early Poems: 1935–1955 (tr. 1974), and Collected Poems, 1957–1987 (1987); the volumes of essays The Labyrinth of Solitude (tr. 1963), The Other Mexico (tr. 1972); and El arco y la lira (1956; tr. The Bow and the Lyre, 1973); criticism; and studies of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marcel Duchamp (both, tr. 1970). In 1971–72 Paz delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard; they are collected in Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde (1974). In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

See I. Ivask, ed., The Perpetual Present (1974).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Q is for:
R is for:

Diego Rivera

Artist

Born: 8 December 1886

Died: 24 November 1957

Birthplace: Guanajuato, Mexico

Best known as: Mexican muralist and husband of artist Frida Kahlo

Name at birth: José Diego Rivera Barrientos

Diego Rivera is the Mexican artist best known for his expansive and politically-charged murals -- and for his love affair with artist Frida Kahlo. Rivera studied painting in Mexico before going to Europe in 1907. While in Europe he took up cubism and had exhibitions in Paris and Madrid in 1913; he then had a show in New York City in 1916. In 1921 he returned to Mexico, where he undertook government-sponsored murals that reflected his communist politics in historical contexts. He married Kahlo in 1929, and their tempestuous marriage got to be as famous as their art. In the 1930s and '40s Rivera worked in the United States and Mexico, and many of his paintings drew controversy. His 1933 mural for the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan featured a portrait of Communist Party leader V.I. Lenin; the resulting uproar led to his dismissal and to the mural's official destruction in 1934. Similarly, a 1948 mural for the Hotel de Prado in Mexico that included the words "God does not exist" was covered and held from public view for nine years. Even so, Rivera's talent for historical murals and his tributes to earthy folk traditions made him one of the most influential artists in the Americas and one of Mexico's most beloved painters.

Extra credit: One of his most famous works is a tribute to workers in Detroit, Michigan, commissioned in 1932 by Henry Ford... Rivera was born a twin, but his brother, Carlos María, died before he turned two... Never very faithful romantically, Rivera was married four times to three different women: to Guadalupe Marin (1922-27), to Kahlo (1929-39, then again from 1940 until her death in 1954), and to art dealer Emma Hurtado (from 1955 until his death in 1957). He also lived with the artist Angelina Beloff for many years in Paris, and she is sometimes counted among his spouses as a common-law wife.

Copyright © 1998-2006 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.

S is for:

Carlos Santana

musician
Born: 7/20/1947
Birthplace: Autlan De Navarro, Mexico

The guitar-playing legend's blend of blues, rock, and Afro-Cuban rhythms has kept him visible on the popular music front for more than 30 years. After moving with his family to San Francisco he became a founding member of the Santana Blues Band, later Santana. A month after appearing at Woodstock in 1969—one of the band's first gigs—Santana released its first album, Santana, which it followed with a series of gold and platinum albums during the 1970s: Abraxas, Borboletta, and Inner Secrets. Santana himself recorded many solo albums including the jazz influenced The Swing of Delight (1980), featuring Herbie Hancock and others, and the pop-oriented Havana Moon (1983) with Willie Nelson and Booker T Jones. In 1986, he wrote the score for La Bamba, the biopic of Ritchie Valens. In 1999, after a break of five years from recording, Santana released Supernatural, which sold almost ten million copies and won eight Grammy Awards.

Serra, Richard

Serra, Richard, 1939–, American sculptor, b. San Francisco. He creates large-scale minimalist (see minimalism) works in metal, concrete, fiberglass, and other materials, usually intended for specific outdoor sites. His Tilted Arc (1981) achieved notoriety when nearby office workers demanded its removal from a site in lower Manhattan. Perceived as menacing, the elegant 120-ft (37-m) curving sheet of rusting steel was dismantled in 1989. In the ensuing years Serra's huge, curved, torqued, space-enclosing, and space-defining steel sculptures have become extremely popular and are widely thought to be among the most significant abstract sculptures of the late 20th and early 21st cent. His pieces are included in many major museum collections; an eight-part, more than 430-ft-long (131-m) assemblage of his massive, rust-patinated steel sculpture was permanently installed (2005) at the Guggenheim Museum's Bilbao branch.

See Richard Serra: Writings/Interviews (1994); C. Weyergraf-Serra and M. Buskirk, ed., The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents (1991); studies by R. Krauss (1986) and H. Foster, ed. (2000).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Luis Santeiro

Writer
Born: 1948
Birthplace: Havana, Cuba

Luis Santeiro has won eight Emmy Awards for his writing for Sesame Street and one for his contribution to the groundbreaking bilingual 1970s sitcom Que Pasa, USA? But Santeiro is primarily a playwright, the creator of widely performed works including Our Lady of the Tortilla (1987) and Praying with the Enemy (1999), which won the National Hispanic Playwright Award. Santeiro's plays use more than a touch of satire to examine such subjects as Catholicism, Hollywood, and Hispanic stereotypes.

Sammy Sosa

Born: Nov. 12, 1968
Baseball OF

slugging Chicago Cub who surpassed Roger Maris’ season home run record (61), just after Mark McGwire did in 1998 and finished the year with 66; followed that up with seasons of 63, 50 and 64 HRs; 1998 NL MVP; 7-time All-Star (1995,98-2002,2004).

T is for:

Torres Bodet, Jaime

Torres Bodet, Jaime (hī'mā tôr'rās bôdet') [key], 1902–74, Mexican poet, diplomat, short-story writer, and essayist. Torres Bodet's first book of poems, Fervor (1918), reveals the influence of symbolism and modernismo, but his later poetry shows the effect of the European avant-garde and is cosmopolitan in tone. His outstanding early poems were collected in Poesías (1926). Sin tregua (1957) and Selected Poems (bilingual ed. 1964) contain later verse. Narratives collected in Margarita de niebla (1927), Proserpina rescatada (1931), and Nacimiento de Venus (1941) reveal his refined, erudite playfulness. Contemporáneos (1938) and Tres inventores de realidad (1955) contain some of his major critical essays. Torres Bodet has held many important government posts.

See study by S. Karsen (1971).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

U is for:

Uslar Pietri, Arturo

Uslar Pietri, Arturo (ärtOO'rō OOs'lär pyā'trē) [key], 1906–2001, Venezuelan novelist and essayist. Uslar Pietri is considered one of the most powerful regional writers in modern Spanish American letters. His masterpiece is the historical novel Las Lanzas coloradas (1931; tr. 1963, The Red Lances), a vivid depiction of the Venezuelan campaign of Simón Bolívar. Among his nearly 50 other works are Red (1936) and Treinta hombres y sus sombras (1949), short stories; El Camino de El Dorado (1947, repr. 1997), a fictionalized biography of Lope de Aguirre; and collections of essays such as Las visiones del camino (1945), Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948), and Las Nubes (1956). Uslar Pietri also held offices in various Venezuelan governments and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1963.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

V is for:

Nydia Velázquez

U.S. Representative
Born: 3/28/1953
Birthplace: Yabucoa, Puerto Rico

In 1992 Nydia Velázquez became the first Puerto Rican woman elected to Congress (Democrat, New York). Velázquez was an activist as a teenager in rural Puerto Rico and came to the U.S. to earn a master's degree in political science at New York University. She has taught university in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. As a U.S. Representative she has been outspoken about voter registration, health care, and family violence.

Villaurrutia, Xavier

Villaurrutia, Xavier (hävē'ār vē"yäOOrOO'tyä) [key], 1903–50, Mexican poet and playwright. Villaurrutia was deeply influenced by Ramón López Velarde. He worked on the Mexican literary review Contemporáneos (1928–31) and in 1928 founded the first experimental theater in Mexico. His poetic writing includes Reflejos (1926) and Nocturnos (1933). Villaurrutia's intense preoccupation with death permeates the poems in Nostalgia de la muerte (1938) and Décima muerte [tenth death] (1941); it is also the subject of his play Invitación a la muerte (1941). His most notable theatrical works are the short dramatic pieces, Autos profanos, included in Poesía y teatro completos (1953). Villaurrutia greatly influenced the work of younger Mexican poets, notably Alí Chumacero.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

W is for:
X is for:
Y is for:

Yáñez, Agustín

Yáñez, Agustín (ägOOstēn' yä'nyās) [key], 1904–80, Mexican novelist and critic. Yáñez's writings include works about Native American myths and the Spanish colonial era. His work includes tthe novels The Edge of the Storm (1947, tr. 1963) and The Lean Lands (1962; tr. 1968).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Z is for:


This is cool too:
From Fact Monster:

• Famous Firsts by Hispanic Americans New!
• Hispanic Americans by the Numbers
• Spanish Loan Words
• Cesar Chavez
• Countries of Origin
• Spanish Accents
• Hispanics in Congress
• Where Spanish is Spoken
• Hispanic Holidays
• Spanish Place Names
• Preference for Racial or Ethnic Terminology
• Notable Books by Mexican and Mexican-American Authors

Here are some cool bios.
And a very cool ABC.... of biographies.