Arnoldo Alemán: 1946—: Nicaraguan legislator and former leader. After the people of Nicaragua had endured years of political conflict and sometimes civil war brought to them by the succession of autocratic right-wing and revolutionary left-wing governments under which they had lived for decades, they hoped in the 1990s for stability and for the strengthening of democratic institu…
Isabel Allende: 1942—: Novelist. One of the most popular and widely acclaimed writers in the Western Hemisphere, the Chilean novelist Isabel Allende has been hailed as the creator of a distinctively female voice within the largely male-dominated Latin American literary tradition. In a series of bestselling novels written in the last decades of the twentieth century, Allende mixed elemen…
Pedro Almodóvar: 1951—: Filmmaker. As notorious as he is notable, Pedro Almodóvar, long Spain's reigning king of film, has taken center stage as one of the world's most successful and original directors. His art, borne out of a childhood of bleak villages and Catholic repression, took shape during "la movida," Spain's cultural revolution …
Alicia Alonso: 1921—: Dancer, choreographer, ballet director, dance instructor. Cuba is known for Castro, Cuban cigars, and communism. But thanks to the tenacity and talent of Alicia Alonso, it is also a world-renowned center for ballet. When Alonso was born in the early 1920s there was no ballet school or professional company in Cuba. Instead she traveled to New York City, Russia, Spai…
Julia Alvarez: 1950—: Author. Dominican author Julia Alvarez has given voice to the themes of displacement, alienation, and search for identity in her poetry and fiction. Thrown into a foreign language and culture as a child, Alvarez found refuge in books and writing. She discovered through words she could build her own worlds that both revealed and transcended the meaning of her life. …
Janeth Arcain: 1969—: Professional basketball player. South American players are rare in professional basketball, whose practitioners from outside the sport's U.S. home-land tend to come from Europe or Africa. But Houston Comets guard Janeth Arcain, a veteran Brazilian player, emerged as a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) star in 2000. Arcain's rise t…
Jose Maria Aznar: 1953—: Prime Minister of Spain. Jose Maria Aznar Lopez was born in Madrid, Spain on February 25, 1953 to a middle class family with political ties to General Francisco Franco's ultra-conservative dictatorship. Aznar's father and one of his grandfathers both held posts in the dictator's government. His family also included several notable conservati…
Hugo Bánzer Suárez: 1926—: Politician. Ailing Bolivian president Hugo Bánzer Suárez resigned in August of 2001 after a long and sometimes controversial political career. A top military officer who engineered a 1971 coup, Bánzer led Bolivia through seven years of harsh military rule. Nearly twenty years after yet another military coup forced him from of…
Fernando Cardoso: 1931—: Sociologist, politician. Fernando Henrique Cardoso became the first reelected president of Brazil, based on the strides he made in modernizing the nation. During his terms, he emphasized economic reform, privatization, foreign investment, and funding for social services and education, and did so without a hint of the corruption that had plagued Brazil's f…
Emerging from the ferment of radical Chicano thought that shaped her ideas as a student in the 1970s, Ana Castillo was long known as a writer who was vigorously critical of the dominant Anglo-American mainstream and who worked to create alternative visions of what American society could become. "I was a Chicana protest poet, a complete renegade—and I continue to write that way,…
Fidel Castro: 1927—: President. Fidel Castro has ruled Cuba since his revolutionary forces overthrew dictator Fulgencia Batista in 1959. He introduced agriculture, medical, and education reforms to improve the quality of life for poor Cubans during the 1960s, but was criticized for suspending elections. His socialist philosophy and close ties to the Soviet Union led to tensions with the…
Ida Castro: 1953—: Public official, lawyer. Ida Castro rose through the ranks of the U.S. Department of Labor before being named the first Latina to head the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1998. Over the course of her three years as the agency's leader, Castro implemented numerous changes and initiatives that improved its ability to provide quality services to th…
Hugo Chávez: 1954—: President. The charismatic Hugo Chávez, elected president of Venezuela in 1998, is sometimes described by political pundits as Latin America's most controversial leader after Fidel Castro. Chávez has set this mineral–and resource-rich South American nation on a course of political, economic, and social reform he describes as a �…
Linda Chavez-Thompson: 1944—: Labor leader. As the number three person at the American Federation of Labor and Congress Industrial Organizations, better known by the acronym AFL-CIO, Linda Chavez-Thompson is in a powerful position. She can turn the ears of politicians, labor union leaders, and the media. She can also put fear into corporate leaders dead set against unionism. When Chavez…
Henry Cisneros: 1947—: San Antonio mayor and Cabinet secretary. Henry Cisneros has often been compared with his immediate supervisor for much of the 1990s—U.S. president Bill Clinton. Both men were intelligent, politically skilled, well-educated, and committed not only to the ideal of change but to the nuts-and-bolts challenges of implementing it. And both were irreversibly diver…
Sandra Cisneros: 1954—: Writer. As the first Hispanic-American to receive a major publishing contract, Sandra Cisneros has provided a voice for she who had had none before, the Hispanic-American woman—or to use Cisneros' favored word—the chicana. "I'm trying to write the stories that haven't been written. I feel like a cartographer. I'm d…
Bert Corona: 1918-2001: Labor organizer. Bert Corona, a longtime leader in Latino civil-rights circles, died in early 2001 after nearly seventy years of public service. Following a career as a union organizer, Corona served for many years as executive director of La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, a Latino organization in the Los Angeles area that fought on behalf of undocumented Mexicans and oth…
Although the Cuban-born music known as salsa, like other forms of Latin jazz and dance music, has been primarily male-dominated, its biggest vocal star is female. Celia Cruz has a powerful voice that transfers the rhythmic energy of salsa into the vocal medium, and she has been a prominent figure in the music since the beginnings of her career in Cuba in the 1950s. Leaving Cuba for the United Stat…
Salvador Dalí: 1904—1989: Artist. Surrealism was a European artistic movement that extended into film, fiction, poetry, and other arts in addition to its primary medium of painting. Nevertheless, in the public mind surrealism is identified above all with one towering figure: the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. With a series of dreamlike works executed in the late 1920s and …
Oscar De La Hoya: 1973—: Boxer. Oscar De La Hoya became the "Golden Boy" of boxing with his surprising win of a gold medal in the 1992 Olympic Games. Since then he has captured five boxing titles in five different weight classes, ranking him among boxing's elite. He has often been referred to as the best contemporary American boxer. Oscar De La Hoya was born on Febr…
Fernando de la Rúa: 1937—: Politician, lawyer. The former president of Argentina, Fernando de la Rúa attempted to restore solvency to a nation deep in debt and out of patience with governmental corruption, rampant inflation, and unemployment. Elected late in 1999 by South America's second largest nation, de la Rúa, Argentina's 47th president, applied t…
Cameron Diaz: 1972—: Model, actress. "She has an energy, an electricity in her face—a sparkle that is unmistakable," photographer Jeff Dunas is quoted as having said in People Weekly about model-turned-actress Cameron Diaz. Diaz is an interesting combination of naiveté and geek—she actually won a belching trophy from Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awa…
Plácido Domingo: 1941—: Opera singer, conductor, administrator. The Spanish-Mexican tenor Plácido Domingo is among the greatest all-around musicians of the last quarter of the twentieth century. With a voice matched only by a very few of his contemporaries, he has sung every major role in the classical operatic repertoire and quite a few more unusual roles. With fellow ten…
Laura Esquivel: 1951 (?)—: Novelist. Like Water for Chocolate, a unique novel in the form of a cookbook by the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel, became one of the surprise literary hits of the 1990s and spawned one of the most successful foreign-language films of all time in the United States. Esquivel followed up that novel with other works that, if less consistently acclaimed, displayed …
Gloria Estefan: Singer, songwriter. Gloria Estefan has been entertaining fans since she joined The Miami Latin Boys in the 1970s. She has inspired many people, and helped to bring the Latin sound to the pop genre. She has weathered many storms, but still managed to continue to release platinum-selling record after record. Estefan was born "Glorita" Fajardo, in Cuba, on September …
Patrick Flores: 1929—: Roman Catholic archbishop. A respected minister and peacemaker, Archbishop Patrick F. Flores has helped and inspired many people as he rose through the ranks in the Roman Catholic church. His openness to other faiths has put him on a platform alongside Protestant minister Dr. Billy Graham and Lutheran officials mending the hurt caused by the Reformation. Without a…
Vincente Fox: 1942—: politician; businessman. On July 2, 2000, Vincente Fox, newly elected president of Mexico, gathered before 100,000 supporters in Mexico City. "The city hadn't seen such jubilation since the pope's visit nearly ten years ago," wrote Dick Reavis in the Texas Monthly. Fox's victory was astounding to many because the International Revo…
Carlos Fuentes: 1928—: Novelist , essayist. "The novelist takes it upon himself to reinvent in depth a world that must come alive again, for the future only exists if the past does also," Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes told the UNESCO Courier in 1992. That statement might serve as a credo for the complex, challenging works of this master of the modern Latin American novel…
Luis González Macchi: 1947—: Paraguayan leader. Dubbed an "accidental president" by one diplomat and "the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time" by a Paraguayan radio talk-show host (both characterizations were quoted in the New York Times, Paraguayan president Luis González Macchi faced a series of extraordinarily diffi-cult tasks when…
Founder of Latina, the first bilingual magazine for Hispanic women, Christy Haubegger had noted the visible lack of Hispanic role models in the media even as a child. As an adult she was determined to change this. Rather than pursue a career in law, Haubegger decided to pursue her dream of creating a women's magazine that dealt with health, beauty, political, and lifestyle issues from a His…
Rita Hayworth: 1918–1987: Actor, dancer, producer. Called "the fiery epitome of screen sensuality," by People magazine, Rita Hayworth became one of America's most popular and famous actresses of the 1940s and beyond, known for her grace, her beauty, and her amazing dancing ability. Born Margarita Cansino on October 17, 1918 in Brooklyn, NY, Hay-worth was part of a f…
Oscar Hijuelos: 1951—: Novelist. The novel of immigrant life is a durable and extremely significant tradition in American literature, and Cuban-American writer Oscar Hijuelos has emerged as one of its top recent practitioners. His 1989 novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love was both a prizewinner and a bestseller; in that work and in several other substantial novels Hijuelos has explo…
Enrique Iglesias: 1975—: Singer, Songwriter. Enrique Iglesias catapulted to fame in the 1990s, holding a leading place among a new generation of Spanish-speaking pop stars whose music combines romantic ballads, hot Latin dance rhythms, and American rock influences. The son of globally-famous Latin crooner Julio Iglesias, Enrique Iglesias has charted an independent course to his musical …
Frida Kahlo: 1907—1954: Artist. One primary impetus behind modernist movements in art is masculine and impersonal: many artists of the 20th century sought to smash rules and stylistic barriers and to break through to new principles of composition and subject matter. In the work of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, however, modernist breakthroughs were placed at the service of artistic aut…
Jennifer Lopez: 1970—: Actor, singer, dancer. Jennifer Lopez is what is known in the entertainment business as a "triple threat"—she can dance, sing, and act. She was a dancing Fly Girl on the 1990s television show In Living Color, and got her break in her lead role as Selena, the 1997 film about the murdered Tejano pop star. She became the first Latina actress to h…
Nancy Lopez: 1957—: Golfer. Hall-of-Fame golfer Nancy Lopez, who began playing golf at an early age, has won numerous championships including the LPGA Championship. Lopez has received many awards and is known for her phenomenal early rise to fame. Her enduring skill on the course, and her open and friendly demeanor has garnered her many fans across the nation. …
Diego Maradona: 1961(?)—: Athlete. Diego Maradona is considered one of the greatest stars in the history of soccer, but his has been a career marred by controversy. The Argentine midfielder's statistical record is impressive: he has scored 255 goals in the 483 professional games he has played over a two-decade career, and was credited with leading an underdog Italian team twice t…
Mel Martínez: 1947—: Cabinet secretary. In January of 2001 Mel R. Martínez became the first American of Cuban heritage to hold a Cabinet post. Martínez was named Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by President George W. Bush, an appointment that signaled the emergence of Florida's strongly Republican Cuban-American community as…
Carlos Saul Menem: 1930—: Political leader. Twice elected president of Argentina, Carlos Menem's terms in office represented a rare period of political stability in the country. Yet Menem himself was never very far from controversy, both for his vivid public persona and a number of decisions that raised accusations of corruption and deceit. Since leaving the presidency, Menem has…
Rita Moreno: 1931—: Actress, singer, dancer. Rita Moreno's versatility as a performer has led to decades of success on stage, screen, and television. She is the only female entertainer to have won all four of the most prestigious show business awards: the Oscar for the role of Anita in the 1962 film West Side Story, the Tony for the role of Googie Gomez in the 1975 production of …
Grace Napolitano: 1936—: Politician, business executive. A political force from urban Southern California, Grace Flores Napolitano has made an impact on U. S. congressional legislation affecting water and soil clean-up, teen suicide prevention, worker training, and the protection of small businesses and jobs for minorities. A retired business executive and concerned parent and citizen, …
Antonia Novello: 1944—: Pediatrician. Antonia Novello overcame childhood poverty and illness to become one of the leading doctors in America. She was trained as a pediatrician and served in the United States Public Health Service. After spending several years at the National Institute of Health, Novello was appointed United States Surgeon General by President George Bush. She was the fi…
Soledad O'Brien: 1966—: Reporter. Television news anchor Soledad O'Brien generated a flurry of her own news stories after she began appearing on the cable network MSNBC in 1996. Hired as the host of its daily technology show, O'Brien and her dramatically exotic looks garnered a slew of fan mail and helped make her one of the news channel's rising stars. O�…
Ellen Ochoa: 1958—: Astronaut. Ellen Ochoa became the first Latina in space in 1993 when she served as the sole female crew member of Discovery space shuttle. By 1999, with three missions behind her, Ochoa had logged 720 hours of space time. An accomplished engineer and scientist who has served at Mission Control for other shuttle flights, the native Californian also likes to speak to s…
Arturo "Chico" O'Farrill: 1921—2001: Composer, arranger, musician. One of the architects of Latin jazz, Arturo "Chico" O'Farrill made his mark by fusing jazz with Afro-Cuban music beginning in the late 1940s. Though he would write and arrange music for five more decades, he would receive the most recognition of his career in the last six years o…
Edward James Olmos: 1947—: Actor. Edward James Olmos is one of the most influential voices of the Latino community in the United States. As an actor, he has produced a commendable body of work that has earned him numerous awards and unlimited accolades. But Olmos's life is more than a story of poor kid from the barrio who made it big in Hollywood. He is not only an actor but an a…
Derek Parra: 1970—: Athlete. When Derek Parra set a new world record in the men's 1,500-meter speedskating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, he also became the first Mexican-American to win a gold medal at the Salt Lake City Games. Parra was an unlikely victor in the sport of long-track speedskating, having tried it for the first time just six years before. The Southern Ca…
Eddie Alberto Pérez: 1957—: Political leader. In his first run for political office in 2001, Eddie Pérez made history as the first Hispanic–American to become mayor of a New England capital. A native of Puerto Rico, longtime Hartford, Connecticut resident Pérez also broke new political ground by forging a bipartisan coalition of community activists and corpor…
Tony Pérez: 1942—: Professional baseball player and manager. "If there's a runner on second base," former Cincinnati Reds manager Sparky Anderson told the National Baseball Hall of Fame on the occasion of Pérez's induction into that body, "there isn't anybody I'd rather see walk to the plate than Tony Pérez. He turns …
Eva "Evita" Perón: 1919–1952: Political leader. Of all the figures of twentieth-century history, few have inspired as many passionate debates as the life and myth of Eva Perón. From her origins as an illegitimate girl in the Argentine provinces, she pursued a career as a film and radio actress in Buenos Aires before meeting, and subsequently marrying, the man…
Tito Puente: 1923-2000: Bandleader, arranger, percussionist. Tito Puente, legendary band-leader and percussionist, performed his unique blend of Latin music and American jazz for over sixty years. He recorded an astounding 118 albums and was a central figure in nearly every trend in Latin music in the 20th century. "He was the founding father of Latin music as we know it, the master of …
Anthony Quinn: 1915–2001: Actor , artist, writer. Anthony Quinn's robust portrayals of such characters as Zorba the Greek and the fierce Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) made him larger than life to millions. Appearing in more than two hundred films during a career that spanned six decades, his image was defined by his charismatic performance as the lusty peasant Alexi…
Denise Quiñones August: 1980—: Miss Universe. "I feel like I am living a fantasy," Denise Quiñones August told People en Español. As the 50th Miss Universe, some would say she is. A rural girl from a mountain town, Quiñones had only been competing in pageants for three years before winning the title of Miss Universe. As the fourth Miss Universe …
Alex Rodriguez: 1975—: Baseball player. Baseball player Alex Rodriguez has been inspiring fans for years with his style of play. He became a household name when he signed a $252-million contract with the Texas Rangers in December of 2001. Rodriguez has won numerous awards and is known for his versatile talent on the field and his good conduct off it. Rodriguez, known as "A-Rod&#x…
Loretta Sanchez: 1960—: U.S. representative. An icon of the growing involvement in politics on the part of Hispanic Americans at the turn of the millennium, Loretta Sanchez is also very much an individualist who has stuck to her own beliefs even when they did not seem expedient. Sanchez came out of political obscurity to defeat an entrenched Anglo-American congressman in the 1996 nation…
Carlos Santana: 1947—: Rock guitarist. One of the great musical boundary crossers of the twentieth century, Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana was a central figure in the growth of rock music as a serious art form in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Santana blended rock and blues guitar styles with Latin rhythms, and later experimental jazz influences, to create a compelling hybri…
Shakira: 1977—: Singer, songwriter. By the time Shakira released her first English language album, 2001's Laundry Service, she had long been an international star in the Spanish speaking world. With four records—the first recorded when she was just thirteen—the petite Colombian singer-songwriter was already established as an authentic rockera with a unique sound tha…
Martin Sheen: 1940—: Actor, activist. A powerful, versatile actor, Martin Sheen is equally convincing in roles as diverse as the rebel killer in Badlands, a homophobic father in Consenting Adults, and President Kennedy in the television miniseries JFK. In his film roles Sheen has often played the loner or outsider, whereas many of his television portrayals are of historical or political…
Sammy Sosa: 1968—: Professional baseball player. Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa slugged his way to fame and revived flagging attendance at American baseball games by challenging the 1961 hitting record of New York Yankees slugger Roger Maris. In 1998 fans and newcomers to the game sat on edge anticipating Sosa's next swat of the bat. In addition to breaking the 37-year-old Na…
Luis Tapia: 1950—: Sculptor. Nobel Prize winner and Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote, "No matter how terrible and powerful the reasons for leaving their countries, the Hispanics have not broken their ties with their places of origin." Like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, New Mexico is an American center of Hispanic population. But unlike those booming metropolises, New Mex…
Dara Torres: 1967—: Olympic swimmer, model, TV reporter and announcer. Resilient Olympic sprinter Dara Torres brought home gold, silver, and bronze medals in swimming in 1984, 1988, and 1992 before entering a voluntary seven-year retirement. After defeating bulimia, which hampered her stamina, she began a career in modeling and TV sports commentary. At age 32, she returned to athletic f…
Acknowledged as the "godfather of Chicano theater," Luis Valdez is the founder and artistic director of El Teatro Campesino, which translates to The Farmworkers Theater. Started in 1965, Valdez has led the theater company to international acclaim and numerous awards. The author and director of numerous plays, Valdez has also written and directed two films: Zoot Suit, based on his pla…
Mario Vargas Llosa: 1936—: Writer. Already a profound chronicler of South America's political and social reality, Mario Vargas Llosa took an unusual step for a writer in the 1980s: he immersed himself in the political life of his native Peru rather than simply standing outside it as an observer. In the widest sense, Vargas Llosa has been a champion of freedom, a writer who spoke …
Nydia Velázquez: 1953—: U.S. Congressional representative. The first Puerto Rican-born woman elected to the U.S. Congress, Nydia Velázquez has served New York State's 12th District since winning election in 1992. She has also, however, served as an able advocate for the interests of her Puerto Rican home-land. In this mixed deployment of her energies Velázque…
Raquel Welch: 1940—: Actress. After moving from Beverly Hills to New York City with her husband in 1985, Raquel Welch reflected in Ladies Home Journal that her big California home had been "a glossed-over paradise, a padded cell." The description might have been a metaphor for the first part of Welch's acting career, which trapped her in the role of sex symbol. Near…