Famous Latinx Birthdays

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Shakira*! (Shakira Isabel Mebarek Ripoli) (1977-     ) *AND to Gerard Piqué (1987-           ), her significant other since 2011 (and father of her two children -- Milan, born in January of 2013, and Sasha, born in January of 2015) Shakira, Gerard Piqué and their children Milan and Sasha. Photo from El País, Dec. 2016 .  Click  HERE .  Shakira most likely doesn't need an introduction. Number 27 on Fortune Magazine's 2017 list of "The World's Greatest Leaders, " this Colombian singer has sold millions of records and won multiple awards, including four Grammys and 12 Latin Grammys. In 1997, she founded Pies Descalzos , an organization that aims to help poor children in Colombia, especially with education. Shakira, whose name in Arabic means "grateful" (her paternal grandparents immigrated to New York City, where her father was born, and her father moved to Colombia when he was five), is an only ch...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Moisés Muñoz! (1980-        ) Photo from alchetron.com. Click  HERE .  A professional soccer player from Morelia, Mexico, Muñoz lived in California (in Redwood City, outside San Francisco), where he dreamed of playing professional basketball or football , from age 10 to 16. His family returned to Mexico when his grandfather was given only a few months to live, and it was then that Muñoz became more involved in soccer. He began his career at the age of 19, in 1999. He is a goalkeeper. Still, in 2013 in Mexico's Azteca Stadium, playing for Club América, he had a dramatic end-of-game goal for the championship when he headed the ball in from a corner. Watch it HERE  (and enjoy the Spanish commentary (¡GOOOOOL!) and the comments, i.e. "¡Este es del tipo de partido que se contará de generación en generación del padre al hijo del hijo al nieto etc!" (This is the type of game that will be described from generation to generation, ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... April Lee Hernández! (1980-       ) Photo from LionChaser Films (Hernández's company with her husband). Click  HERE .  An actress who has appeared in many television shows, Hernández is known by many for her role as Eva, based on real-life high school student Maria Reyes, in the 2007 film Freedom Writers . She was born in The Bronx, New York, to loving Puerto Rican parents who encouraged her to become whatever she dreamed of being. While studying at Hunter College to become a nutritionist, Hernández took an improv class "just for fun" and fell in love. She left college to pursue stand-up comedy and acting, where she found success. She moved to Los Angeles for her career but returned to New York to marry husband José Castillo. The two have a daughter together, Summer Rose, born in 2012, and often speak to youth about their faith through Bold Faith Ministries (click  HERE  to see Hernández speak about her work with Bold...

Photo from wikipedia ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Wilmer Valderrama! (1980-      ) Wilmer Valderrama is an actor, singer, producer, and activist (perhaps best-known for his role as "Fez" on That 70s Show ). Born in Miami, Florida, he moved with his family to Venezuela when he was three, and then back to the United States (Los Angeles) when he was thirteen. He has been active encouraging young people to vote (see this segment  with Jorge Ramos), promoting the welfare of immigrants ( this article  profiles his meeting with United Farmworkers' Dolores Huerta), and showing solidarity with Venezuelans fighting against an oppressive regime (see his message in 2017 here ). He won an ALMA Award in 2013 for his activism (click  HERE  to see his red-carpet interview). For years (2010-2016), he dated singer Demi Lovato. Valderrama currently plays special agent Nicholas Torres on the television show NCIS. For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP,...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Cristina Saralegui! (1948-       ) Photo from Cristina Sarelegui's official website. Click  HERE . Cristina Saralegui is best-known for her Spanish-language talk show, El Show de Cristina, which aired for 21 years on Univisión (click HERE  to see her 2009 interview with Shakira, and HERE  to see an excerpt of her 1994 interview with Selena). Often compared to Oprah Winfrey (with whom she shares a birthday), Sarelegui also has a magazine ( Crisina: La Revista ), a radio show, and a furniture line. Born in Havana, Cuba, Sarelegui fled Cuba with her family in 1960 after the Revolution. She was twelve. After graduating high school in Miami (and perfecting her English), she attended the University of Miami. An internship with Vanidades,  a magazine that her grandfather, a publisher and businessman, had founded in Cuba, helped her perfect her written Spanish (which she had lost focusing on English in high school) and paved...

Image from cubajournal.com. Click  HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... José Martí! "Being educated is the only way to be free." - José Martí (click  HERE  for full UNESCO profile) A poet, philosopher, politician, soldier, and prolific author (he even published a children's magazine!), Martí is considered a hero by many, even those on vastly different sides of an issue (see this 2016 article about Obama's visit to the Martí statue in Havana for more on this). Martí, the older brother to seven sisters, was born in Havana in 1853. In 1865, after U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Martí and his friends formed a group to mourn the passing of this leader who had decreed the abolition of slavery (Martí was adamantly opposed to slavery, which still existed in Cuba under Spanish rule). When he was sixteen, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish over a letter to a friend expressing his disapproval of that friend's joining the Spanish army. He was se...

Photo from Vogue Italia Encylo. Click  HERE ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Narciso Rodríguez! (1961-          ) An award-winning fashion designer who became a household name when he designed Carolyn Bessette's dress for her wedding to John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1996, Rodríguez was born in Newark, New Jersey to Cuban parents who had come here in search of the American Dream. As such, they were not thrilled when their son told them he wanted to be a designer (they were hoping for lawyer, or doctor, as Rodriguez explains in this interview  (in Spanish) with CNN (Click HERE  for my AP/S4 lesson on this interview). "They may not have understood my choices, but their actions taught me to take risks and have courage. They left their home in Cuba and came to a country where they didn't even speak the language," explains Rodríguez to Forbes writer Jessica Pliska in a 2016 interview , adding, "Even when I got a top job at Calvin Klein my mother offered, 'It isn...

Photo from boxrec.com. Click  HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Salvador Sánchez! (1959-1982) A Mexican boxer who was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991, Sal Sánchez tragically died at the age of 23 while driving his Porsche at a high speed on a highway outside of Mexico City. He left behind his twenty-one year old wife, Maria Teresa, and two sons, sixteen month old Cristian Salvador and four month old Omar. When he died, he has just returned to Mexico from New York City, where he had successfully defended his title as World Boxing's featherweight champion, and he was training for a September fight in Madison Square Garden. Nonetheless, he has planned to retire from boxing after a year, saying, "I've already distinguished myself in boxing. Now I'd like to distinguish myself in life. I want to carry on studying [he had left school at age 14 to train] and become a doctor" (from his New York Times 1982 obituary - click  HERE ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Chantal Andere! (Jacqueline Chantal Fernández Andere) (1972-       ) Photo from listal.com. Click  HERE .  An actress and singer from Mexico City, Andere is best known for playing the villain (la villana) in multiple Mexican telenovelas, including Madres egoístas, La usurpadora, Los parientes pobres, Mirimar (with Mexican actress and singer Thalía), Sortilegio, La mujer de Vendaval, and Antes muerte que lichita (Better off dead than plain!).  She is currently in the program El bienamado, in which for the first time in many years she does not play a villain. Though she now focuses mostly on acting, Andere is also a singer who has released three albums: Regresa in 1990, Chantal in 1992, and Tentaciones in 1995 (to see her 1990 video for Regresa , click  HERE ). Andere's mother is Mexican actress Jacqueline Andere (1938-      ), and her father was Argentine writer José María Fernández Usaín (1918-199...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Luis Suárez! (1987-      ). Suárez with his family and La bota del oro from 2016 elmundodeportivo.com article. Click HERE .  "I think [my] hunger [to win] comes from all the suffering since childhood." - in June 2014 interview with Sports Illustrator writer Grant Wahl. Click  HERE  to read the full article, which also mentions Suárez drinking yerba matté from a gourd (very Uruguayan) during the interview and referencing Uruguayan garra , or grit, as a reason for his success. Considered one of the best professional soccer players in the world (see highlights of his 2017 season  HERE ), Suarez overcame many hardships -- and caused a lot of controversy -- on his way to the top. Born in Salto, Uruguay, a town about 300 miles northwest of the capital, Montevideo, Suárez moved to the city with his family when he was seven. When he was nine, his parents divorced, and Suárez's mom began supporting the family with her work cl...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Elvira Lindo! (1962-       ) Photo from Wikipedia Elvira Lindo is an author, journalist, screenwriter, and actress from Spain* who currently lives in New York City (*because she is from Spain she is not considered Latino , which is a term used to group together many different people from Spanish-speaking countries of South America, Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean). Lindo is well-known for her children's books featuring Manolito Gafotas (gafas=glasses, gafotas = BIG glasses). Manolito is a madrileño boy, the son of a trucker, and the books include humor, irony, and sharp social criticism. In 1996, Lindo won the Premio Nacional de Literatura Infantil and Juvenil for Los trapos sucios de Manolito Gafotas . A movie based on Manolito's character was released in 2000 (click HERE  to see the trailer). In addition to writing books, Lindo has also written eight screenplays (and appeared in multiple movies). She writes a column fo...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Carlos Ruiz! (Carlos Joaquín "Chooch" Ruiz) (1979-          ) As a lifelong Phillies fan who was teaching in a Philadelphia school when the Phillies won the 2008 World Series with Chooch, I have to say, this one's personal! We all love Chooch (an he loves us back! See this billboard he bought to tell us so in 2016).  Photo from philly.com. Click  HERE .  Carlos Ruiz is a professional baseball player from Panama who played with the Phillies for 11 seasons (he also played for the L.A. Dodgers and Seattle Mariners). A catcher called the "heart and the soul" of the team when they won the World Series in 2008 (see his Game Three game-winning hit in this fan video,  HERE ), Ruiz won teammates and fans over with his humility and humor -- not to mention hard work. His nickname, Chooch, is actually a variation of the F-bomb in Panama that Ruiz used to mutter under his breath when unhappy with his performance. This was ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Marco Asensio! (1996-         ) Photo from skysports.com. Click  HERE A Spanish soccer player (and therefore not Latino, which is a term used in the United States to group together many different people from Spanish-speaking countries of South America, Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, but just too important to not highlight here!), Asensio is currently signed with Real Madrid through 2023. Born on the Balearic Islands of Spain (in Palma, Majorca) to a Dutch mother and a Spanish father, Asensio was named after legendary soccer player Marco Van Basten. When he was still only eight years old, his mother was saying that he would someday play for Real Madrid. She passed away (cancer) in the summer of 2011, when Asensio was only fifteen, and he now dedicates every goal he scores to her.  He, his brother Igor (also a professional soccer player), and his father are close, and they were all clearly moved when Asensio si...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Juan García Esquivel! (1918-2002) Photo from discogs.com Click  HERE A self-taught bandleader, pianist, and composer from Mexico, Esquivel is known for his inventive "space age" arrangements from the 1950s and 60s, which enjoyed a revival in the 90s after the release of Space Age Bachelor Pad Music , a compilation of his hits. His music was featured in several movies, including 1998's The Big Lebowksi, and many advertising jingles. After living in the United States for many years, Esquivel returned to Mexico in 1979, where he wrote songs for the children's show Burbujas (click  HERE  to be amazed). He was married six times, the last time when he was 84 to his much younger health care aide, Carin Osorio. As he once told The Wire magazine, "I have had many loves in my life: music, cars, women, and the piano, not necessarily in that order." A  film about Esquivel's life starring John Leguizamo was announced in 1998 but neve...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Ricardo Arjona! (Edgar Ricardo Arjona Morales) (1964-         ) Arjona in concert at Houston's Toyota Center. Click  HERE .  A singer/songwriter who has sold-out New York's Madison Square Garden multiple times (and sold more than 20 million albums), Arjona was born in Jocotenango, Guatemala during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996). His mother was of the right and pro-military, while his father was of the left (and communist). Arjona had friends on both sides of the conflict (read more in this interesting interview with La Nación HERE ). Arjona speaks in several interviews of the impact a sign at his university, Cuidado hermano revolucionario que te estés graduando de explotador (Careful revolutionary brother, as you are becoming the exploiter), had on him. A member of Guatemala's National Basketball Team  before becoming a professional singer (he once scored 78 points in a single game), Arjona became a commercial ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Elena Arizmendi Mejía! (1884-1949) Cover of the 2010 biography of Arizmendi written by historian Arizmendi founded the Neutral White Cross  (when the Red Cross refused to treat insurgents in the Mexican Revolution), the feminist magazine Femenismo Internacional , and the organization Mujeres de la raza , which aimed to unite Latina women in the struggle for rights. Born to a wealthy family in Mexico City in 1884 (her mother's father was Ignacio Mejía, a general and close ally of Benito Juárez, and her great grandfather was Manuel Cristóbal Mejía, who had fought in the Mexican War of Independence against Spain), Arizmendi spent the early years of her life with her grandfather in Oaxaca. When she was only fourteen, her mother died, and she became responsible for the care of the household and her siblings. When her father remarried two years later, Arizmendi also hastily married, perhaps to escape the house, but that marriage fell apart (some say due to a...

Photo by Victor Chavez for Getty Images Click  HERE ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Angela "Angie" Vazquez! (2001-        ) The lead singer of the Mexican group Vázquez Sounds (formed by Angie and her older brothers Gustavo and Abelardo), Angie first became famous at the age of 10 with her cover of Adele's Rolling in the Deep (click  HERE  for the video, and HERE  for a news story about the video with understandable Spanish for a first year class). Angie sings and plays piano, harmonica, and guitar. She and her brothers, whose father is a music producer, are from Baja California in Mexicali, Mexico. They released an album of songs in English (all covers) in 2012 and an album of all original songs (in Spanish) in 2014. That album, Invencible , quickly became a hit in Mexico and earned them a Latin Grammy Nomination for "Best New Artist." They released a Christmas album, Sweet Christmas Ukelele and Jazz , in 2015. Their YouTube channel, Vázquez Sou...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Albert Pujols (José Alberto Pujols Alcántara)! (1980-         ) Photo from piodeportes.com (click  HERE ) Baseball player Albert Pujols is a a three-time National League MVP (2005, 2008, 2009), a nine-time All Star (2001, 2003-2010), and a two-time World Series Winner (2006, 2011, both with the Cardinals). After years of playing with the Cardinals, he became a free agent in 2011 and signed a ten-year contract with Los Angeles. It was with them that he hit his 600th home run, on June 3rd, 2017 (click  HERE  to see - it was a grand slam against the Minnesota Twins). Born in the Dominican Republic and raised mostly by his grandmother, Pujols came to New York City with his father and grandmother in 1996. After Pujols witnessed a shooting in a grocery store, his grandmother decided to move the family to Missouri, where he arrived for senior year of high school speaking little English, but playing an incredible game of base...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Pitbull (Armando Christian Pérez)! (1981-        ) Photo from zimbio.com. Click  HERE .  "I'm very proud to be a first generation Cuban American and to be able to represent for Latinos all over the world. If you don't know where you're from, you don't know where you're going." -Pitbull to writer Lisa Robinson in Vanity Fair, August 2016 (click  HERE  for full article) Pitbull is a rapper, singer, actor, and record producer who was born in Miami, Florida. His mother came to the U.S. in 1962 with  Operation Peter Pan , and his father came in the 1970s. As a child, Pitbull's father recited the poetry of Cuban national hero José Martí to him ("Yo soy un hombre sincero/de donde crece la palma/y antes de morirme/quiero echar mis versos del alma" - Versos Sencillos , 1891), which he credits with teaching him the power of words. He had his first solo track in 2002 on Lil Jon's album King of Crunk . He went on to r...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Kuno Becker (Eduardo Kuner Becker Paz)! (1979-      ) An actor best known for his roles as Ruben Berraizabal in the Mexican telenovela Soñadoras and Santiago Muñez in the movie Goal! (and its sequels), Becker was born in Mexico City, Mexico, and originally planned on becoming a professional violinist. He won a scholarship and travelled to Austria, where he spent several years taking lessons (click HERE  to see him play the violin on Soñadoras ). At the age of 17, however, he decided that acting was his greatest passion and auditioned for Centro de Educación Artística at Televisa. After two years, he got his first role on the telenovela Para toda la vida (1996). Becker has been on the American series Dallas and CSI: Miami , and he has been working since 2014 on a movie about the 1985 earthquake in Mexico (he presents a clip on Univisión in January of 2017  HERE  - the movie has still not been released). In 2014 the press report...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Michael Peña! (1976-        ) An actor ( Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Ant Man, César Chavez, World Trade Center, Walkout, Fury, Turbo, American Hustle, etc ) whose parents came to the United States in search of the American dream, Peña grew up in Chicago. He only began acting to try to help pay for his mother's medical care, but he found he had a knack for it. Peña now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Brie Shaffer, and his son, Roman (2008). Read HERE  (in English) about Michael Peña's career. See his "90 Second Interview" with People en español   HERE  (including his difficulty understanding one of the questions in Spanish). For a quick laugh, see his 2016 Bud Light commercial with Erik Estrada  HERE .  For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE. Other January 13th events of note: 2001 - earthquake in El Salvador kills more than 800 people. Some 200K Salvadorans are given Tempo...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Jeff Bezos! (1964-         ) Jeff Bezos is the billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. His step-father, who Bezos considers his only "true, real" father, came to this country from Cuba at the age of 16 in 1962 with  Operation Peter Pan  (as did the mother of rapper/singer/producer Pitbull ). He was then moved to a home for children in Wilmington, Delaware. He met Bezos' mother at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and married her in 1968, when Bezos was four (that's when Bezos, who had been born Jeff Jorgensen, was legally adopted by him and took his last name). Bezos grew up in Texas but moved with his family to Miami, where he attended high school. He graduated as valedictorian and attended Princeton, where he studied electrical engineering and computer science. After college he went to work on Wall Street. In 1994 he left his hedge fund job to begin Amazon, which his parents funded with $3...