El trece de marzo/March 13th

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¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Ozuna (Juan Carlos Ozuna Rosado)! (1992-       )

Photo from billboard.com. Five Things You Should Know
About Ozuna's Debut Album Odisea (Ozuna
speaks in Spanish with English subtitles). Click HERE.  
A recording artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to a Dominican father and a Puerto Rican mother, Ozuna is a popular reggaetón and Latin trap singer who just released his first crossover hit, La Modelo (featuring Cardi B), which already has more than 160,000,000 views on YouTube (click HERE to join the crowd). Ozuna released his first album, Odisea, in 2017 and won the Premios Juventud "Best Breakthrough Artist" that same year. He grew up very poor, raised by his paternal grandmother after his father (a dancer for the reggaetón artist Vico C) was fatally shot when Ozuna was only three years old (his mother did not have the financial resources to raise him). He started writing songs when he was twelve and moved to New York for several years in the early 2010s before moving back to Puerto Rico. In 2014, he signed a recording contract with Golden Family Records and began uploading videos on YouTube, quickly becoming a hit across Latin America (click HERE to watch his video Dile que tú me quieres). He has collaborated with artists such as DJ Luian, Mambo Kingz, De La Ghetto, Arcángel, and Anuel AA (on La Ocasión), and Daddy Yankee (on No Quiere Enanmorarse), and more, all the while working hard on improving his English (in his crossover hit Cardi B sings in Spanish and English, while Ozuna just sticks to Spanish). Ozuna is married and has a daughter, Sofia, and a son, Jacob, with wife Taina Marie Meléndez. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, he speaks of wanting to be in the public spotlight for only a few more years before retreating to spend more time with his family (read more HERE). In the meantime, his popularity is skyrocketing, as described in this Forbes magazine profile. He is trying to be conservative with his money and investing in other ventures, such as restaurants in Puerto Rico, but that didn't stop him from donating $100,000 in January to help cover the medical expenses of a Dominican boy awaiting a heart transplant (read more HERE).

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Other March 13th birthdays:

Photo from Sports Vice. Click HERE.
Andrés Escobar (1967-1994): A Colombian soccer player, in 1994 he made an accidental goal against his own team in a World Cup game and was killed shortly thereafter, some believe by the mafia. Click HERE to learn more.

Carlos Reina (1926-2003): President of Honduras from 1994-1998 (with the Liberal Party). His wife, Bessie Watson, was an American citizen. When young, he was arrested several times for his political activities in opposition to the military government. As such, he became a fierce defender of human rights.

Other March 13th events of note:

1697 - Nojpelén, capital of the last independent Maya kingdom, fell to Spanish conquistadors in the final step of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala (Nojpelén was on an island in northern Guatemala, current day name is Flores).

1957 - Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of Fulgencio Batista.

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