Famous Latinx Birthdays

Photo from New York Latin Culture , 2017. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Willie Colón! (1950-    ) One of the founding members of the musical genre known as salsa, Willie Colón has been performing and producing music for more than 50 years. He has won numerous accolades, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Grammys in 2004. Born in the Bronx, New York, Willie Colón was mostly raised by his grandmother, Antonia Roman Pintor, who had grown up in the hills of Puerto Rico and received only a third grade education. Colón's mother was around, but as she was only 16 when she had him, she did not do much parenting. Colon's father was a heroin addict and not a major part of his life. When Colón was 11, his grandmother gave him a trombone, and soon after a neighbor walking by heard him practicing, knocked on the door, and offered to teach him. Colón was performing in local clubs at the age of 14 (with a forged id card) and had signed with the newly for...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Froy Gutierrez! (1998-       ) Photo from regardmag.com. Click HERE .  An American born actor of Mexican descent (who lived in Guadalajara, Mexico as a young child), Froy Gutierrez grew up in Dallas, where he attended Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts. After graduation he attended college for a year, where he studied economics, but he was soon offered a guest spot on the Nickelodeon series Bella and the Bullldogs (he had been spotted by a talent agent when performing in a play in high school and had begun acting in commercials). That year, he also had recurring guest roles on the sitcom The Goldbergs , and then in 2017 he was cast in MTV's Teen Wolf . He also appeared in the 2017 movie A Cowgirl's Story , and he plays Josh Flores in the Netflix original series One Day At a Time . Gutierrez is bilingual (see him speaking Spanish in this 2017 interview with Azteca Dallas, HERE , or in this 2015 interview, also with ...

The photo that San Martín posted on Facebook when he became a citizen of the United States in February of 2018. He captioned it "¡Feliz como lombriz!" Read more HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Roberto San Martín! (1976-      ) An actor from Havana, Cuba, the son of actress Susana Pérez (who has lived in Miami since 2008), he became known for his work in the Spanish series Aquí no hay quien viva (he played Yago in the 4th and 5th seasons), La que se avecina (playing Silvio in the 1st and 2nd seasons), and Amar en tiempos revueltos (playing Ubaldo in the 6th season). Since arriving in Miami in 2012, he has worked on several projects, including two Internet series,  Sobre Vivir en Miami and La Familia Pérez . San Martín became a citizen of the United States in 2018. He is an outspoken critic of the Castro regime (now the Miguel Díaz-Canel regime) and has stated "Deseo justicia ... Yo deseo libertad total y absoluta para las personas de Cuba" (I desir...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Gina Torres! (1969-       ) Photo from etonline.com in March 2018 article about Suits spinoff coming to TV. Click HERE .  An American actress born to Cuban parents in New York City, Torres attended LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts for singing and began pursuing her dream of becoming a performer directly after (she applied to and was accepted at several colleges but could not afford to go). She has been in multiple movies and television shows but is perhaps best known for her work in the USA Network's legal drama Suits . It was announced in March of 2018 that she would executive produce and star in a Suits spin-off centered around her character, Jessica Pearson. Torres won an ALMA Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in  a Syndicated Drama in 2001, and she has been nominated for ALMA Awards multiple times (click HERE to see her speak Spanish to a Telemundo reporter at the 2012 ALMA Awards). Gina Torres...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Alejandro Fernández ! (1971-       ) A Mexican singer who has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, he is known as "El Potrillo" (The Colt) by fans and the media. The son of singer Vicente Fernández  ("El Rey de la música ranchera"), Fernández started singing mariachi and ranchera like his father, but he branched into pop with great success. He has won two Latin Grammys and, like his father, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Success didn't always come easy, though. At his first public appearance in 1976 (ok, he was only five) he forgot the lyrics to his song halfway through and started to cry. His father had to come onstage and finish the song with him. Fernández has five children, three with his ex-wife América Guinart and two with Colombian model Ximena Díaz. To see the music video for his hit song Sé Que Te Duele Ft. Morat , click HERE . For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Photo from pe.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... George López! (1961-       ) A comedian and actor born in Los Angeles, López was raised by his maternal grandmother, Benita Gutierrez (his father left when he was a baby, and his mother remarried and left when he was ten). He never celebrated a birthday and dealt with bullying as the "darkest kid in the neighborhood" (read more in the 2002 New York Times article A Life So Sad He Had to be Funny , HERE ). Despite the difficulties of his childhood and conflicting feelings about his grandmother, who passed away in 2009, López acknowledges the huge role she played in his life, telling a writer for The Chicago Tribune in 2016, "I think about her every day. I think, probably, about her, like every hour" (click HERE for full article). López began pursuing stand-up comedy after graduation from high school, crediting comedian Freddie Prinze, his idol, for helping him realize it was possible. He was performi...

Guillermo Cabrera Infante and his wife, Miriam Gomez, as photographed for The Paris Review, 1983. Click HERE for interview.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Guillermo Cabrera Infante !  (1929-2005) A Cuban writer, screenwriter, and film critic who at first adamantly supported the Communist Revolution and Castro regime, Guillermo Cabrera Infante (who used the pseudonym G. Caín in the 1950s) went into exile in 1965 and became an outspoken critic of Castro and communism. Considered a member of the "Latin Boom" (alongside writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, and Carlos Fuentes), Cabrera nonetheless shunned this label. He was decidedly more libertarian than his contemporaries. As he explained in a 1983 Paris Review interview, which he gave when teaching at the University of Virginia as a guest professor, "Any literary work that aspires to the condition of art must forget politics, religion, and, ultimately, morals. Otherwise it will be a ...

 Photo from Wikimedia.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... JenCarlos Canela! (1988-       ) A bilingual singer, songwriter, and actor born in Miami to Cuban immigrant parents, JenCarlos Canela attended New World School of the Arts , a prestigious public magnet school in downtown Miami that claims many famous alumni (Tarell A McCraney, co-writer of the movie Moonlight, is one of them, as is television host Lili Estefan). He became well known as the protagonist Ángel Salvador on the Telemundo telenovela Más Sabe el Diablo , for which he also wrote songs (listen to Amor, Quédate , HERE ). In 2012 Canela collaborated with Emilio Estefan to record the song Sueña for Telemundo's coverage of the Olympics. He has three studio albums to his name: Búscame (2009), Un Nuevo Día (2011), and Jen (2014). All have been commercially successful. In 2015 and 2016 Canela worked with Eva Longoria on her television show Telenovela, and in 2016 he played Jesus Christ in the m...

Photo from screenertv.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Carlos Valdes (1989-       )! An actor and singer from Colombia best known for his role as Cisco Roman/Vibe on the television series The Flash (2014-present), Valdes was born in Colombia and moved to Miami with his family when he was five years old. When he was 12, he moved once again to Marietta, Georgia. Valdes, who sings and plays piano, guitar, ukulele, bass, and percussion in addition to acting, studied Musical Theater at the University of Michigan. He graduated in 2011. While there he also honed his skills with the musical theater group StarKid Productions. After graduation, Valdes appeared in stage productions of High School Musical, The Wedding Singer, Jersey Boys , and Once . Once was nominated for a Tony in 2013. To hear Valdes talk about his role as Cisco in The Flash , click HERE . To read more about him in the post "Five Things You Didn't Know About Carlos Valdes," click HERE ,...

Luis Miguel in Miami in 2011. Photo from billboard.com article announcing the new tv series based on Luis Miguel's life, which Netflix bought the rights to in Latin America and Spain, and Telemundo bought the rights to in the U.S. Series premieres in April 2018. Click HERE  for article.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Luis Miguel! (1970- ) A Mexican singer often referred to as "El Sol de México," Luis Miguel has multiple Grammys, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 16 #1 songs on the Billboard chart (second only to Enrique Iglesias), and 22 highly successful albums (he has sold more than 100 million). In 1993 he helped celebrate Frank Sinatra's 80th birthday with a special concert alongside Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Cole, Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan. He had been personally invited by Sinatra to do so. Though famously private, he now has a television series based on his life broadcast in Latin America, Spain, and the United States (read more and see a short trailer H...

Photo from The Advocate . Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... America Ferrera! (1984-        ) " Every single one of us, we can leave the next generation with a better reflection of [its] innate worth and inherent power simply by claiming and living in our own power ." -America Ferrera (see article in The Advocate , link under photo at right, for more in this speech) An American actress and activist born to Honduran parents in Los Angeles, Ferrera is perhaps best known for her role as Betty Suarez in the ABC comedy/drama Ugly Betty (2006-2010), though she made her film debut before that, winning accolades for her role in the 2002 comedy/drama Real Women Have Curves . She was also in the popular 2005 movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants . She has been in numerous television shows and movies then, and she has received recognition in the form of an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award, among others. In 2007 Time magazine named her...

Photo from elmundo.com, in an article about the documentary made about her by Mexican Rubén Rojo, with an emphasis on her last performance, which was an homage to Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Chavela Vargas (Isabel Vargas Lizano)! (1919-2012) Chavelas Vargas, a Costa-Rican singer who adopted Mexico as a her homeland (her last words were purportedly "I go with Mexico in my heart"), was the recipient of a 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Grammys. She was also the muse to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and the lover of Frida Kahlo and other famous women. Born in Costa Rica in 1919, she left the country in her teens and headed to Mexico City, where she began her career singing ranchera music on the streets. By her thirties, she was a star, well-known for the red jorongo that she donned at every performance. She refused to be defined by gender stereotypes and often performed in pants (shocking at the time!) and w...

Photo from vibe.com article announcing ABC's just announced television series (January 2018) inspired by the life of Selena. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Selena Quintanilla-Pérez! (1971-1993) "The Queen of Tejano Music" who paved the way for success by artists such as Shakira, Ricky Martin, and Jennifer Lopez (who played Selena in the 1997 movie about her life), Selena still inspires devotion from fans around the world. April 16th is "Selena Day" in Texas (as declared by Texas Governor George W. Bush two weeks after her death) and marked annually with a two-day music festival, La Fiesta del Flor , in Corpus Christi, Texas. Selena, who is Mexican-American, was born in Lake Jackson, Texas in 1971 and grew up speaking English as her first language. She started singing in her father's Tex-Mex restaurant, Papa Gayo's, when she was only eight years old alongside her brother, Abraham III (playing bass guitar), and her sister, Suzette (playing dru...

Photo from rollingstone.com, September 2107, in post about Fonsi's performance of Despacito with The Roots on The Tonight Show. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Luis Fonsi (Luis Alfonso Rodríguez López-Cepero! (1978-     ) If you haven't yet heard of Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, you almost definitely have heard his 2017 hit song with Daddy Yankee (remix featuring Justin Bieber), Despacito. The Despacito video on YouTube broke records with more than 5 billion views (and also made history when it was hacked in April 2018). Despacito has also spawned interesting discussions about the aspects of race in reggaeton music and the fact that this song was so successful (see interview in The Atlantic with Wellesley college professor Pietra Rivera-Rideau , author of Remixing Reggaeton: The Cultural Politics of Race in Puerto Rico . As Rivera-Rideau says, "It's an interesting moment to think about how this genre has moved from being so maligned, marginal...

Axel Ramirez (third from left) with his band, Alta Consigna in 2017. Photo from an article about the band on aldíadallas.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Axel Ramirez! (2000-  ) Ramirez is a singer and guitarist for the band Alta Consigna, which was formed in Tijuana, Mexico in 2014 by childhood friends Aarón Gil and Alan Balderrama (Axel and fellow band member Dani Vidal joined soon after). Another original member of the group, Crecer German, left to pursue a solo career. The band started by playing at parties and bars in Tijuana, where they were popular, and then decided to upload some videos to Facebook, which is when they really shot to fame. Their official videos, like Culpable Tú ,  No Te Pido Mucho , and El Poder de Tu Mirada have millions of views, and the group has over a million Facebook fans (as well as a significant presence on other social media sites). See them arrive for a concert in Chicago to the delight of fans, who have been singing the...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Olga Tañón! (1967-     ) Photo from a 2010 NY Daily News profile of Tañón. Click HERE .  A singer from Puerto Rico with 14 studio albums, two Grammys, three Latin Grammys, and 29 Premios Lo Nuestro, Tañón is known as La Mujer de Fuego (The Woman of Fire) for her passionate performances. She first became a solo artist in 1992, when she recorded the appropriately named merengue album Sola after leaving the group Chantelle . As the youngest of four children growing up in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, she sang often and joined the group Las Nenas de Ringo y Jossie as a teen. It was from there that she was recruited into Chantelle. Tañón and husband Billy Denizard have two sons, and Tañón has a daughter from a previous (short and tumultuous) marriage with former Puerto Rican baseball player Juan González. Her daughter has had health problems throughout her life, and Tañón often speaks about both the challenges and joys of parenting her. She sings...

Photo from variety.com for a story/interview with García after the death of Fidel Castro in 2016. In the article he states: " I pray for what I have always prayed for: the restoration of our constitution and absolute freedom for the people of Cuba. That dream is very much alive. Let the spirit of José Martí and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. show us the way. " Click HERE  for the full article.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Andy García (Andrés Arturo García Menéndez)! (1956-    ) A Cuban-American actor known for his roles in Oceans 11, Oceans 12 , and Oceans 13 , The Godfather III , and The Untouchables , among many other film and television roles, García came to the United States from Cuba with his parents at the age of 5. His mother, an English teacher, and his father, a lawyer, decided to leave after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. García's father got the family out via Operation Peter Pan , and he was only able to escape himself under the guise of walking two childr...

A promotion for Alvarez's concert in Oakland, CA before his tour was cancelled. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Julión Álvarez! (1983- ) A singer from Mexico whose 2018 album Ni Diablo Ni Santo (Neither a Devil nor a Saint) was nominated for a Grammy for Best Regional Mexican Music Album, Álvarez began his career in 2003 with the group Banda MS. In 2006, he left Banda MS and started Julión Álvarez and his Norteño Banda. He has produced 12 albums with that band. In 2014 he was a coach on the show La Voz ... México (The Voice in Mexico), and his student, Guido Rochin, won the whole competition. The next year, Álvarez won Favorite Regional Mexican Band, Duo or Group and Favorite Regional Mexican Song (Y Fue Así - listen HERE ) from the Latin American Music Awards (Telemundo). In August of 2017 Álvarez (along with several others, including Mexican soccer player Rafa Marquez) was linked to Mexican drugpin Flores Hernandez by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. His assets ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Dolores Huerta! (1930-        ) ¡Sí se puede!  -Dolores Huerta Photo from the L.A. Times, January 2017. Click HERE . A civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farmworkers Association with César Chávez (which later became the United Farmworkers, or UFW), Dolores Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 and stood beside Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968 as he made a victory speech after winning the California Democratic presidential primary election, moments before he was shot and killed. She has continued to fight for the rights of immigrants, workers, and women ever since. She has won numerous awards for her community service and civil rights work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. Born in New Mexico to Mexican immigrant parents, Huerta was raised mostly by her mother after her parents' divorce when she was three. Her father was a coa...

Photo from YCF Diving, where Ruiz is the head coach. Click HERE .   ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Mark Ruiz! (1979-        ) An Olympic diver from Toa Alta, Puerto Rico, Ruiz started diving at the age of 9. He moved to Florida at the age of 12 to further train, and he was the individual state champion for diving all four years of high school. In 1999, he swept all three events at US Nationals, the first diver to do so since Greg Louganis. That year, he also won the Pan Am Games gold medal. Ruiz competed in the Olympics in 2000 and 2004, and he was a US National Champion 22 times. Ruiz now runs Mark Ruiz Diving Camps for athletes from all over the country, and he is the head coach for YCF Diving. He is married to Nicole Bolt, an NCAA All American at the University of Florida who was also a state champion diver at his high school. In 2017, Ruiz raised money to help with recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. His GoFundMe pa...

Photo from billboard.com Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Joan Sebastian (José Manuel Figueroa)! (1951-2015) A Mexican singer who won four Grammys and seven Latin Grammys, Sebastian was born in Juliantla, a small town in Guerrero, Mexico. As he told the New York Times in this excellent 2012 profile (click HERE ), his father bought him a transistor radio when we was a child and he listened to country stations from as far away as Nashville. He began writing music when he was 11. At 14, he entered the seminary to study to become a priest, but he fell in love with a girl who often visited her brother, and at 17 he left to follow his heart, and to write his music. He moved to Chicago and worked as a dishwasher and a used cars salesman for a while, but he always believed that he would do something special with his life, and he always played his music. He gained a following in the 80s and became especially popular when he started riding his horses on stage to begin a concert a ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Gabriela Mistral (Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga)! (1889-1957) Image from Biblioteca Yacucho. Click HERE .  A Chilean poet, educator, and diplomat, she was the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1945), and she remains the only Latin American woman to have won the prize to date. As this 2003 New York Times article asserts, there is probably "no town in [Chile] that does not have a street, square or school named for her." Her image also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note. Born in Vicuña, Chile to a seamstress mother and a guitar-playing, poetry-writing father who abandoned the family when she was three, Mistral grew up surrounded by the Andes Mountains. Though she only attended school until she was 11, she nonetheless began writing poetry at the age of 13. A year later, she became a teacher's aide and discovered a passion for the classroom that would never wane. She taught elementary and secondary school for ye...

Photo from Wikipedia ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Adrián Alonso! (1994-       ) A Mexican actor, Alonso played the role of Carlitos in the 2008 movie Under the Same Moon alongside Kate del Castillo and Eugenio Derbez. He won an Imagen Award for that role, beating out Javier Bardem (read more HERE) . See him and Derbez interviewed by People en español (Derbez praises Alonso's maturity) HERE . Alonso also had a role in the 2005 movie Voces Inocentes , which tells the story of the civil war in El Salvador from a child's point of view. Alonso has appeared in many film and television projects since his role as Carlitos, including, most recently, a recurring role in the Mexican telenovela Yago . For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.