El diecisiete de abril/April 17th

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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 wearing a gun. A heavy drinker, she became an alcoholic and disappeared for more than a decade in the 70s. Nursed back to health by an indigenous family who had no idea who she was, Vargas made a resurgence in the 1990s and became internationally renown once again. At age 82, she published her autobiography, Y si quieres saber de mi vida/And If You Want to Know About My Life. She performed in Carnegie Hall in September of 2003 (click HERE to hear her rendition of the famous La Llorona). In 2012, at the age of 93, she performed in Spain to honor poet Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936), the Spanish poet murdered by Nationalist forces at the beginning of the Civil War. Vargas is the subject of multiple documentaries (click HERE to see the trailer for the 2017 documentary Chavela). Read more (in English) in this 2017 New Yorker article, or in this one from 2017 in Forbes.

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

Other April 17th birthdays:

Photo from wikipedia
Gabriel Soto (1975-      ): Mexican model and actor known for his work in many Mexican telenovelas.

Other April 17th events of note:

1492 - Las capitulaciones de Santa Fe. Christopher Columbus (Cristobál Colón) meets with Los Reyes Católicos Ferdinand and Isabela in Granada, Spain where they tell him he can keep 10% of all profit from his trip to "India," where he is looking for spices.

1961 - The Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Fidel Castro defeats American forces.

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