Famous Latinx Birthdays

Click HERE for Emanero's website.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Emanero (Federico Andrés Giannoni)! (1987-     ) An Argentinian rapper who started performing when he was 15, Emanero released his first demo, Mi Primer Maqueta , in 2004. He attracted the attention of Sigla Music , an independent label, who then helped him turn his demo into an album, Bienvenidos a Mi Mundo , which sold over two million copies in two years. His second album, Arjé , produced by independent label Benditas Producciones , included socially conscious songs such as Más tenemos, Más Queremos and Miedos   (which includes the line "La Argentina sangra y todos bailan por un sueño.") In 2013 Emanero released Si no haces nada sos parte , which became the theme song of Argentina's national anti-bullying campaign. Emanero's third album, Tres , was released in 2014. As the host of the show AcciónArte , produced by FWTV, Emanero investigates different social issues (the show premiered last year...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Cheyo Carrillo (Xavier "Cheyo" Carrillo)! (1998-     ) A singer and songwriter from Los Angeles with Mexican roots (his grandparents are from Sinaloa, Mexico), Carrillo started singing at festivals and family parties at the age of 4. When he was six, he self-recorded an album of 10 songs to give out to friends and family. And in 2006, at the age of 8, he won first place in a singing competition on El Show de Don Cheto . That same year he got an accordion and started playing. Several years later he became the accordion player for the group Bukanas de Culiacán , and then, a year after that, for Alfredo Ríos "El Komander ." From there, he branched off and began a solo career. His 2016 music video No Es Normal  (click HERE ) has nearly 6 million views on YouTube, with the videos for songs such as El Más Grande Amor and Estando Contigo also amassing millions of views. In a 2017 interview (in Spanish) with Los Angeles radio personality Pepe...

Photo from eldemocrata.com, from story about March 2018 performance of her work. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Pita Amor (Guadalupe Teresa Amor Schmidtlein)! (1918-2000) A Mexican poet known for challenging the social norms of her age (she had passionate affairs, was a single mother, posed nude for painters Diego Rivera and Antonio Peláez, and never shied away from saying exactly what she thought), Amor was the last of seven children born into a wealthy, conservative family. Even as a child, she was rebellious (she has said that as a child she was graciosa (funny), as an adolescent she was llorona (moody), and as a young adult she was cabrona (an a*hole, more or less). She published her second (and perhaps most famous) book of poetry Yo soy mi casa (I Am My Home) in 1946, dedicating it to her friend Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean poet who had won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945 (the first Latin American woman to do so). She went on to publish eight more bo...

Fonseca with his wife, Juliana, and children, Paz and Manolo. Image from El Tiempo. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Fonseca (Juan Fernando Fonseca)! (1979- ) A Colombian singer and composer who has won 6 Latin Grammy Awards and one Billboard Latin Music Award, Fonseca has five albums to his name, including 2015's Conexión . His 2012 album, Ilusión , was nominated for a Grammy (Best Latin Pop Album). Born in Bogotá, he always had an affinity for music, even recording a song and having 500 copies made for friends and family when he was only 12. He went on to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and he released his first album, Fonseca , after studying there. Fonseca has worked with Marca Colombia, a program run by the Colombian government to reeducate the world about their country. His 2018 video Simples Corazones was produced in Colombia and has many beautiful shots of Bogotá and the surrounding country (click HERE ). He and wife Juliana met each other in high s...

Photo from mlb.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Jhonny Peralta! (1982-      ) A baseball player from the Dominican Republic who was an MLB All-Star in 2011, 2013, and 2015, Peralta is currently a free agent. He first signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1999 and has played with the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals as well. Peralta is married, and he and wife Molly have three girls, including twins Gabriela and Laina. See him interviewed (in Spanish) in this short video (minute :55) HERE . For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE. Other May 28th birthdays of note: Marco Rubio (1971-    ): A Cuban American Republican senator from Miami, Rubio decided to run for President of the United States in 2015, though he suspended his campaign in 2016 when he did not win the Republican primary in Florida. See a short video (in Spanish) about him HERE .

Photo from Facebook.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Paulina Holguín! (1991-      ) A Mexican singer and actress who got her start with Disney Channel Latin America, Holguín is now part of the duo Pau y Davo with her younger brother David Holguín (click HERE to see the video for their song Para estar contigo ). Born in Hermosillo, in Sonora, Mexico, Holguín is the only girl of her parents' four children. She began acting at age 11, and at age 15 she was in High School Musical: El Desafío , which aired through all of Latin America (click HERE to see her sing Eres la música en mí ). She has also been the host of Disney Planet and Zapping Zone , as well as one of the stars of the Disney show Highway , which led to her accompanying the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez on parts of their world tours. For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE. Other May 27th birthdays of note: Jaime Lusinchi (1924-2014): A physician who became...

Photo (from minuto30.com. Click HERE ) of Cuadrado's mother, wife, daughter, and stepsister with him after a game.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Juan Cuadrado! (1988-) A professional soccer player from Colombia, Cuadrado now plays for the Italian club Juventus as well as the Colombian national team. He is featured alongside Lionel Messi on the cover of FIFA 2016 in Latin America. Cuadrado was born in Necolí, Colombia, and during his childhood experienced the violence of war (Colombia was going through what is referred to as "The Colombian Conflict," which was first a part of the Cold War (1964-1991) and then a part of the War on Drugs (1991-2016, when a peace deal was signed)). When he was just four years old there was a firefight by his home and he hid under the bed, as his parents instructed him to do. That saved his life, but his father was killed. Cuadrado's mother, now responsible for earning a living (Cuadrado's father had been a truck driver), went to wor...

Photo from eltecolote.org. Click HERE.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a Rosario Castellanos! (1925-1974) A poet and author who is considered one of the most important Mexican writers of the 20th century, Castellanos was known for representing the struggles of women, of the poor, and of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Her work has influenced feminist theory and inspired a generation of feminist leaders in Mexico. Born into a privileged family in Mexico City and raised in the southern state of Chiapas, Castellanos lost her brother to appendicitis when she was only seven. She then lost her parents when she was 16, one year after the family lost most of its land under reforms instituted by President Lázaro Cárdenas.  Castellanos went on to study philosophy and literature at UNAM. After graduating, she wrote extensively. Her first novel, Balún Canán,   published in 1958, dealt with the struggles between indigenous Mexicans and European landowners. Today, it is considered part of a...

Photo from nbcsports.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Bartolo "Big Sexy" Colón! (1973- ) A pitcher with Major League Baseball from 1997 to 2017, Bartolo now plays in the minor leagues. A pitcher, he won the Cy Young Award in 2005 and was a player on four MLB All-Star teams (1998, 2005, 2013, and 2016). Bartolo grew up in Altamira, Dominican Republic, where he met his future wife at the age of 13. From the age of 9 to 14, he worked alongside his father harvesting coffee beans and fruit. He also honed his aim by throwing rocks at coconuts and mangoes (read more in this 2017 New York Times story, HERE ). Colón lives in Clifton, New Jersey with his wife and family. Hear him interviewed (in Spanish) in 2015 HERE . For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Photo from latintrends.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a Ruth Fernández! (1919-2012) A singer from Puerto Rico hailed as "el alma de Puerto Rico hecha canción" (the soul of Puerto Rico made song), Fernández became a senator representing the U.S. commonwealth later in life. She was elected in 1973 and served for 8 years (she was an advocate for keeping Puerto Rico's commonwealth status, opposing both statehood and independence). Born in Ponce, Fernández lost her mother when she was only 6 years old, and she and her four siblings were raised by their grandmother. She began singing professionally at the age of 14, when she would sing for the local radio stations. She was hired by Mingo, the bandleader of a locally popular band, in 1940 and began performing with them, and then signed with Columbia Records in 1941. As an Afro-Puerto Rican woman, Fernández is credited with breaking racial and gender barriers. In 1945, she was told to enter the concert at The Vanderbi...

Image from elem.mx. Click HERE .  Feliz cumpleaños a ... Rita Cetina Gutiérrez (1846-1908) A poet, educator, and feminist who educated a generation of young leaders in Mexico, Cetina was born in Mérida, Yucatán in 1846 to Colonel Don Pedro Cetina and Jacoba Gutiérrez. Her father was killed when she was only 14, and a benefactor helped assure that she obtained an education. Cetina was already a respected, published poet when, in 1870, she opened La Siempreviva , Mexico's first secular school for poor girls as well as an art college for young women. She rejected the idea that women should only study domestic skills and included astronomy, law, geometry, geography, history, math, and geography in the curriculum. In 1877 the governor of Yucatán founded El Instituto Literario de Niñas (ILN) and asked Cetina to be the director. She agreed, and in 1886 La Siempreviva and ILN merged. For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE. Other May 22nd birthdays ...

Photo from guideposts.org. Click HERE .  Feliz cumpleaños a ... Eduardo Verastegui (1974-         ) A Mexican singer, actor, and model, Verastegui gained fame in his native Mexico as a member of the band Kairo and as an actor in many telenovelas. He also modeled, appearing in many advertisements for Calvin Klein. In 2001 he appeared in Jennifer López's music video Ain't It Funny , and in 2003 he starred in the movie Chasing Papi ( Papi Chulo ) with Sofia Vergara, Jaci Velasquez and Roselyn Sánchez. He was often called "the Brad Pitt of Mexico." Before appearing in Chasing Papi , Verastegui started taking English lessons to improve his pronunciation, and his teacher, who was a practicing Catholic, began questioning him about his life. She asked him if he was helping to change the perception of Latinos by the roles he accepted, if he was using his talents to leave a lasting legacy, and if he were the type of man he would want a future daughter of his t...

Photo from diariossobrediarios.com.ar. Click HERE .  Feliz cumpleaños a ... Zelmar Michelini (May 20 1924-May 20 1976) A Uruguayan journalist and politician who spoke out about the human rights abuses during " Operation Condor " in South America, he was kidnapped (in front of two of his children), tortured and killed in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. He was in Argentina, exiled from his home country of Uruguay, due to the 1973 coup d'etat that put in place a civilian-military dictatorship with Juan María Bordaberry at its head. In 2010 Bordaberry was convicted of human rights abuses, including the assassination of Michelini, and sentenced to 30 years (read more HERE ). In 2016, on the 40th anniversary of Michelini's death, his ten children stood at his gravesite and read a statement, saying that their father always fought for "libertad, democracia, derechos humanos e igualdad social" (liberty, democracy, human rights, and social equality) (read the ...

Poniatowska before receiving the Premio Cervantes in 2013. Photo accompanies an interview about her book on Lupe Marín, the second wife of muralist Diego Rivera. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Elena Poniatowska! (1932-     ) A Mexican journalist and author who was born in France after her family fled the Mexican Revolution, Poniatowska has more than forty books to her name. Much of her work focuses on social injustice in Mexico, especially for women and the poor. In 2014 she won the Premio Cervantes, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish language (read more in the L.A. Times article, HERE ). Poniatowska, whose first language is French, lived there for the first ten years of her life. When she was ten, she and her mother moved back to Mexico to flee World War II, while her father stayed in France to fight (he participated in D Day). She spent some time in the late 1940s being educated in the United States, at Eden Hall, a convent boarding ...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Luisana Lopilato! (1987-      ) Photo from Facebook. Click HERE .  Lopilato is an Argentine actress, singer and model who has appeared on the shows Chiquititas, Rebelde Way, Alma Pirata, Casados con Hijos (the Argentine version of Married with Children) ,  Atracción x4 and En Terapía (the Argentine version of Treatment), among many others. From 2002 to 2007 she was a member of the group Erreway (formed on the show Rebelde Way ), which released three studio albums that sold more than 5 million copies. The band was featured in the 2004 film Erreway: 4 Caminos , a box office hit. Since 2011 she has been married to Canadian singer Michael Bublé, and together they have two children, Noah (2013) and Elías (2016). The couple met in 2009 when Lopilato appeared in Bublé's music video  I Just Haven't Met You Yet . In January of 2018 they announced that they were expecting their third child (read more (in Spanish) HERE ). For resource...

Photo from mlb.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Carlos Peña! (1978-     ) Carlos Peña is a 14 year veteran of the MLB who was first drafted (in the first round) by the Rangers in 1998. Originally from the Dominican Republic, he moved with his family (his parents and three younger siblings) to the United States when he was 12. They at first lived with an uncle of his. Peña attended Haverhill High School in Massachusetts and then Wright State University in Ohio for a quarter until transferring to Northeastern, where he studied electrical engineering and led the Huskies to the NCAA tournament. In 2008, Peña was tied for most home runs (39) in the American. He was also nominated that year by the Rays for the Roberto Clemente Award, which recognizes players for exemplifying on-field achievement and sportsmanship. In 2009, Peña was an American League All-Star. He had 286 career home runs and 818 RBIs. Over his career, in addition to the Rangers, he played f...

Photo from Getty Images. Sabatini in 1996, the year she retired from professional tennis. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Gabriela Sabatini!  (1970-       ) A professional tennis player from Argentina who won the US Open in 1990 and the Wimbledon Doubles Title in 1988, among many other accomplishments, Sabatini is now a businesswoman (she has a line of fragrances) and activist (fighting for the rights of children and human rights). Born in Buenos Aires, she is also proud of her Italian roots (her paternal great grandparents immigrated to Argentina from Italy at the end of the 19th century, like so many others), and she obtained Italian citizenship in 2003. Sabatini started played tennis at the age of 6 and won her first tournament at the age of 8. In 1985, at the age of 15, she was one of the youngest ever players to reach the finals of the French Open, where she lost to Chris Evert. In 2006, she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall o...

Image from La comisión de derechos humanos del Distrito Federal (CDHDF). Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Digna Ochoa (Digna Ochoa y Plácido! (1964-2001) A human rights lawyer in Mexico, she won Amnesty International's "Enduring Spirit" Award in 2000 (presented by actor Martin Sheen). In October of 2001 she was shot and killed in her law office, and a note was found beside her warning other human rights lawyers that this could happen to them as well. Nonetheless, her death was ruled a suicide by Mexico City authorities (read more HERE ). Journalist Linda Diebel, who headed the Toronto Star's Latin America bureau for seven years before transferring to Washington, debunks the suicide theory in her 2007 book Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa (see this review in The New Yorker ).   Ochoa was from Veracruz, Mexico, where she attended law school. She began working part-time for the Attorney General's office in Veracruz in 1984. Several years later,...

Photo from telemundo.com story (includes video of her and son Manuel, born in January of 2017). Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Anahí (Anahí Giovanna Puente de Velasco)! (1983-      ) A Mexican singer, songwriter, actress, record producer, and dancer, she has also been the First Lady of Chiapas since her marriage in 2015 to Governor of Chiapas Manuel Velasco Coello. She started her acting career at the age of two on the show Chiquilladas and went on to appear in many successful telenovelas, including the wildly successful Rebelde (2004-2006), which was based on the popular Argentine series Rebelde Way . As such, she was a member of the musical group Rebelde , which sold more than 20 million albums worldwide and was nominated for two Latin Grammys. She has since gone solo and has six studio albums, including 2016's Inesperado . Anahí suffered from anorexia as a teenager that required serious treatment (at one point the disease caused her heart to stop fo...

From ¡HOLA! México Edition, May 2018. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Itatí Cantoral (1975-   )! A Mexican actress, singer, dancer, and producer perhaps best known for her role as Alejandra Álvarez del Castillo Fernández in the televisa telenovela Hasta que el dinero nos separ e (for which she won Best Actress from People en español in 2010), Cantoral is the daughter of Mexican composer and songwriter Roberto Cantoral and Argentine actress of Italian descent Itatí Zucchi. She started acting professionally at the age of 13 and has done work in theater as well as television. Cantoral has twins (Eduardo and Roberto Miguel, born in 2000) with first husband Eduardo Santamarina and a daughter (María Itatí, born in 2008) with second husband Carlos Alberto Cruz. She is currently the lead in the upcoming biographical series Silvia Pinal, frente a ti . For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE. Other May 13th birthdays of note: Enrique Bo...

Image from Nicaragua's El Nuevo Diario, July 2010. Click HERE.  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Claribel Alegría (Clara Isabel AlegríaVides)! (1924- Jan. 25, 2018) An internationally recognized poet, essayist, novelist and journalist who was born in Nicaragua, Alegría was raised (from the age of 9 months) in El Salvador after her father, a doctor, went into exile under pressure for protesting human rights violations during the United States' occupation of Nicaragua (1912-1933). Alegría's mother was from a prominent coffee growing family in El Salvador, and the family moved back to her town, Santa Ana. There, Alegría began composing poems at the age of six (dictating them to her mother, as she was too young to read or write). She published her first poems in Repertorio Americano at the age of 17. She attended George Washington University in the United States, graduating in 1948 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Letters. It was there that she met the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jimén...

Photo from latina.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Prince Royce (Geoffrey Royce Rojas)! (1989-     ) An American singer and songwriter with Dominican roots who was born and raised in The Bronx, New York, Prince Royce has won 19 Billboard Latin Music Awards and 17 Premios Lo Nuestro , along with a host of other honors. He started by performing bachata (a genre of music that originated in the Dominican Republic in the first half of the 20th century and has elements of Indigenous, African, and European music) but has ventured into other types of music in recent albums (read more in this 2015 New York Times article about his first all English album). Royce started writing poetry and music at the age of 13. The second oldest of four children, he was raised by his father, a taxi driver, and his mother, a beauty salon owner. He saved the thousands of dollars needed to produce his first demo by working at Sprint. Recently, he began working with Sprint again...

Photo/Image from scholastic.com. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Ellen Ochoa! (1958) An engineer and veteran astronaut who is currently the director of The Johnson Space Center, Ochoa is the first Hispanic women to have gone to space (with the space shuttle Discovery in 1993) and the first Hispanic director of The Johnson Space Center. Ochoa's paternal grandparents were immigrants from Mexico who came to the United States to provide their family with more opportunities. Of them, Ochoa has said that she could only imagine the astonishment and pride they would feel upon knowing that their granddaughter had travelled to space, as they had been born in Mexico in the 1870s and had come to this country to lift up their family ("Sólo puedo imaginar el asombro y el orgullo de mis abuelos, quienes nacieron en México en la década de 1870, hubieran sentido al saber que su nieta creció para viajar al espacio. Vinieron a Estados Unidos para levantar a su familia. Junto a la pas...

Photo from 2011 Mother Jones interview. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Rosario Dawson! (1979-       ) An actress and activist who is also a singer, producer, and comic book writer, Dawson was born to her Puerto Rican-Cuban mother in New York City when her mother was just 16. The man her mother married when Dawson was one is who she considers her father. Dawson was discovered while sitting on a  porch stoop when she was just 15 and made her feature film debut in the 1995 independent drama Kids . She has not looked back since, appearing in many movies including He Got Game (1998), Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Men in Black II (2002), 25th Hour (2005) ( 25th Hour is a movie by Spike Lee, and a friend of mine who lost several loved ones in the attacks of September 11th told me to watch it as it was an elegy to the city and those lost, even though the attacks are not directly referenced), Rent (2005), Sin City (2005), Death Proof (2007), Seve...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Enrique Iglesias! (1975- ) Often called "The King of Latin Pop," Iglesias is a Spanish singer, songwriter, actor, and record producer who has lived in Miami since he was a child. He has sold over 100 million records and holds the record for #1 Spanish language singles on Billboard's Hot Latin Tracks chart (he has 27). Iglesias was born in Spain in 1975 to socialite and magazine journalist Isabel Preysler and legendary singer Julio Iglesias. His parents divorced in 1979, and for a few years, Iglesias and his siblings stayed with their mother in Spain, but after their grandfather was kidnapped by the Basque terrorist group ETA in 1981, it was decided that Spain was not safe for them, so Enrique and his brother went to live with their father in Miami. There, he was raised mostly by his nanny, Elvira Olivares, to whom he dedicated his first album. He graduated from Gulliver Prep School and then went on to University of Miami, where he planned to stud...

Photo from GQ Magazine, July 2017, in an article about Balvin's pop-up store in the Paris boutique Colette. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... J. Balvin (José Álvaro Osorio Balvin)! (1985-      ) A musician from Medellín, Colombia whose breakthrough came in 2012 with the song Yo te lo dije , an international hit, Balvin has been composing and performing music since he learned to play the guitar at age 12. Though he is known now as a reggaeton star, he started as a grunge rocker obsessed with Metallica and Nirvana (he has a Nirvana tattoo on his knee). He credits Daddy Yankee for inspiring him to go into reggaeton, though he also acknowledges Héctor Lavoe and Snoop Dogg as influential. At this point, he has collaborated with numerous artists on a variety of projects, including Beyoncé (and her daughter Blue Ivy) for a remix of his hit single Mi Gente in 2017 (click HERE for more on that). The original Mi Gente video on YouTube now has more than 1.7 billio...

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Angela Hernández Nuñez! (1954-       ) Photo from alternativasnoticias.com, in a 2016 announcement that Hernández had been awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura in the Dominican Republic. Click HERE .  A writer from the Dominican Republic who won the Premio Nacional de Literatura there in 2016, Hernández was born and raised in Jarabacoa. She graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo and was even a professor there before turning to writing full-time. As she told a group of students in March of 2016 "I could not escape my vocation as a writer. After studying Chemical engineering, I had to accept that the only work in which I felt free to create and didn't feel like I was working was this one, being a writer" ( No podía evadir mi vocación de escribir, luego de estudiar ingeniería Química, tuve que aceptar que, en la única labor que podía sentirme libre de crear y no creer qu...