El cinco de mayo/May 5th

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¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Lilian Tintori! (1978-     )

Lilian Tintori at a rally in support of political prisoners
in Venezuela in 2015. Click HERE for full story. 
Wife of Venezuela's jailed (now on house arrest) opposition leader Leopoldo López, Tintori  was a Venezuelan athlete and television and radio personality before becoming involved in politics through her marriage to López in 2006. Born in Caracas, the capital, to a Venezuelan mother and an Argentinian father, she studied at Merici Academy and earned a Bachelor's degree in preschool education with a minor in political communications from the Andrés Bello Catholic University. Her career in the entertainment industry began with a 2001 stint on the popular Venezuelan reality tv show Robinson: La Gran Aventura. She was then a television host with RCTV and Televen. She was also Venezuela's 2003 Kitesurfing National Champion.  She and López were married in May of 2007, when he was mayor of Chacao, a municipality of Caracas. After he was arrested during the 2014 Venezuelan protests, she became a more public face of Venezuela's opposition movement. She has met with many international leaders (such as Joe Biden (when he was Vice President), Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and Pope Francis) to advocate for releasing political prisoners in Venezuela. In September of 2017 she published an Op-Ed in The New York Times, This Isn't the Venezuela I Married, once again critiquing the Maduro regime and calling for the release of political prisoners. In January of 2018 her third child with López, Federica, was born (see more HERE). She is interviewed at her home in 2016 and describes the difficulties of her husband's imprisonment HERE.

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

Other May 5th events of note:

¡Cinco de Mayo! (of course!) - Celebrates the 1862 battle in which Mexican troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza defeat the French despite being far outnumbered.

Other May 5th birthdays of note:

Ignacio Ramonet (1943-      ): Spanish journalist and friend of Fidel Castro (he wrote his autobiography).

Raúl Jimenez (1991-       ): Mexican soccer player who played for Mexico in the Olympics in 2012.

Santiago Cabrera (1978-     ): A Venezuelan actor (Heroes, with Hayden Pannetierre) and semi-professional soccer player, he was born in Venezuela but grew up in England, Romania, Canada, and Spain.

Agustín Barrios (1885-1944): Musician from Paraguay famous for his composition Catedral.




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