Famous Latinx Birthdays

Photo from eldiario.es. Click HERE . ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Eduardo Galeano! (1940-2015) A Uruguayan journalist, writer, and novelist considered one of the most important figures of the Latin American left, Galeano's book Las venas abiertas de América Latina (1971) was one of the few possessions writer Isabel Allende took with her when she fled Chile after Pinochet's military coup. The book, which chronicles U.S. and European imperialism in the region, was also given to President Barack Obama by Venezuela's leader Hugo Chávez in 2009 when he made an official state visit (click HERE for more). Galeano, who was born in Montevideo, began his career as a journalist in the early 60s as an editor for Marcha , an influential weekly journal. After the military coup in Uruguay in 1973, he was imprisoned and later forced to flee to Argentina. When the Videla regime took over Argentina several years later, he fled to Spain. He returned to Uruguay in 1985 when democracy was re...

Photo from The Paris Review, 1984. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Julio Cortázar! (1914-1984) An Argentinian writer known as a modern master of the short story, though he also wrote poetry, novels, and other works, Cortázar is credited as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom. Born in Brussels in 1914, he and his family returned to Argentina after the war, and he grew up in Banfield, near Buenos Aires. His father left the family soon after they returned in 1919, never to be heard from again. As a child, Cortázar was often sick and spent much time in bed reading the works of Jules Verne. He graduated with a degree in teaching and worked as a schoolteacher through the 1940s, only writing on the side. In 1951 he moved to Paris and began writing in earnest. By the time he died in 1984 at 69 years old, he was widely revered for his writing, and the Madrid newspaper El País published 11 full pages of tributes and farewells over two days. Cortázar became deeply inves...

Photo from Revista Arcadia. Click HERE .  ¡Feliz cumpleaños a... Andrés Ospina! (1976-    ) A Colombian writer who has also worked in radio and television, Ospina often writes about Bogotá, where he was born and raised. Since May of 2014 he has hosted the documentary series Callejeando , about the history and culture of Bogotá (click HERE to see an episode). And since 2016 he has written and presented the show Leer es volar TV (click HERE) . Ospina has written novels, stories, newspaper columns, and essays. See a text-based interview with him (easy for students to follow!) with El Tiempo HERE . For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.