Hispanic Heritage Month

Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Sotomayor was born in the Bronx, New York. Her desire to be a judge was first inspired by the TV showPerry Mason. She graduated from Yale Law School. She became a U.S. District Court Judge in 1992 and was elevated to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in In 2009, she became the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history.

Carlos Santana Carlos Santana is a Mexican and American musician who became famous with his band, Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American music. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and African. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards.

FRANKLIN R. CHANG-DÍAZ, PH.D. FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT PERSONAL DATA: Born in Costa Rica, He enjoys music, glider planes, soccer, scuba diving and hiking. NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in May 1980, Dr. Chang-Díaz became an astronaut. In late 1982, he was designated as support crew for the first Spacelab mission and served as in-orbit Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) during that flight. He was leader of the astronaut support team at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

William Levy William Levy is a Cuban-American actor and former model. His debut on the Spanish-language channel Univision was in the Venevision International production of Olvidarte Jamás. He later appeared in Mi Vida Eres Tu and Acorralada. In 2008, he appeared in his first film, Retazos de Vida, directed by Viviana Cordero.

Andy Garcia Andres Garcia is professionally known as Andy Garcia, is a Cuban American actor. He became known in the late 1980s and 1990s, having appeared in several successful Hollywood films, including The Godfather Part III, The Untouchables, Internal Affairs and When a Man Loves a Woman. More recently, he has starred in Ocean's Eleven and its sequels, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, and The Lost City.

Celia Cruz Celia Cruz was a Cuban-American salsa performer. One of the most popular salsa artists of the 20th century, she earned twenty-three gold albums and was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" as well as "La Guarachera de Cuba.“ She spent much of her career living in New Jersey, and working in the United States and several Latin American countries.

Shakira Shakira is a Colombian singer-songwriter, dancer, record producer, choreographer, and model. She has won many awards including five MTV Video Music Awards, two Grammy Awards, ten Latin Grammy Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards, twenty-eight Billboard Latin Music Awards and has been Golden Globe- nominated. She is also involved in philanthropic activities through charity work and benefit concerts, notably her Pies Descalzos Foundation, her performance at the "Clinton Global Initiative" created by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and her invitation to the Oval Office by President Barack Obama in February 2010 to discuss early childhood development.

Dani Valencia Dani Valencia is an Cuban- American professional baseball third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball. He has also played for the Minnesota Twins and Boston Red Sox. Valencia made his major league debut with the Twins in June He was named the third baseman on Baseball America's 2010 All-Rookie Team, and on the 2010 Topps Major League Rookie All-Star Team. In 2011, he led the Twins in RBIs, and led all major league third basemen in assists.

Pau Gasol Pau Gasol Sáez is a Spanish professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a four- time All-Star, and a three-time All-NBA selection, once on the second team and twice on the third team. He has won two NBA championships, both with the Lakers. He was the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2002 with the Memphis Grizzlies.

Jessica Sanchez Jessica Sanchez is an American singer originally from California. Her father is a Mexican American, originally from Texas, and is a US Navy veteran. Her mother is a Filipina from Samal, Bataan in the Philippines She was the runner-up on the eleventh season of the reality show American Idol. Prior to appearing on American Idol, Sanchez competed in the first season of America's Got Talent at the age of 11.

Penelope Cruz Penélope Cruz is a Spanish actress and model. She made her acting debut at 16 on television and her feature film debut the following year in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim. Her subsequent roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes (1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams. Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in the 2001 films Vanilla Sky and Blow.

SOFIA VERGARA Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, Sofía Vergara got her acting star as a television personality in the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, she became known as a film actress, following the 2002 film Big Trouble, starring alongside Tim Allen and Rene Russo; and 2003's Chasing Papi, in which Vergara plays one of Thomas Fuentes's three girlfriends.

Gloria Estefán Gloria Estefán is a Cuban-born American singer, songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. She is in the top 100 best selling music artists with an estimated 100 million records sold worldwide. She has won seven Grammy Awards and is the most successful crossover performer in Latin music to date.

Mario Molina Mario Molina is a Mexican chemist and one of the most prominent precursors to the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. He was a co-recipient (along with Paul J. Crutzen and F. Sherwood Rowland) of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth's ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases (or CFCs), becoming the first Mexican- born citizen to ever receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Antonio Banderas Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish film actor, film director, film producer and singer. He began his acting career with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood movies, especially in the 1990s, including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire, Philadelphia, Desperado, The Mask of Zorro and Spy Kids. Banderas is also a voice artist, portraying the voice of Puss in Boots in the Shrek sequels and Puss in Boots.

Salma Hayek Salma Hayek is a Mexican American film actress, director and producer. She began her career in Mexico starring in the telenovela Teresa and went on to star in the film El Callejón de los Milagros (Miracle Alley) for which she was nominated for an Ariel Award. In 1991 Hayek moved to Hollywood and came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as Desperado (1995), Dogma (1999), and Wild Wild West (1999).

Enrique Iglesias Enrique Iglesias is a Spanish singer-songwriter, actor, and record producer based in America. Iglesias started his career in the mid-1990s on an American Spanish Language record label Fonovisa which helped turn him into one of the biggest stars in Latin America and the Hispanic Market in the United States becoming the biggest seller of Spanish-language albums of that decade.

Ellen Ochoa Ellen Ochoa is a former astronaut and current Director of the Johnson Space Center. Ochoa became director of the center. Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in the world to go to space [ when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in The astronauts were studying the Earth's ozone layer. In her honor, Pasco School District # 1 in Pasco, Washington, and Ellen Ochoa Elementary School in Cudahy, CA had named their newest schools after her.

Isabel Allende Isabel Allende is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus, 1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias, 2002), which have been commercially successful. Allende has been called "the world's most widely read Spanish- language author". In 2004, Allende was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010, she received Chile's National Literature Prize.

Frida Kahlo Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter, who is best known for her self- portraits. Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as Naïve art or folk art. Her work has also been described as "surrealist“.

Bibliografía