2. Hispanic Heritage Month
The story of Hispanics in America
is the story of America itself.
The Hispanic community’s values – love of family,
a deep and abiding faith, and a strong work ethic –
are America’s values.
President Barack Obama
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6. Hispanic Heritage Month
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Chair of the
Foreign Affairs Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
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7. Percent Hispanic of the Total
Population
in the United States: 1970 to 2050
Source: U.S. Census Bureau 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 decennial censuses. *Population projections: 2020 to 2050
Actual percentages
Trend line (with projections)
8. Hispanic Heritage Month
Ellen Ochoa
First Hispanic woman
to go into space
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José Hernandez
Mission specialist
Discovery Shuttle
9. Mario J. Molina
Winner of the Nobel Prize
in Chemistry
Hispanic Heritage Month
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10. Luis Alvarez
First Hispanic to win the
Nobel Prize in Physics
Hispanic Heritage Month
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Photo from 1946
11. Hispanic Heritage Month
Nina Vaca-Humrichouse
Chair of the U.S. Hispanic
Chamber of Commerce
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12. Hispanic Heritage Month
Graciela Tiscareño-Sato
Author of Latinnovating - Green American Jobs
and the Latinos Creating Them
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DISTRIBUTION
13. Maria Hinojosa
Journalist and host of the
radio program Latino USA
Hispanic Heritage Month
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15. Hispanic Heritage Month
Junot Díaz
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction for
The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao
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DISTRIBUTION
16. Dolores Huerta
Labor activist and co-founder
(with Cesar Chavez) of the
United Farm Workers of America
Hispanic Heritage Month
NOT FOR PUBLIC
DISTRIBUTION
Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States runs from September 15 to October 15. It honors the diverse people of Spanish-speaking backgrounds in the United States — those who trace their roots to Spain, Mexico and the Spanish-speaking nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
During Hispanic Heritage month in the United States, special programs, events and websites celebrate the culture, traditions and extraordinary contributions of the 50.5 million Hispanics who constitute the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the country.Hispanic heritage was first celebrated on a national scale in 1968. It was then a designated week -- chosen to coincide with independence day celebrations in Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.
In 1988, the weeklong celebration was expanded to a month, running from September 15 to October 15.
In addition to community events, U.S. government agencies celebrate the month with special events and projects.
Obama quote comes from:
Presidential Proclamation for National Hispanic Heritage Month 2009 http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2009/09/20090915164445eaifas0.6365167.html
See also:
Obama’s Proclamation on National Hispanic Heritage Month 2010
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2010/09/20100916122333su7.189143e-02.html
Obama’s Proclamation on National Hispanic Heritage Month 2011
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2011/09/20110915170045su0.8251393.html
A Celebration of Hispanic-American Heritage
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2010/09/20100914173140xlrennef0.9748651.html
Photo credit: U.S. Supreme Court
Sonia Sotomayor became the U.S. Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice, and its third female justice, on August 8, 2009. She served as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge prior to her nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama.
Sotomayor, 57, was born in New York City and is of Puerto Rican descent. She earned her law degree in 1979 from Yale Law School, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal.
Early in her career, Sotomayor worked as an assistant district attorney and for a private firm in New York City. She then became a U.S. District Court judge, and in 1998 was confirmed as an appeals court judge.
See also:
Obama Picks Sonia Sotomayor to Serve on U.S. Supreme Court
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2009/05/20090526132556HMnietsuA0.4148371.html
U.S. High Court Nominee’s Career Shaped by Personal Experiences
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2009/05/20090526170438HMnietsuA0.7788202.html
Sotomayor Confirmed as Newest Supreme Court Justice
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2009/08/20090806175704esnamfuak0.877865.html
Photo credits: U.S. Department of Labor (Solis) and U.S. Department of the Interior (Salazar)
Hilda Solis became secretary of labor on February 24, 2009. Before that, she served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from California (2001–2009).
Solis was raised in La Puente, California, by immigrant parents from Nicaragua and Mexico. In 1994 she became the first Hispanic woman to serve in California State Senate, where she became known for her work toward environmental justice.
Ken Salazar assumed office as secretary of the interior on January 20, 2009. Before that, he was a U.S. senator from Colorado (2005–2009). He told the New York Times, “There is a historic aspect to my election from Colorado to the United States Senate, because I became the first Mexican-American in the history of our country to ever be elected outside the state of New Mexico.”
Salazar, a Democrat, grew up in Colorado and has ancestors in the Southwestern United States dating back to the 1500s. He served as the state’s attorney general before running for the U.S. Senate.
Photo credit: AP Images
Antonio Villaraigosa has served as mayor of Los Angeles, California, since 2005. He is the third Mexican American to hold office in the city of Los Angeles and the first in more than 130 years. He was re-elected for a second term in 2009.
Previously, Villaraigosa was the speaker of the California State Assembly (the lower house in the California State Legislature) and a representative on the Los Angeles City Council. Prior to his career in politics, he worked as a labor organizer and president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Villaraigosa is the current president of the United States Conference of Mayors.
Photo credit: United States Congress
Cuban-born Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1989 from Florida’s 18th Congressional District. She is chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the most senior Republican woman in the House.
Ros-Lehtinen was the first Cuban American and the first Hispanic woman elected to the United States Congress.
She also was the first Republican woman elected to the House of Representatives from Florida.
Prior to entering political life, Ros-Lehtinen was an educator and the owner/operator of a private school in Miami-Dade County.
See also:
State Department Official and Lawmakers Discuss Libya Crisishttp://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2011/03/20110331190840m0.2300313.html
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Hispanic population of the United States was 50.5 million in 2010,
making people of Hispanic origin the nation's largest ethnic minority.
Hispanics constituted 16.3 percent of the total U.S. population in 2010.
Hispanics are also the fastest-growing minority in the United States. Their numbers grew by 43 percent from 2000. More than half of the U.S. population growth in the past decade was among Hispanics.
The projected Hispanic population of the United States in 2050 is 133 million.
Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Hispanic-origin people in the United States are of Mexican background. Another 9.2 percent are of Puerto Rican background, 3.5 percent Cuban, 3.3 percent Salvadoran and 2.8 percent Dominican.
New Mexico is the state with the highest ratio of Hispanics, 45 percent, followed by California and Texas (each 36 percent).
More than 1 million Hispanics or Latinos age 18 and older are veterans of the U.S. armed forces.
Source:
U.S. Census Bureau
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff18.html
Photo credits: NASA
In 2009, José Hernandez spent 15 days in space on a Discovery space shuttle mission to the International Space Station.
As a child, Hernandez, who is Mexican American, picked strawberries in California with his family. He earned a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering and then worked for 14 years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. He joined NASA in 2001.
Hernandez founded the Reaching for the Stars Foundation, which conducts summer math and science academies and space conferences for primary school students. The goal is to interest children in careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
Hernandez now works for MEI Technologies Inc. in Houston, which provides engineering, information technology and cybersecurity services.
Since becoming an astronaut in 1991, Ellen Ochoa has flown four missions. She was the first Hispanic woman to go into space, serving on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993. She is now deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Texas, home to the U.S. astronaut corps.
Ochoa’s paternal grandparents were Mexican immigrants to the United States. She earned a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in California and has received three patents for her work on optical systems.
“Being an astronaut has given me the opportunity to speak to children all over, including children with the same background as myself,” Ochoa said in an interview with Scholastic.com. “I think that it's important for children to have a role model to see what they can grow up to be.”
See also:
José Hernandez Keeps Reaching for the Stars
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2011/08/20110825150901enaj0.3570063.html
First Hispanic Woman in Space Honored by U.S. State DepartmentRead more: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2003/03/20030312163412nellAJ0.0325281.html
Photo credit: AP Images
Mario Molina won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work in identifying the threat to the ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs), which were widely used chemical propellants and refrigerants.
Molina, who was born in Mexico, studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Irvine. He co-authored a paper in 1974 highlighting the threat of CFCs to the ozone layer in the stratosphere. The paper was met with skepticism, and only in 1976, with the publication of a scientific review by the National Academy of Sciences, did a consensus begin to emerge on the need for action.
By 1985, scientists saw a drastic thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctica. A thinner ozone layer allows more ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, and overexposure to UV can cause negative health and environmental effects.
In 1987, with the passage of the Montreal Protocol, governments around the world agreed to limit the production and use of nearly 100 substances that destroy ozone.
Molina donated $200,000 of his Nobel Prize money to set up fellowships to help scientists from developing countries conduct research in environmental sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
See also:
Backgrounder on the Montreal Protocol (EPA document)
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/downloads/MP20_Backgrounder.pdf
Photo credit: AP Images
In this 1946 photo, scientist Luis Alvarez examines a radio transmitter used in the radar Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) system, built to help guide airplanes through fog.
Alvarez, who died in 1988, was an experimental physicist and inventor at the University of California, Berkeley. His family was of Spanish descent, and in 1968 Alvarez became the first Hispanic to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. He received the award for his work on resonance particles (subatomic particles having extremely short lifetimes and occurring only in high-energy nuclear collisions*).
During World War II, Alvarez worked on the Manhattan Project. In 1980 Alvarez (along with his son Walter) originated the theory that the impact of a meteor may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a thesis which has now met with general acceptance.
The American Journal of Physics called Alvarez “one of the most brilliant and productive experimental physicists of the twentieth century.“
*Source: Encyclopedia Britannica Academic Edition
Photo credit: Courtesy of Nina Vaca-Humrichouse
Nina Vaca-Humrichouse is the founder of Pinnacle Technical Resources, an information technology services provider to the Fortune 500. She was named one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in America by Latino Leaders magazine, as well as U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce businesswoman of the year.
Born in Ecuador, Vaca-Humrichouse emigrated at age 2 with her family to California. She now lives in Dallas.
Vaca-Humrichouse is chair of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. She also chairs the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s “Stars on the Rise” scholarship program and has helped raise more than $400,000 in financial aid for college-bound Hispanics.
On September 15, 2011, Vaca-Humirchouse was named to the inaugural board of the Startup America Partnership, an initiative launched by President Obama in January.
See also:
Hispanic Entrepreneur Builds Company, Helps Others Succeed
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2011/08/20110819165240nerual0.584881.html
Startup America Partnership
http://www.startupamericapartnership.org/press-release/white-house-announces-startup-america-partnership-foster-innovative-high-growth-firms
Photo credit: Courtesy of Graciela Tiscareño-Sato
Graciela Tiscareño-Sato, a former U.S. Air Force officer and aviator, is author of Latinnovating — Green American Jobs and the Latinos Creating Them, which showcases Latino-led innovation and entrepreneurship in the green economy.
In this photo, California students try on uniforms Tiscareño-Sato (in back) wore while serving in the Air Force.
She was born in Texas to Mexican immigrant parents and was the first in her family to attend college. The mother of a blind daughter, she is an advocate for children with disabilities and for mentoring students to stay in school and go to college.
Tiscareño-Sato runs her marketing and communications firm, Gracefully Global, in San Francisco. The firm works with the Hispanic business community to improve business practices.
She was honored as “Entrepreneur of the Year” by LATINA Style Magazine in 2010.
See also:
A Green Moment for Latin Entrepreneurs
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2011/08/20110818111223nirak0.258465.html
Photo credit: Courtesy of NPR/Michael Paras
Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist and president/CEO of The Futuro Media Group, a progressive new nonprofit media organization. She is the host of The Futuro Media Group’s flagship show, Latino USA, which is broadcast nationally on National Public Radio.
Previously, Hinojosa was a senior correspondent for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) newsmagazine Now and also for CNN. Three times over the past decade, Hinojosa has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Latinos in the United States by Hispanic Business magazine.
Born in Mexico City, Hinojosa was raised in Chicago.
Photo credit: AP images
Sandra Cisneros is a Mexican-American author best known for her first novel, The House on Mango Street (1984) , and a short-story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). She has also published poetry, a children’s book, and a second novel, Caramelo (2002), which was named a noteworthy book of the year by the New York Times.
Cisneros was born in Chicago but has lived in Texas for many years.
She established the Macondo Foundation, which provides workshops for writers interested in community-building and social change, and the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation, which awards grants to talented writers connected to Texas.
Cisneros has received wide recognition, including the Texas Medal of the Arts and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation, which awards the so-called “genius grants.”
Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Christopher Peterson
Junot Díaz, who was born in the Dominican Republic and emigrated to New Jersey as a child, is a novelist and creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He is best known for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and for the short story collection Drown (1996).
The novel and short stories focus on a teenage boy’s impoverished, fatherless youth in the Dominican Republic and his struggle adapting to his new life in New Jersey.
Diaz said in an interview with National Public Radio:
“I know that being brought to central New Jersey was both this remarkable opportunity — I would not have discovered things about myself that I never would have discovered, I think, had I not been torn away from my moorings. But also it was a real, real, real challenge. Listen, I became a fanatic of the Dominican Republic based on the fact that it was taken away from me. I don’t think I ever would have thought so longingly of Santo Domingo had I stayed there my whole life.”See also:
Dominican-American Author Wins Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2008/04/20080410111349GLnesnoM0.5494501.html
An Interview with Junot Díaz
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication/2009/02/20090213134540mlenuhret0.2832453.html
Photo credit: AP images
Labor activist Dolores Huerta looks at a mural of the late Cesar Chavez during a dedication of the Cesar Chavez Monument in San Jose, California. She and Chavez co-founded the United Farm Workers of America (UFW).
In 1965 Huerta directed the UFW’s national grape boycott, which resulted in the entire California table grape industry signing a three-year collective bargaining agreement with the United Farm Workers in 1970.
Chavez died in 1993. Huerta continues to be an advocate for workers’ rights. The Dolores Huerta Foundation works for fair and equal access to health care, housing, education, jobs, civic participation and economic resources for disadvantaged communities.
Photo credit: AP images
American sculptor Richard Serra stands near his exhibition at the Grand Palais museum in Paris in 2008. Beneath the museum’s glass and filigree metal dome, five immense monoliths of rusted steel reach toward the sky.
Serra is a minimalist sculptor whose large-scale, abstract works are seen in museums and collections worldwide. His challenging and innovative works — including many large-scale assemblies of sheet metal — are considered among the most significant of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Serra was born in San Francisco. His father was a Spanish native of Mallorca and his mother was Russian.
Among Serra’s famous works is the mammoth sculpture Snake, permanently located in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In 2005, the museum mounted an exhibition of Serra’s work. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art presented a retrospective of Serra’s work in New York.
Photo credit: AP images
Isabel Toledo is a Cuban-born fashion designer based in New York. She has been designing her own collections since 1985 and is the recipient of many awards, including the Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion and the Cooper-Hewitt Award.
Toledo is one of the designers favored by First Lady Michelle Obama. Toledo designed a lemongrass yellow wool lace shift dress with matching overcoat which Mrs. Obama wore at the inauguration of her husband, President Barack Obama.
Photo credit: AP Images
Daisy Fuentes, born in Cuba and raised in Spain and the United States, is a model, international television personality and fashion designer.
Fuentes was MTV’s first Latina VJ [video jockey] and the first Latina worldwide spokeswoman for Revlon. She has hosted numerous TV shows and specials. In 2005, Fuentes appeared on the cover of People en Español as one of the “50 most beautiful” women.
Actively involved in charity fundraising, Fuentes works with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the March of Dimes and other organizations. She works to raise breast cancer awareness, particularly in the Latino community.
In the photo, Fuentes is shown with a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital patient during the fundraising gala in Miami.
Photo credit: AP images
In this photo, Carlos Bocanegra, captain of the U.S. Men’s National Team, maneuvers the ball during the World Cup group C soccer match between Slovenia and the United States in Johannesburg, South Africa, on June 18, 2010.
Bocanegra, a Mexican American, has captained the national soccer team since 2007. He currently plays for the Scottish Premier League club Rangers.
Born in California, Bocanegra was drafted by U.S. Major League Soccer’s Chicago Fire in 2000 and was Rookie of the Year. He was named MLS Defender of the Year in 2002 and 2003.
Photo credit: AP images
Born in the Dominican Republic, David Ortiz began his career in Major League Baseball at the age of 17 with the Seattle Mariners. After he joined the Boston Red Sox in 2002, his record performance elevated Ortiz to stardom. He is considered one of the best hitters in baseball.
Ortiz sponsors charity softball games, donates to children’s hospitals, and has raised funds for natural disaster victims in the Dominican Republic and beyond. He founded the David Ortiz Children’s Fund in 2007.
Photo credits: AP Images
(Photo, left) Mark Sanchez, a quarterback for the New York Jets National Football League (NFL) team, meets with children in support of the Tuesday’s Children charity. Tuesday’s Children was created help families who lost relatives in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and it now helps teenagers worldwide.
Sanchez is the New York Jets team captain. The photo on the right shows him in action.A Mexican American, Sanchez was born in Long Beach, California. He is one of 24 Hispanic players with the NFL.
Sanchez was drafted by the Jets in 2009 after playing football at the University of Southern California (USC). He participated in charity fundraisers at USC and was hailed as a significant role model for Hispanic youth. He continues to be involved in multiple charities, such as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Inner-City Games Los Angeles, an after-school program that provides “at-risk” youth with positive activities.
Read more:
Program Helps Kids Heal from Terrorism’s Traumas [Tuesday’s Children]
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2011/08/20110810154734nerual0.530102.html
Photo credit: AP images
Dara Torres was the first swimmer from the United States to compete in five Olympic Games (1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008), and, at age 41, the oldest swimmer ever to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic team.
She qualified for the 2008 Olympic Trials at the Masters World Championships three months after giving birth to her daughter, Tessa.
At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Torres competed in the 50-meter freestyle, 4x100-meter medley relay, and 4x100-meter freestyle relay, and won silver medals in all three events.
She holds a total of 12 Olympic medals.
Torres was born in Beverly Hills, California, and is of Spanish ancestry.
Photo credit: AP Images
Ozomatli is a seven-piece multiracial, multiethnic band playing primarily Latin, hip-hop and rock music. The band was formed in 1995, and its music reflects the cultural and ethnic diversity of its members and the diversity of their native Los Angeles.
In this 2010 photo, three members of the band (from left, Raul Pacheco, Willy “Wil-Dog” Abers and Asdrubal Sierra) pose for a photo in Los Angeles.
Ozomatli has received numerous honors, including two Grammys, a Latin Grammy, a Billboard Latin Award and an Alma Award.
The band has long been devoted to outreach and community involvement. Through the U.S. State Department’s cultural diplomacy program, they have played in China, Egypt, India, Jordan, Madagascar, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, South Africa, Thailand, Tunisia and Vietnam.
See also:
Ozomatli Promotes Music, Diversity as U.S. Cultural Ambassadors
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2007/04/20070420160016btruevecer0.5710413.html
Ozomatli Prepares to Connect Musically with China and Mongolia
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/article/2010/04/20100427161801esnamfuak0.4168054.html
