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September is National LatinX Heritage Month, making it the perfect time to introduce the kiddos to historical figures that changed the world. After all, celebrating the contributions LatinX-Americans have made to our country helps us find unity in our diversity. Read on for a curated list of social activists, scientists and artists that have made a lasting impact.

The Nicaraguan-born Bianca Jagger is a former actress and lifelong human rights activist. She founded the human rights foundation that bears her name, which fights to support indigenous people, address climate change and end violence against women and girls. In 1981 she was part of a US congressional delegation that chased after a Honduran death squad to liberate 40 captured refugees.

Elizabeth Martinez held many roles during her life-writer, editor, publisher, social activist and feminist, to name but a few. She helped define the Chicana movement and was one of the early voices to discuss overlapping systems of oppression before the term intersectionality became mainstream. Martinez's book 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures is widely taught in elementary and secondary schools.

Juan Felipe Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. His early experiences as a migratory farm worker in California have strongly influenced his creative works, such as 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border.

Sandra Cisneros is a writer best known for her book The House on Mango Street. She is generally acknowledged as the first Mexican-American writer to be published by a mainstream publisher. She is a key Chicana literary figure both in Texas and among the Mexican diaspora.

For many, Puerto Rican actor Raul Julia was best known for his role as Gomez Adams of The Addams Family. But his acting career spanned both screen and theatre, earning him a nomination for the Tony Award and two nominations for the Golden Globe Award. He won a posthumous Golden Globe, Primetime Emmy, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for his work in The Burning Season.

-Teresa Douglas
22 Black Heroes Your Kids Should Know By Name 81 Amazing Facts Every Kid Should Know 4 New Inspiring Books to Read to Your Kids Right Now

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18 Latinx Trailblazers Your Kids Should Know

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September is National LatinX Heritage Month, making it the perfect time to introduce the kiddos to historical figures that changed the world. After all, celebrating the contributions LatinX-Americans have made to our country helps us find unity in our diversity. Read on for a curated list of social activists, scientists and artists that have made a lasting impact.

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10 Inspiring Latinas Who've Made History

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10 Inspiring Latinas Who've Made History

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10 Inspiring Latinas Who've Made History - Google Arts & Culture

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Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

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Explore Biography's collection of Hispanic Athletes. See our picks, along with full biographies, photo galleries and videos, only on Biography.com.

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Young Latinos: Born in the U.S.A., Carving their own Identity

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Young Latinos: Born in the U.S.A., Carving their own Identity

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Young Latinos: Born in the U.S.A., carving their own identity

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For many young Hispanics, navigating their parents’ culture in the U.S. has shaped their views on what it means to be American.

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24 Trailblazing Hispanic Americans Who Made History

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24 Trailblazing Hispanic Americans Who Made History

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24 Famous Hispanic Americans Who Made History

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During Hispanic Heritage Month and beyond, take a look at just a few notable famous Hispanic people who have changed the course of history.

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There isn't an industry in which Hispanic Americans haven't made their mark in history, with some of the most iconic politicians, singers, actors, athletes and more coming from Hispanic descent.

We're celebrating 15 of the most notable Hispanic Americans whose influence has touched everything from pop culture to politics:

Rita Moreno

Rita Moreno has been a household name for decades, ever since she captivated audiences with her fierce portrayal of Anita in 1961's West Side Story. Moreno would go on to cement her name in history by winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role, becoming the first-ever Hispanic American woman to win an Academy Award.

Born Rosa Alverio on December 11, 1931 in Humacao, Puerto Rico, the actress later changed her last name to match her stepfather's after she immigrated to New York City with her mom in 1936. Moreno made her Broadway debut in Skydrift at age 13, with her career taking off after that.

The pioneering actress went on to star in dozens of film, TV and stage shows through her decades-long career. She became only the third person ever to achieve the coveted EGOT, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award by 1977. In 2019, she added a P to the achievement with a Peabody Award, one of only three performers to accomplish this feat.
READ MORE: Rita Moreno Was Over Being Stereotyped in Hollywood, so She Quit Making Movies for Seven Years
Cesar Chavez

Born in Arizona to a Mexican American family, Cesar Chavez grew up around the people he later helped through his activism. The defining moment in Chavez's life came when his family moved to California during the Great Depression to become farm workers, cementing his fight for farmers rights.

After receiving an honorable discharge from the Navy, Chavez worked as a lumber handler in San Jose, where he helped set up a chapter of the Community Service Organization, a pivotal civil rights organization for Latinos in California.

Chavez made the CSO his full-time job after he was laid off, meeting fellow activist Dolores Huerta while traveling to chapters around the state of California. The two would go on to found the National Farm Workers Association, later the United Farm Workers labor union, becoming primary figures for Latin American civil rights.

Though Chavez later received criticism from within for his singular control of the union, including times in which he fired those who opposed him, the activist is still regarded as an important civil rights leader and posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom the year after his death in 1993. He was 66.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. Praised Cesar Chavez For His 'Indefatigable Work'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

In just a few short years, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become one of the major leading voices for Hispanic Americans in politics.

Also known by her initials AOC, Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989 in the Bronx, New York to a Puerto Rican mother and a Bronx-born father of Puerto Rican descent. She excelled through high school after her family moved to the suburbs and was in her second year at Boston College when her dad tragically died of lung cancer in 2008.

After graduating college in 2011, Ocasio-Cortez returned to the Bronx and later campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 democratic primary. She visited Flint, Michigan, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota after the general election, where she attended the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and decided to run for office.

Ocasio-Cortez eventually challenged Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley, the first to do so since 2004, and pulled off a surprise primary win in June 2018. Through a grassroots campaign, she became the youngest person elected into the House of Representatives during the midterm elections that year.

"I'm hoping that this is a beginning," Ocasio-Cortez said at her victory party in 2018. "That we can continue this organizing and continue what we've learned."

Since her arrival in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez's vocal support of left-leaning ideas, including co-sponsoring the Green New Deal package to combat climate change, has made her a popular figure in progressive politics. She once again won her primary in June 2020, all but ensuring her return to Congress for a second term after the general election in November.

Roberto Clemente

A pioneer of the game, Roberto Clemente paved the way for Hispanic Americans in Major League Baseball.

The prolific right fielder was born in 1934 in Puerto Rico, joined the island's amateur baseball league when he was 16 and made the professional league two years later at 18.

Another two years and Clemente was off to Montreal, Quebec, to play in the minor leagues in 1954. That same year, the Pittsburgh Pirates scouted him during training in Richmond, Virginia and Clemente was called up to the majors by November of that year in the rookie draft.

Clemente, wearing the iconic number 21, went on to become the first Latin American and Caribbean to win a World Series as a starting player in 1960.

The athlete died in a plane crash in 1972 while on his way to Nicaragua to deliver aid to earthquake victims when he was 38. In his honor, the MLB renamed the Commissioner's Award to the Roberto Clemente Award, given to the player who all-around exemplifies sportsmanship and community outreach. He was also inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, making him the first Latin American and Caribbean honoree.
READ MORE: How Roberto Clemente Lived Life to the Fullest Before Tragically Dying in a Plane Crash
Julia Alvarez

Dominican American writer Julia Alvarez has been enchanting readers with her words since the early 1990s.

Alvarez was born in New York City in 1950 before her family moved to the Dominican Republic when she was a baby. They stayed there throughout Alvarez's childhood until her father's involvement in a failed attempt to overthrow the militant dictator forced the family to flee to the United States in 1960.

The traumatic event has since made its way into several of Alvarez's works, including the poem "Exile" in which she recounts the night her family fled. She went on to become one of the most critically revered Latina writers and has published poems, novels and essays throughout her career.

Jennifer Lopez

"Jenny from the Block" has always paid tribute to her Latin roots throughout her success.

Jennifer Lopez was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1969 to Puerto Rican parents who supported her ambitions to become a singer, taking singing and dancing lessons starting at 5 years old. This changed when Lopez dropped out of college to pursue acting, with her parents strongly opposing her aspirations.

After touring the world with various productions, Lopez made her breakthrough performance in Selena. The 1997 movie, in which she played the beloved Mexican singer Selena Quintanilla, who had been killed just years prior, earned Lopez praise and put her on the fast track to superstardom.

Since then, Lopez has remained one of the most notable Hispanic American figures in the movie and music industry, often earning the status of "triple threat." She also earned critical acclaim for her role in 2019's Hustlers, which generated Oscar buzz that resulted in strong opposition to her being snubbed for the awards show.
READ MORE: The Story of Jennifer Lopez's Iconic Green Jungle Versace Dress
Sylvia Rivera

In addition to being an influential Hispanic American, drag queen Sylvia Rivera is also an iconic figure in the gay and transgender rights movement.

Rivera, born in New York City in 1951 of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent, had a rough upbringing. Her father left the family when she was a baby and her mother later died by suicide when Rivera was just 3 years old. Then still known as Ray, the young child was raised by her Venezuelan grandmother who strongly rejected the beginnings of Rivera's transgender identity forming.

Rivera was forced to leave home when she was 10, making her way through the rough streets of New York City. She often faced discrimination and violence, compelling her to begin her transgender and gay rights activism.

"We were sick and tired of being put down," Rivera said in The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America Since Stonewall. "Things just started happening."

Rivera and her friend Marsha P. Johnson, both sex workers, made an indelible mark in the advancement of LGBTQ rights. Both are credited with forming the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), later changed to Transgender, which helped house and support LGBTQ youth and sex workers in Manhattan. They also worked with the Gay Liberation Front, founded after the Stonewall Riot in 1969.

Rivera died in February 2002 due to complications of liver cancer. She has since been heralded alongside Johnson as the mothers of the gay rights movement. Rivera was honored as one of the 50 activists included in the Stonewall National Monument, the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights.

Ellen Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa made her mark by becoming the first Hispanic American woman to go to space with a nine-day mission in 1993.

Ochoa was born in 1958 in Los Angeles, California, years after her paternal grandparents immigrated from Mexico. She first obtained her physics degree from San Diego State University and later her masters and doctorate from Stanford University's department of electrical engineering by 1985.

Through her impressive research work, NASA selected Ochoa in 1991 and she became an astronaut in July of that year. Two years later, Ochoa made history on board the Space Shuttle Discovery on a mission to study the Earth's ozone layer. She later completed three more missions.

Ochoa became the first Hispanic American director of the Johnson Space Center in 2013, only the second woman to take the helm. After retiring with 30 years of service, Ochoa continues to advocate for women in STEM.

"I think we need all the best and brightest people working in science and engineering fields, and that is certainly not limited to men or white men or anything like that," she told NBC News in 2019.

Marco Rubio

Senator Marco Rubio has made his mark in politics as a leading member of the Republican party.

A Miami native, Rubio was born in 1971 to Cuban immigrants who fled the Batista regime in 1956, two years before Fidel Castro took over through the Cuban Revolution. Though Rubio obtained citizenship through his birth, his parents didn't become naturalized citizens until after his birth in 1975.

Rubio went to Tarkio College in Missouri for one year on a football scholarship in 1989 before returning to Florida and later transferring to the University of Florida. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1993 there and later earned his law degree from the University of Miami in 1996.

His career in politics started just three years later when he won a run-off election in the fight for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives. He rose through the ranks and became House Speaker in 2005, the first Cuban American to do so.

The politician announced his intention to run for U.S. Senate in 2009 and was elected the next year during the midterm elections. Rubio later entered the Republican presidential primary race in April 2015, becoming one of the first Hispanic Americans to have aspirations of the highest office.

Though Rubio ended his campaign in March 2016 after placing second in Florida, the Senator did pick up three primary victories in Minnesota, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C.

He pivoted and ran for Senate re-election that year instead, beating out his Democrat opponent Patrick Murphy with 52 percent of the vote.

Sonia Sotomayor

A Bronx native of Puerto Rican descent, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic American to serve as a member of the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor was born in 1954 in the New York City borough, where she grew up in a predominantly Catholic and Puerto Rican community. She quickly made education a priority through her mother's insistence after her dad died when she was 9 years old.

"I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten. Ten. That's no jest," she told the NY Daily News in 1998.

The future judge went on to graduate valedictorian from high school and earned a full scholarship to Princeton University. She graduated in 1976 after establishing herself as a student advocate, working hard to ensure Princeton began hiring Latin American faculty. She went on to Yale Law School and graduated in 1979, earning her acceptance to the New York Bar the next year.

After working for over four years as an assistant district attorney in New York and stepping away to work in private practice, Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Twelve years later, Sotomayor made history when President Barack Obama picked her as his first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009.
READ MORE: How Sonia Sotomayor Overcame Adversity to Become the United States' First Hispanic and Latina Justice
Lin-Manuel Miranda

Few Hispanic Americans have made a bigger impact in recent pop culture than Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Miranda was born in 1980 in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City to Puerto Rican parents, who immigrated to New York to pursue academics. Miranda's mother Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda is a clinical psychologist and his father Luis A. Miranda, Jr. is a Democratic Party consultant and immigrant advocate.

Miranda was raised around musicals and started writing his first title at Wesleyan University in 1999 during his sophomore year. In the Heights, loosely based on his own experiences growing up, would go on to open on Broadway in March 2008. Miranda won his first Tony Award that summer after the show received 13 nominations, earning four wins including Best Musical.

Influenced by his upbringing in the predominantly Latin Washington Heights, and his frequent vacations in Puerto Rico, the musical was heralded for featuring a largely Latin American cast with characters often singing and speaking in Spanish.

But Miranda's largest mark on culture came when his musical Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015. Following the life of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda reimagined the beginnings of America told by all actors of color, whose ancestors didn't have a say in how the country was built. The hip-hop musical quickly became one of the most profitable shows to ever hit Broadway.

Miranda once again won several Tony Awards for the show, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.

Ted Cruz

Much like Rubio, Ted Cruz has elevated the representation of Hispanic Americans in Congress.

Cruz was born Rafael Edward Cruz in Calgary, Canada, in 1970 to an American mother and a Cuban father who had been living in Canada for three years. His father initially left the family and moved to Texas, though his parents reconciled and the family relocated to Houston in 1974. They later divorced in 1997.

The future politician graduated valedictorian from his high school and went to Princeton, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in public policy in 1992. Cruz went on to Harvard Law School, earning his degree in 1995.

Cruz quickly entered politics, joining George W. Bush 's presidential campaign in 1999 where he assisted in building Bush's legal team during the Florida presidential recounts.

After serving as Texas Solicitor General from 2003 to 2008, Cruz stepped away to work in private practice. He returned to public policy when he was elected U.S. Senator of Texas in the 2012 election.

Cruz ran for president in 2016, entering the primary race in March 2015, earning 12 states and receiving 7.8 million votes. He suspended his campaign in May 2016, weeks before the Republican National Convention that made Donald Trump's nomination official.

Dolores Huerta

At 90 years old, Dolores Huerta still stands as a giant in the fight for Hispanic American labor rights.

Born in 1930, the New Mexico native of Mexican descent grew up in a farm worker community in Stockton, California, with her mom and two brothers. She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher after attending college before setting off on the path of civil rights activism.

She joined the Community Service Organization, where she later met fellow activist Chavez. She co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association in 1960 and collaborated with Chavez to found the National Farm Workers Association in 1962.

Her activism continued in California, where she made a name for herself by supporting and leading various strikes for workers' rights. She later stepped away from the union to focus on women's rights after she was badly beaten by a San Francisco police officer during a peaceful raid, resulting in a long recovery.

Huerta now runs the Dolores Huerta Foundation and has received several accolades, including an inaugural Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1998 under President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom under President Obama in 2012.

Julián Castro

On the Democratic side, Julián Castro has been a rising star in American politics.

Castro is of Mexican descent and was born with his twin brother, Joaquin, in San Antonio, Texas in 1974. His roots in Texas trace back to 1920, when his grandmother immigrated as a child to live with extended family. Castro credits his mother, a Chicana political activist, for his life in public service. He counted her influence as the reason why he and his brother, a U.S. Representative for Texas, are politicians.

"Growing up, she would take us to a lot of rallies and organizational meetings and other things that are very boring for an 8-, 9-, 10-year-old," Castro told in 2012. "What I did get from my mother was a very strong sense that if you did public policy right, and you did well in public service, that it's a positive influence on people's lives."

He graduated from Stanford University in 1996, interning for Clinton administration at the White House between his sophomore and junior year, and later Harvard Law School in 2000.

Castro was elected to San Antonio City Council the next year in 2001 until he ran for mayor in 2005, coming in second by a small margin of votes. He was then successful in 2009 after stepping away to run his own law practice. Castro was re-elected in 2011 and 2013.

He resigned as mayor in 2014 after accepting President Obama's offer to become the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in which he served until Obama's term ended in 2017.

Castro was one of the first democrats to announce his 2020 presidential campaign, making it official in January 2019. A year later, Castro suspended his campaign and endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Gloria Estefan

Singer Gloria Estefan is often synonymous with Latin music in the United States.

Born in Cuba in 1957, Estefan's family fled to Miami during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Her father enlisted in the military shortly after they immigrated and took part in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, where he was captured by his own cousin and held prisoner for two years.

While performing in a church ensemble in 1975, Estefan first met her future husband Emilio Estefan, who had recently formed a band in Miami. She and her cousin were invited to join his band and renamed it Miami Sound Machine, leading to hits like "Conga," "Anything for You," "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," and "Hot Summer Nights." The band's name was dropped in 1989, with Estefan embarking on a successful solo career ever since.

Estefan married Emilio in 1976 and the couple welcomed two children, Nayib and Emily. Her lengthy career has earned her three Grammy Awards and a Presidential Medal of Freedom under President Obama in 2015, as well as the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017. The musical On Your Feet, telling the story of her and Emilio's life, premiered on Broadway in 2015.

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15 Influential Hispanic Americans Who Made History

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There isn't an industry in which Hispanic Americans haven't made their mark in history, with some of the most iconic politicians, singers, actors, athletes and more coming from Hispanic descent.

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10 Latina Pioneers of the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries

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10 Latina Pioneers of the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries

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Whether it be in politics, science, medicine or the arts, Latinas have defied social, cultural, and gender stereotypes throughout many generations and have become pioneers in their respective fields and native countries.

In honor of these brave, daring, and at times controversial women, here are 10 Latinas who fought against the odds and became the first in their class:

Sonia Sotomayor - First Latina U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Born in the Bronx, New York in 1954, Sonia Sotomayor grew up in challenging circumstances. Although she recalled regular summertime visits to Puerto Rico to see friends and family, her home life in New York was not a happy one. Her father was an alcoholic who died in his early 40s and her mother kept her emotional distance from her daughter. The family lived in the housing projects, which would later be overrun by gang violence.

Still, Sotomayor's mother pushed her children to take their education seriously, which left a deep imprint on Sotomayor, who knew by age 10 that she wanted to be a lawyer. Sotomayor won a scholarship to Princeton University and graduated summa cum laude in 1976 and went on to receive her law degree from Yale.

In 1979 Sotomayor served as an assistant district attorney, which eventually paved her way to becoming a U.S. District Court judge, appointed by George H.W. Bush. Under Bill Clinton's administration, Sotomayor would make her way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1997, and a little over a decade later, Barack Obama nominated her to the highest court in the land. In 2009 Sotomayor would make history as the first Latina to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Since then, she has built her reputation on being an advocate for criminal justice reform and women's rights.
READ MORE: How Sonia Sotomayor Overcame Adversity to Become the United States' First Hispanic and Latina Justice
Rita Moreno - First Latina PEGOT Recipient

Born in 1931, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno has built an award-winning career in film, television and theater that has spanned over seven decades. Famous for her supporting roles in the film adaptations of the King and I (1956) and West Side Story (1961), Moreno would earn herself an Oscar for the latter, making her the first Latina to achieve such a feat.

In the 1970s, Moreno became a regular cast member of the beloved PBS children's show The Electric Company and would later be cast in a supporting role on the HBO hit drama Oz (1997-2003).

Her multitude of credits as an actress, singer and dancer would later result to one of her biggest crowning achievements in 2019: She is the first Latina to be elevated to PEGOT status, a small group of entertainers who have won a Peabody, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award.
READ MORE: Rita Moreno Was Over Being Stereotyped in Hollywood, so She Quit Making Movies for Seven Years
Isabel Perón - First Latina Female President

Despite her lower-middle-class background and her fifth-grade education, former nightclub dancer Isabel Perón would become Latin America's first female president.

Born in Argentina in 1931, Isabel Perón's rise to power would be through her husband, Argentinian president Juan Perón, who was previously married to the late and beloved Eva Perón (aka Evita). As the third wife, Isabel, known to her countrymen as "Isabelita," would serve as her husband's vice president and First Lady during his third presidential term, starting in 1973.

However, just a year in office, Juan suffered from a series of heart attacks and died on July 1, 1974. Isabel took over as president, and while her nation and political allies and even some of her husband's enemies initially showed support for her, she quickly fell out of favor after she issued a government-run suppression campaign against her adversaries, including a string of political murders and anti-left-wing policy measures and purges.

In 1976 Isabel was forced out by a military coup and remained under house arrest before being allowed to move to Spain. In 2007 an Argentinian judge issued an order for her arrest for the disappearance of an activist in 1976, but Spanish courts refused to extradite her, citing the charges didn't fall under the category of crimes against humanity.

Ellen Ochoa - First Latina Astronaut in Space

Born in Los Angeles in 1958, Ellen Ochoa immersed herself in the sciences, graduating from San Diego State University with a bachelor's in physics (1980) and later from Stanford University with a master's in science (1981) and a doctorate in electrical engineering (1985).

As a doctorate student, she focused her studies primarily on optical systems involving high tech space exploration, which eventually led her into the NASA space program in 1991. Two years later, Ochoa became the first Latina woman to fly into space, which occurred aboard the shuttle Discovery.

Ochoa would complete a total of four space missions during her career at NASA and would make history once again when she became the first Latina director of the agency's Johnson Space Center in 2013.

Evangelina Rodriguez - First Dominican Female Doctor

Despite being born into poverty and discriminated against for being born of partial African descent, Afro-Dominican Evangelina Rodriguez became the first woman from the Dominican Republic to earn her medical degree.

Born in 1879, Rodriguez was raised by her grandmother and diligently worked her way through school and earned her education, despite the social and cultural challenges of being a poor half-Black female who was a product of wedlock. She received her medical degree from the University of the Dominican Republic in 1909 and began building her career in small towns and giving medical care to the poorest citizens.

After scrounging her earnings for many years, Rodriguez furthered her expertise by studying gynecology and pediatrics in France in 1921 and graduated four years later. She returned to her country and cared for her patients, while also becoming a political firebrand, advocating for women's rights and issues, such as birth control, and speaking out against dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Gabriela Mistral - First Latina Author to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature

Tragic love, childhood, piety, sadness, bitterness and the politics of the times brought forth the lyrical poetry that defined Chilean poet, diplomat and educator Gabriela Mistral. Born in 1889 as Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, the poet would later go by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral, which she created by fusing the names of her favorite poets Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral.

While working on her poetry as a young woman, Mistral also served as a village school teacher. An intense romance with a railway worker who would end up killing himself, was one of several tragedies throughout her life that would inspire her poetry, and it was her sonnets memorializing the dead, Sonetos de la muerte, in 1914 that would make her famous throughout Latin America.

As an artist and intellectual who gained international fame for her poetry, Mistral was invited to travel the world as a cultural ambassador for the League of Nations and lived in France and Italy in the mid-1920s to early 1930s. She lectured and served as an educator throughout the United States, Europe and Cuba and received honorary degrees at renowned universities. In 1945 she was the first Latin American female poet to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Isabel Allende - First Latina Author Dubbed as Most Widely Read in the World

Another Chilean artist, Isabel Allende, would follow in Mistral's footsteps to become "the world's most widely read Spanish-language author." In fact, Allende would become the first woman to be awarded the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit.

Born in Peru in 1942, Allende would gain international recognition for her magical realism in novels such as The House of Spirits and City of Beasts. Drawing from historical events (her father's first cousin was Chilean president Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a military coup in 1973) and her own experience, Allende honors the stories of women in mythical fashion and is credited to have transformed non-fiction literature.

Among her many awards, Allende received Chile's National Literature Prize in 2010 and was honored by President Barack Obama with a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 as well as an honorary degree from Harvard that same year.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - First Latina & Cuban-American to Serve in Congress

Political activism ran in Ilena Ros-Lehtinen's family. Born in Cuba in 1952 and later immigrating to the United States at age eight, Ros-Lehtinen grew up with an anti-Castro activist father and memories of escaping Fidel Castro's regime. Focusing her career in education, Ros-Lehtinen earned both her a bachelor's degree in 1975 and a master's degree in 1985 at Florida International University. In 2004 she received her doctorate in education from the University of Miami.

While operating a private school in Miami in the early 80s, Ros-Lehtinen was elected to the Florida House of Representatives, becoming the first Latina to accomplish this. She continued her groundbreaking streak by becoming the first Latina to serve in the state senate and in 1989, the first Latina and first Cuban-American to serve in the United States Congress as a member of the House of Representatives. Starting in 2011, she also became the first female to ever manage a regular standing committee, the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

As a moderate Republican, Ros-Lehtinen was considered one of the most popular bipartisan politicians before retiring her House seat in 2017. She was the first House Republican to come out in support of gay marriage and served as a member of numerous caucuses in her 30-year political career, including the LGBT Equality Caucus, the Climate Solutions Caucus and the Congressional Pro-Life Women's Caucus.

Maria Elena Salinas - First Latina Journalist to Win a Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award

Born in 1954, Los Angeles native Maria Elena Salinas is distinguished for being the longest-running female TV news anchor in the U.S. and the first Latina to earn a Lifetime Achievement Emmy. With a journalism career spanning over three decades, Salinas has interviewed world leaders - from presidents to heads of state to dictators - and served as the co-anchor for Univision's nightly news broadcast as well as its news magazine program, Aquí y Ahora ( Here and Now).

Known as the "Voice of Hispanic America," Salinas recently retired from her role at Univision but continues to focus on her philanthropy, which includes education, promoting women's media, and increasing voter registration within her community. "I am grateful for having had the privilege to inform and empower the Latino community through the work my colleagues and I do with such passion," she stated while stepping down from Univision, adding, "As long as I have a voice, I will always use it to speak on their behalf."

Eulalia Guzmán - First Mexican Female Archaeologist

Born in 1890 in San Pedro Piedra Gorda, Eulalia Guzmán was an educator, feminist and philosopher best known as Mexico's first female archaeologist. She helped develop the Ixcateopan, Guerrero archaeological project, an archive of her country's history, and the National Library of Anthropology and History.

Although some of Guzmán's archaeological work became controversial among Mexican scholars for their lack of authentication - namely her claim that she discovered the remains of the Aztec Emperor, Cuauhtémoc - she was popular among Indigenous populations who celebrated her accomplishments.

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Sonia Sotomayor and 9 Other Latina Pioneers of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries

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Whether it be in politics, science, medicine or the arts, Latinas have defied social, cultural, and gender stereotypes throughout many generations and have become pioneers in their respective fields and native countries.