Hispanic Heritage Month: Do You Know These Eight Hispanic Heroes?

Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15) is an excellent time to take a moment and reflect on the lives of some of those who came before. Although you may not know of many of them, these are Hispanic men and women of extraordinary courage, vision and resolve who opened the doors for those who followed. To help celebrate these special days, we are paying tribute to eight such figures of U.S. Hispanic history whose lives and accomplishments should not be forgotten.

Luis W. Alvarez was a Californian who spent most of his career teaching at UC Berkeley. He cemented his worldwide reputation as a brilliant scientist and inventor by winning the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics.
He was a key figure in the Manhattan Project, which was the name of the effort to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II. He also flew as a scientific observer in the plane that carried the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

An avid inventor, he was granted more than 40 patents. Some of his most important work came in the area of radar and navigation, including development of the ground controlled approach system that enables planes to land in poor visibility.

Ellen Lauri Ochoa is not the sort to be stopped by a glass ceiling, or any kind of ceiling; in fact, for her not even the sky is the limit. Ochoa blazed her own trail in 1993 by becoming the first Hispanic woman in space.

Now 50, Ms. Ochoa has a PhD in electrical engineering and was part of a nine-day mission on the shuttle Discovery, during which the crew studied the earth's ozone layer.
Her journey into space started with selection by NASA in early 1990; 18 months later she became an astronaut. Ochoa has since completed four flights, logging almost 1,000 hours in space.

Soprano Lucrezia Bori made her operatic debut in Rome at the age of 21, sang with Caruso in Paris two years later, and over the next 25 years became a leading performer at the New York Metropolitan Opera.

Over the course of 19 seasons, more than 600 performances and 29 roles with the company, she enjoyed critical acclaim, enormous public popularity and great affection from fellow performers.
After retiring from the stage, Bori, who died in 1960 at the age of 73, became director of the Metropolitan Opera Association, where her tireless fundraising earned her the nickname "the opera's Joan of Arc."

While Hispanic performers shine brightly across today's entertainment industry, one of the most famous stars ever was Ramon Novarro, known as the "Latin Lover" in the era of silent movies. He was a trailblazer for U.S. Hispanic actors.

Born in Mexico in 1899, Novarro began playing bit parts in films in 1917. He scored his first success in "Scaramouche" in 1923, but it was his performance in the title role of "Ben-Hur" two years later that made him a Hollywood sensation.

He was hugely popular playing action characters with a strong romantic streak, and at his peak he was earning more than $100,000 per movie -- a princely sum in the days when fine houses went for less than $30,000. Move over Andy Garcia, Mr. Novarro remains the hottest Hispanic leading man in Hollywood history.

Romana Acosta Banuelos, the first Latina Treasurer of the United States when she served from 1971 to 1974, is a shining example of someone overcoming all the odds to reach the top.
She is the daughter of poor Mexican immigrants who were deported by the U.S, government in 1933 -- along with thousands of other Mexican-Americans -- during the Great Depression.

Despite her hardships, Banuelos went from rags to riches. After returning to the U. S. with two children, no husband, little knowledge of English, and almost no money, she became a very successful businesswoman and was tapped by President Nixon for the Office of Treasurer.

Jose Antonio Romualdo Pacheco, though he lived and died more than a century ago, is still an important figure in California and U.S. history. He remains the only Hispanic Governor of California, and was the first governor born in that state.

During a distinguished 30-year political career, he served as governor in 1875, spent three terms in the House of Representatives, and served as state treasurer.

Pacheco, who was born in Santa Barbara, California in 1831 and educated in Hawaii, began political life as a Democrat, later switched to the National Union Party, but held most of his elected positions as a Republican. He died in Oakland, California, in 1899.

Hispanics are among this country's greatest baseball players, but the first few steps along that road were taken about 140 years ago by Esteban Bellan, the first Hispanic to play Major League Baseball.
Bellan learned the game in high school in New York between 1863 and 1868. After graduation he joined the Troy Haymakers and played in the National Association, which later became the National League. The Haymakers would become the New York Giants, now the San Francisco Giants.

After five pro seasons in the U.S., Bellán became a successful player-manager in his native Cuba, taking Habana to three national championships. He died in 1932.

Cesar Chavez, a Mexican-American farm worker who became a pivotal figure in labor relations and civil rights, probably needs no introduction here.

Indeed, he is held in such high regard that eight states have declared his birthday, March 31, a public holiday. His name also graces parks, schools, streets, and other public places across the nation.
Among his lasting legacies is the United Farm Workers, a union which evolved from the National Farm Workers Association. Chavez co-founded the association, helped organize strikes, and led marches to secure better wages, working conditions, and civil rights.


Source: HispanicBusiness.com

Daddy Yankee supports McCain

Convention coverage won't be hard to find

If this year's epic presidential-primary coverage wasn't enough to put you off politics, rejoice!
The next two weeks will be a political wonk's paradise as broadcast and cable networks cover the Democratic and Republican conventions, and Barack Obama and John McCain.
In broad strokes, television will have pretty much the same offerings for the Democrats in Denver this week and for the Republicans in St. Paul, Minn., next week.
ABC, NBC and CBS will each offer one-hour reports at 10 each night of the conventions (up from three nights of coverage in 2004), tonight through Thursday and Sept. 1-4. PBS will air three hours of coverage each night, beginning
at 8.
For CBS Evening News anchorwoman Katie Couric, an hour of convention coverage in prime time will give her the opportunity to do more of what she enjoys most.
"I really miss doing as many interviews as I used to," Couric said.
Although she still does interviews occasionally on Evening News, including a recent one with the president of Georgia, she'll do more during the convention coverage, including live webcasts at CBSNews.com and CNET.com each night after network coverage ends.
"I think there's something about the Web vibe, and I know that makes me sound very out of it to use the word vibe, but I'm looking forward to being able to have more casual but hopefully hard-hitting coverage, if that's not too counterintuitive," she said. "We're booking people as we speak."
On cable, viewers will be able to watch convention coverage for up to 20 hours a day -- from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily on MSNBC.
Whether cable networks will use that time for actual coverage or just as an outlet to allow their talking heads to bloviate further remains to be seen.
more

The Big Question: What does it mean for the US if whites are no longer in the majority?

Because the United States Census Bureau has just released a projection – based on current birth, death and immigration rates – which predicts that white people of northern European descent will no longer make up a majority of the country's population by the year 2042.
The white population will begin to shrink from 2031. By contrast, the population of Hispanic Americans, who have a much higher birth rate, will double so that one in three American citizens will be of Spanish background.
Before the mid-century, whites will be outnumbered by a combination of Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. Even Alaskan natives are projected to increase. Only the whites will fall in number. The latest figures suggest that these trends are accelerating and will bring about the change eight years sooner than was previously estimated.
more

Latinas Underrepresented on Olympic Team

Apparently it's a problem that Latin@s are not as represented on the Olympic team as they are in the general populations. Our lack of Olympic involvement probably has something to do with our evidently overwhelmingly sedentary ways.
I'm really not sure what is going on with the constant influx of news stories about fat, lazy, unhealthy Latin@s recently, but I'm getting kind of sick of them. Especially since nobody really seems to know what a Latin@ even is.

more

CNN Mobilizing Latino voters

John McCain Not Doing as Well With Hispanic Voters, Abortion Views Will Help

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- New polling data shows John McCain is not faring as well with Hispanic voters as President Bush did in each of the last two elections. While Bush solidified his support with Hispanics with his evangelical outreach and focus on Hispanic concerns, McCain is trailing with the important voting group.
A new Pew Hispanic Center poll released on Thursday shows McCain getting the support of just 23 percent of Latinos.
That's less than half of the 56 percent President Bush received in 2004 and much smaller than the 44 percent Bush got in 2000.
The Pew poll shows just one-third of Protestant or evangelical Hispanics plan to vote for McCain while 59 percent are behind pro-abortion rival Barack Obama. McCain also trails Obama by 50 percentage points among Catholic Hispanics.
Cortes, who leads the Christian group Nueva Esperanza tells Politico the reason McCain is doing worse is because the Republican Party has alienated Hispanics over the immigration issue.
more

Latino groups unite to launch $5-million voter registration drive

Citing increased interest in national politics and the important issues facing immigrants and Latinos, nine organizations announce a nonpartisan effort to register up to 2 million new voters.

Buoyed by a surge of political interest among immigrants and youth, nine national Latino organizations Friday announced a joint effort to register as many as 2 million new voters as presidential candidates from both parties vie for their community's increasingly influential support. The $5-million nonpartisan voter registration effort, announced at a national Latino forum in downtown Los Angeles, comes amid an unprecedented campaign by community organizations and Spanish-language media to boost Latino civic participation -- and two new reports showing signs of success.The U.S. government last week reported that the number of Mexican immigrants who became citizens last year swelled by 50%, with hundreds of thousands more in line to process their naturalization applications
more

Latino groups are seeking to mobilize, register voters

LOS ANGELES — For years now, the metaphor that political strategists and commentators fall back on to describe the millions of Latino voters in the United States has been "the sleeping giant."

On Friday at the National Latino Congreso conference in downtown Los Angeles, no one uttered that phrase, except in attempts to debunk it.

"This is our moment," Angel Luevano, regional vice president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said at the outset of the three-day conference. "We are no longer a sleeping giant."

That's the hope, anyway, among the hundreds of conference delegates.

Most represent Latino political and civic groups such as LULAC, the Mexican American Political Association and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.
more

Pitbull