Harriet Rene "Khandi" Alexander is an American dancer, choreographer, and actress. She began her career as a dancer in the 1980s, and was a choreographer for Whitney Houston's world tours from 1988 to 1992.
Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso, known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname "La Guarachera de Cuba". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" due to her contributions to Latin music. She had sold over 10 million records, making her one of the best-selling Latin music artists.
Gloria María Milagrosa Estefan is a Cuban-American singer, actress, and businesswoman. Estefan is an eight-time Grammy Award winner, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and has been named one of the Top 100 greatest artists of all time by both VH1 and Billboard. Estefan's record sales exceed 100 million worldwide, making her one of the best-selling female singers of all time. Many of Estefan's songs became international chart-topping hits, including "1-2-3", "Don't Wanna Lose You", "Coming Out of the Dark", "Turn the Beat Around", and "Heaven's What I Feel". Other hits include "Bad Boy", "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You", "Get On Your Feet", and "You'll Be Mine ".
Rita Moreno is an American actress, dancer, and singer. With a career spanning eight decades she is known for her roles on stage and screen, and is one of the last remaining stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Among her numerous accolades, she is one of the few actors to have been awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony (EGOT) and the Triple Crown of Acting. She has been honored with Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, the National Medal of Arts in 2009, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2013, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2015, and a Peabody Award in 2019.
Chumbais a traditional form of music and dance performed by the Garifuna people in several Central American countries. Like punta, chumba songs are highly polyrhythmic, but have a slower tempo.
Nina Serrano is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Vallejo, California. She is the author of Heart Songs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, including the literary anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California, and three anthologies of peace poems edited by Mary Rudge from Estuary Press. She has also translated two chapbooks from Peruvian poet Adrian Arias. She currently leads storytelling workshops at senior centers and elementary schools through Stagebridge.org. She is the former director of the San Francisco Poetry in the Schools program and the Bay Area's Storytellers in the Schools program. A Latina activist for social justice, women's rights, and the arts.
Sonia Manzano is an American actress, screenwriter, and author. She is best known for playing Maria on Sesame Street from 1971 to 2015. She received a Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy Award in 2016.
Cecilia María Altonaga is the chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She is the first Cuban-American woman to be appointed as a federal judge in the United States.
Punta is an Afro-indigenous dance and cultural music of the Belizean, Guatemalan, Honduran and Nicaraguan Garífuna people, originating from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It has African and Arawak elements which are also the characteristics of the Garífuna language. It is also known as banguity or bunda.
Alicia Alonso was a Cuban prima ballerina assoluta and choreographer whose company became the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in 1955. She is best known for her portrayals of Giselle and the ballet version of Carmen.
Honduran Americans are Americans of full or partial Honduran descent. Hondurans are the eighth largest Hispanic group in the United States and the third largest Central American population, after Salvadorans and Guatemalans. Hondurans are concentrated in Texas, Florida and California, and are now the largest immigrant group in Louisiana.
The Sugar Babies is a 2007 feature-length documentary film about exploitation in the sugar plantations of the Dominican Republic. The film, narrated by Edwidge Danticat, explores how the descendants of African slaves, are trafficked from Haiti to live and work in inhumane conditions akin to modern day slavery.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons is a Cuban-born artist based in Nashville, Tennessee. Campos-Pons works primarily in photography, performance, audiovisual media, and sculpture. She is considered a "key figure" among Cuban artists who found their voice in a post-revolutionary Cuba. Her art deals with themes of Cuban culture, gender and sexuality, multicultural identity as well as interracial family (Cuban-American), and religion/spirituality.
Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child.
Olga Merediz is an American actress and singer. Merediz originated the role of Claudia in the Broadway musical In the Heights, for which she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She played the role for the show's entire Broadway run, and reprised the role in the film adaptation. Her television credits include NBC's 2016 series Shades of Blue and Netflix's Orange Is the New Black.
El espíritu de mi mamá is a Spanish language feature film by Ali Allie about Garifuna woman's journey home to Honduras to embrace her cultural roots. It premiered at SXSW in 1999 and later at Dawn Breakers International Film Festival. It was released on DVD in 2002 by Vanguard Cinema and was the first fictional movie featuring Garifuna actors in leading roles. It features an extended religious ritual segment with traditional Garifuna songs and traditional punta dance.
Nancy Mercado is an American writer, editor, educator and activist; her work focuses on issues of injustice, the environment, and the Puerto Rican and Latino experience in the United States. She forms part of the Nuyorican Movement, a literary genre which arose from the Beat Movement.
Tony Mendoza is a Cuban-American artist with a studio in Miami, Florida. Mendoza's style is Primitive Expressionist and "Caricaturista," a type of art that is whimsical in nature. Mendoza works mainly with acrylic on canvas.
Marion Lipschutz is an American documentary producer, writer, and director. Lipschutz has directed and produced award-winning documentaries, including BEI BEI, The Education of Shelby Knox and Young Lakota.
Sofía Blanco is a Garifuna singer from Guatemala, widely recognized for her talent and efforts to promote the cultural traditions of her people. She has been a featured singer on several albums of Garifuna music, and has toured internationally with the Belizean group Garifuna Collective and Garifuna Women's performance band Umalali, one of the groups selected for performances at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
