The image is a vibrant, colorful graphic designed to celebrate "National Hispanic Heritage Firsts." The central focus is on the bold title text, surrounded by an arrangement of national flags from various Hispanic and Latin American countries. In the center of the image, large text reads:
Surrounding the central title is a border made up of the national flags of several Hispanic countries. The flags are positioned along the top, bottom, and sides of the image, creating a dynamic, framing effect. Some of the visible flags include:
After earning her doctorate in engineering from Stanford University, Ochoa joined NASA in 1988 as a research engineer and was selected to be an astronaut in 1990. Her first mission in space was aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993.
The former Johnson Space Center director logged four space shuttle flights and 1,000 hours in orbit over her 30-year career.
One of NASA's most decorated astronauts and leaders, Dr. Ochoa was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor.
Dr. Ochoa is the tenth astronaut, and second female astronaut, to receive the Medal of Freedom.
In 1980, he became Commander of III Corps - and is recognized for his innovative leadership of the Corps. In 1982, Cavazos again made history by being appointed the U.S. Army's first Hispanic four-star General.
Cavazos earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, the nation's second-highest award for valor in combat. Among his many awards and decorations are the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star Medal with "V" device with four Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Purple Heart.
Fort Hood, the Army's largest armored, active-duty military installation, located in Killeen, TX, was redesignated as Fort Cavazos on May 9, 2023, in honor of native Texas General Richard E. Cavazos. The name change was part of a military-wide effort to remove or modify bases, memorials, and other installations that commemorate Confederate figures. Some say that changing the name is about building a new future based on lessons learned from history, and that the new name symbolizes cherished values.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was born in Cuba in 1952 and immigrated to the United States at the age of eight. Her family settled in Miami. She was elected to the Florida House of Representatives and then to the Florida Senate, becoming the first Hispanic woman to service in both. In 1989, she ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives against Democrat Gerald F. Richman, who used the campaign slogan, "This is an American seat." Many viewed this as anti-Cuban and anti-Hispanic rhetoric, and in a backlash, Ros-Lehtinen won the election, making her the first Hispanic woman to ever serve in the United States Congress.
One of Franklin Chang-Díaz’s earliest memories is of lying inside a very large cardboard box with his friends and cousins and pretending to count down and blast off into space. Chang-Díaz, who was born in Costa Rica and whose father was of Chinese descent, grew up during the Cold War and was fascinated by space exploration. To pursue his dream, he headed to the United States in his teens, eventually earning a Ph.D. in plasma physics from MIT and applying to NASA’s Space Program, where he became the first Hispanic astronaut in 1981. In his 25-year career at NASA, Chang-Díaz equaled the record seven space shuttle flights, helped build the International Space Station and logged more than 1,601 hours in space, including 19 hours and 31 minutes in three spacewalks. Upon retiring from NASA in 2005, Chang-Díaz, who envisions a day when humanity will live and travel throughout the solar system, founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company, where he is developing a plasma rocket engine that claims 10 times the performance of a chemical rocket while using one-tenth the amount of fuel.
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1859, Octaviano Larrazola immigrated to the United States as a boy and was raised in New Mexico. A Republican from New Mexico, Larrazola was a champion of civil rights and equal treatment for Hispanic Americans. This made him popular with New Mexican voters, who would elect him to be the fourth governor of New Mexico in 1918. Ten years later, he was elected to the United States Senate, making him the first Hispanic American to serve as a U.S. Senator.
Once called “one of the heroic figures of our time” by then-Senator Robert Kennedy, Cesar Chavez lived a life of service to justice and equal rights. As the first-generation American son of farmworkers in Arizona, he was drawn to a life of activism. After serving in the Navy in 1946, Chavez returned home and became a community organizer, first as a leader in the San Jose Community Service Organization (CSO), and then by establishing the National Farm Workers Association. Chavez led successful marches, strikes, fasts and protests, and was inspired by peaceful resistance movements and leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. His legacy lives on in Latinx and workers’ rights movements going on today.
A childhood spent combating a congenital disease left Antonia Novello determined to become a doctor and help children and families who, like hers, could not afford the medical care they needed. Eventually, that path would lead her to join the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. As a congressional fellow, Novello — born Antonia Coello in Fajardo, Puerto Rico — helped draft federal legislation to establish the national registry for organ matching, as well as the health warnings added to cigarette packages. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush appointed her the United States’ 14th surgeon general, the nation’s top health official, making her the first woman and the first Hispanic to hold that position. During her tenure, from 1990 to 1993, Novello continued to focus on the health of women, children and minorities, launching initiatives to combat underage drinking and smoking as well as domestic violence, and to prevent the neonatal transmission of AIDS. In 2014, Novello retired from her position at the Florida Hospital for Children in Orlando, but she remains active, most recently meeting with all living former U.S. Surgeon Generals at the White House in 2021 to discuss expanding COVID-19 vaccine access and information to communities of color.
“We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. We are numerous. There are many of us out here.” Venezuelan- and Puerto Rican-American Sylvia Rivera was an LGBTQ rights pioneer. New York City’s Stonewall Inn is now a historic landmark and destination for Pride celebrations, but in 1969, brave patrons like Rivera were resisting an unlawful raid by police. The riots at Stonewall were a turning point in history for equal rights. Rivera went on to be the co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which provides legal representation and support to all those in the trans, non-binary and non-gender conforming communities, was established in 2002 shortly after her death.
In 2009, Bronx-born Latina Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice of the United States. She was nominated by former President Barack Obamam and confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 68 to 31. Sotomayor holds a B.A. from Princeton and a law degree from Yale University. Her long career includes time spent as assistant district attorney for New York County, being a judge to the U.S. District Court (appointed by George H.W. Bush) and serving as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Sotomayor has been outspoken about how her unique experience as a Latina has contributed to her work as a judge.
Born as Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga in Chile in 1889, poet and educator Gabriela Mistral was the first Hispanic person to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. Although she was no stranger to tragedy, she used her pain to create lasting works of poetry. Throughout her career, Mistral traveled the world as a writer and educator, teaching at Columbia University, Vassar College and the University of Puerto Rico. She died in New York in 1957, 12 years after winning the Nobel Prize.
In 1981, U.S. baseball fans would be introduced to one of the game’s great pitchers, whose prowess ignited Fernandomania from the moment he first stepped onto the mound at Dodger Stadium. Twenty-year-old Mexican pitcher Fernando Valenzuela went on to win the National League Rookie of the Year Award and the Cy Young Award, the first pitcher in major league history to win both during the same season. Nicknamed El Toro (“the bull”), Valenzuela went on to help the Los Angeles Dodgers clinch the 1981 World Series against the New York Yankees — and best all National League pitchers to win the 1981 Silver Slugger Award. That was just the beginning. Fabulous Fernando would continue to confound batters with his signature screwball pitch throughout a 17-year career in the majors.
In 1962, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno made history when she became the first Hispanic woman to win an Academy Award for best actress in a supporting role for her portrayal of Anita in West Side Story. Sixty years later, history was made yet again when another Latina, Ariana DeBose, who is of Puerto Rican ancestry, was awarded the Oscar for playing the same character in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake. Adding to the list of firsts, DeBose also became the first Afro-Latina and LGBTQ woman of color to win the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Thanking “the divine inspiration that is Rita Moreno” in her acceptance speech, DeBose also referred to their shared character: “Now I see why Anita says ‘I want to be in America’; because even in this weary world that we live in, dreams do come true.”
When journalist José Díaz-Balart started hosting his own weekday morning show, José Díaz-Balart Reports, in English on MSNBC on September 27, 2021, it was just the latest step in a career that has the versatile anchor moving deftly between English- and Spanish-language newscasts at NBC, Telemundo and CBS. It was, in fact, at CBS that Díaz-Balart first made history, in 1996, when he became the first Cuban American to host a network news program in English (This Morning). In 2016, the bilingual anchor — winner of four national Emmys, an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award and a George Foster Peabody Award — again made history when he took over NBC Nightly News Saturday while continuing to anchor Noticias Telemundo, making him the first U.S. journalist to anchor both English- and Spanish-language newscasts on two broadcast networks simultaneously. Now, as host of José Díaz-Balart Reports and NBC Nightly News Saturday, and as he continues to helm special news coverage for Telemundo and on Peacock, Díaz-Balart is the only anchor to host national news programs on both cable and broadcast television in both English and Spanish.
As the son of migrant farmworkers in California, Juan Felipe Herrera had a childhood that was nomadic, restless and kaleidoscopic, all words that have also been used to describe his body of work as a poet, novelist, author of books for young adults and children, nonfiction writer and performance artist. But there was one constant in his early life: his mother’s voice, reciting poetry in Spanish and singing songs from the Mexican Revolution. Her voice, he said, inspired his own. In 2015, Herrera’s stature in Chicano and American literature led the Library of Congress to name him the nation’s 21st poet laureate, making him the first Latino to hold that position and the first whose body of work blends English and Spanish. Seven years later, in 2022, Ada Limón became the first Latina to be named poet laureate. Born in Sonoma, California, and of Mexican ancestry, Limón is the author of six critically acclaimed poetry collections. As the 24th poet laureate of the United States, she has said that she’d “like to explore how poetry can reconnect us to the natural world and help us to repair our relationship to the planet.”
Introduced to auto racing at the age of 24 in her native Venezuela, Milka Duno soon started competing professionally and today has eight major motorsport wins to her credit. Besides becoming the first Latina driver to compete in a NASCAR national series in 2014, Dono is also the first Latina driver to compete in multiple U.S. racing series, including the Indianapolis 500 and the IndyCar, ARCA, Rolex and American Le Mans series. A former model, Duno is a qualified naval engineer with four master’s degrees. In 2004, she created the Milka Way program to inspire children to achieve academic excellence.
Originally from Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente Walker came to the United States to play major league baseball in 1954. This famous Hispanic American spent his career as a right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Although he was an elite athlete, achieving more than 3,000 base hits by the end of his career, Clemente faced racial bias in the United States. This led Clemente to become an advocate for Latino and Black players’ rights in baseball. He died in a plane crash in 1972, en route to bring relief to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua. He became the first Hispanic baseball player to be inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame, and he helped pave the way for future generations of Latino ballplayers to join the game.
