HARRIS BEACH RECOGNIZES NATIONAL HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States honors the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. We’re participating at Harris Beach by spotlighting interesting Hispanic public figures, and facts about different countries, and testing your language skills. As our focus on National Hispanic Heritage Month continues, this week we focus on a figure from the world of sports: Roberto Clemente, who is known as much for his accomplishments as humanitarian as he is for his feats on the field of play.

ROBERTO CLEMENTE Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker of Puerto Rico, born August 18, 1934, has the distinction of being the first Latin American and Caribbean player to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He played right field over 18 seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Clemente’s untimely death established the precedent that, as an alternative to the five-year retirement period, a player who has been deceased for at least six months is eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame. Clemente was the youngest of 7 children and was raised in Barrio San Antón, Carolina, Puerto Rico. During his childhood, his father worked as foreman of sugar crops located in the municipality and, because the family’s resources were limited, Clemente worked alongside his father in the fields by loading and unloading trucks. Clemente was a track and field star and Olympic hopeful before deciding to turn his full attention to baseball. His interest in baseball showed itself early on in childhood with Clemente often times playing against neighboring barrios. He attended Julio Vizcarrondo Coronado High School in Carolina where he was recruited by Roberto Marín to play softball with the Sello Rojo team. He was with the team two years as a shortstop, then later joined Puerto Rico’s amateur league when he was 16 years old. Clemente’s professional baseball career began when Pedrín Zorilla offered Clemente, 18, a contract which he signed on October 9, 1952, with the Cangrejeros de Santurce, a winter league team and franchise of the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League. During his distinguished career, Clemente played in 15 All-Star Games. He was the National League’s (NL) Most Valuable Player in 1966, the NL batting leader in 1961, 1964, 1965, and 1967, and a Gold Glove Award winner for 12 consecutive seasons from 1961 through 1972. His batting average was over .300 for 13 seasons and he achieved the rare feat of recording 3,000 hits. He also played in two World Series. Clemente is the first Latin American and Caribbean player to win a World Series as a starting position player (1960), to receive an NL MVP Award (1966), and to receive a World Series MVP Award (1971). Clemente spent much of his off-season time engaged in charity work. When Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, was struck by a massive earthquake on December 23, 1972, Clemente (who visited Managua three weeks before the quake) immediately set to work arranging emergency relief flights. He soon learned, however, that the aid packages on the first three flights had been diverted by corrupt officials of the government, never reaching victims of the quake. He decided to accompany the fourth relief flight, hoping that his presence would ensure that the aid would be delivered. The airplane he chartered for a New Year’s Eve flight, a Douglas DC-7 cargo plane, had a history of mechanical problems and an insufficient number of flight personnel (missing both a flight engineer and copilot.) It was also overloaded by 4,200 pounds. The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Isla Verde, Puerto Rico immediately after takeoff on December 31, 1972 due to engine failure Roberto Celemente was 38 years old. The following season, the Pirates retired his uniform, number 21, and MLB renamed its annual Commissioner’s Award in his honor, which is now known as the Roberto Clemente Award. This award is given to the player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team”.

To learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Clemente

Published: October 7, 2019

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HARRIS BEACH RECOGNIZES NATIONAL HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States honors the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. We’re participating at Harris Beach by spotlighting interesting Hispanic public figures, and facts about different countries, and testing your language skills. This week we introduce you to writer Junot Diaz, a Dominican-American writer raised in New Jersey. Drawn from content on Mr. Diaz’s official biography, his Wikipedia entry and other sources, here’s more about his literary career:

JUNOT DÍAZ Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was selected as one of the 39 most important Latin American writers under the age of 39 by the Bogotá World Book Capital and the Hay Festival. In his youth he was known to be a voracious reader, often walking four miles in order to borrow books from his public library. He became fascinated with apocalyptic films and books, especially the work of John Christopher, the original Planet of the Apes films, and the BBC mini-seriesEdge of Darkness. Growing up Diaz struggled greatly with learning the English language. And as such, central to Díaz’s work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience. In an interview conducted in 2010, Diaz reflected on his journey. “I can safely say I’ve seen the United States from the bottom up ... I may be a success story as an individual. But if you adjust the knob and just take it back one setting to the family unit, I would say my family tells a much more complicated story. It tells the story of two kids in prison. It tells the story of enormous poverty, of tremendous difficulty.” To learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junot_D%C3%ADaz and http://www.junotdiaz.com/

Published: October 1, 2019

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HARRIS BEACH RECOGNIZES NATIONAL HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States honors the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. We’re participating at Harris Beach by spotlighting interesting Hispanic public figures, and facts about different countries, and testing your language skills. This week we introduce you to singer Gloria Estefan, a Cuban-American singer. Drawn from Wikipedia and other sources, here’s more about Ms. Estefan and her performing and business career:

GLORIA ESTEFAN Gloria Estefan (née María Milagrosa Fajardo García) is a Cuban-American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman whose music reached the top of the charts in the United States. Estefan was born into a middle-class household on September 1, 1957 in Havana, Cuba, to parents José Fajardo and Gloria García. Estefan’s maternal grandparents were Spanish immigrants.

Gloria grew up in a musical family that included a famous flutist and classical pianist. Her mother Gloria Fajardo (nicknamed “Big Gloria”) won an international contest and received a Hollywood offer to dubShirley Temple’s films in Spanish during her childhood. Estefan also had uncles who were singer-songwriters. The passion for music and performing obviously had an impact.

Estefan traces her professional career to the group “Miami Latin Boys,” which later became known as Miami Sound Machine. As the story goes, in 1975, Gloria and her cousin Mercedes “Merci” Navarro met Emilio Estefan, Jr. while performing at a church ensemble rehearsal. Emilio had formed the band the Miami Latin Boys earlier that year. The Latin Boys were performing at a Cuban wedding at a Miami Hotel, when Gloria and Merci (who were wedding guests) performed two Cuban standards impromptu. This netted them an invitation to join the band permanently; the band subsequently changed its name to the Miami Sound Machine.

Initially, Gloria was with the band only on weekends as she was studying at the University of Miami. But things would change quickly. By the beginning of 1977, Miami Sound Machine began recording and releasing various albums and 45s. The band’s popularity grew immensely and they were eventually absorbed into a record label associated with CBS.

In the middle of 1988, Gloria and the band got their first number-one hit for the song “Anything for You.” A year later, the Miami Sound Machine name was dropped, and Gloria has been credited as a solo artist ever since. In late 1989, she released her best-selling album to date, Cuts Both Ways. The album included the hit singles “Don’t Wanna Lose You” (Hot 100 No. 1 hit), “Oye mi Canto,” “Here We Are,” “Cuts Both Ways” (No. 1 on the U.S. Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks chart), and a song that has become a party anthem: “Get on Your Feet.”

In the course of 40 years of performing, Estefan has won three Grammy Awards and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Las Vegas Walk of Fame. In 2015, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions to American music and received the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2017 for her contributions to American Culture Life. Estefan has also been honored with the American Music Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and has received multiple Billboard Awards. She is also on the list of VH1 top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and in Billboard’s Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

*For more information on Gloria Estefan, please feel free to click here. Published: September 24, 2019

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HARRIS BEACH RECOGNIZES NATIONAL HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH Over the next four weeks, as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the United States will be honoring the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. We’re participating at Harris Beach as well. Here on ED, we’ll be spotlighting interesting Hispanic public figures, and facts about different countries. And we’ll be testing your language skills a bit as well. We kick off our series today with a look at Felix Longoria Jr., a Mexican-American from Texas who was killed serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. The “Longoria Affair,” as it became known, put focus on discriminatory treatment of Hispanic veterans and helped unify the Chicano movement. More about Private Longoria and Longoria Affair, drawn from Wikipedia and other online sources:

FELIX Z. LONGORIA JR. Felix Z. Longoria Jr. (1920 – June 1945), was a Mexican-American soldier from Texas who served in the United States Army as a private. He died during World War II. The events that followed became known as the “Longoria Affair” and served as a pivotal moment in the early stages of the post-World War II Chicano Movement in the United States, with the then-newly formed G.I. Forum advocating on behalf of Hispanic veterans receiving unequal treatment. Longoria was killed during the war, in the Philippines in 1945, but his body was not returned to his family until 1949. The soldier’s widow tried to make arrangements with the director of the funeral home in Longoria’s hometown of Three Rivers to hold a wake for him at the funeral home. Tom Kennedy, the funeral home director, denied the request due to Longoria being Mexican. Kennedy was very vocal about this sentiment with others. He was willing to set up a wake at the Longoria home, in the segregated area across the railroad tracks from the white section of town, as was the customary treatment of Mexican-Americans by the Three Rivers community. Outraged Tejanos who sought to end such discrimination organized under the newly formed American GI Forum and its leader, Dr. Hector P. Garcia. When the New York Times reported on the difficulties faced by Longoria’s family in Three Rivers, the case drew significant national and international attention. “The big state of Texas looks mighty small tonight,” famed broadcaster Walter Winchell commented on his radio program. The matter even impacted U.S.-Mexican relations. Reporting on the “Longoria Affair” caught the attention of freshman U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, thereby encouraging his intervention in the case. Sen. Johnson gained approval for Longoria’s remains to be reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery in a full military ceremony, along with 18 other soldiers whose remains had been repatriated from foreign soil where they had served and died. Full military honors was accorded each burial. For more information on Felix Longoria, please feel free to read here.

Published: September 19, 2019

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