La Malinche is known by various names including Malintzin and doña Marina. She was born around 1500 in the Yucatán peninsula. She had a difficult childhood and was sold into slavery to a group of Mayans after her father’s death. She was later given to yet another tribe as tribute. Through her circumstances she was forced to learn several indigenous languages. She also learned Spanish through her friendship with a Spanish priest while she was enslaved.

In March of 1519 she was given to Hernan Cortés along with approximately 20 other enslaved women as part of a declaration of peace. She was treated with respect by the conquistadors due to her beauty, mannerisms and fluency in the Spanish language. She stayed close to Cortés during an expedition they soon undertook as she was a valuable interpreter to him in his negotiations with Moctezuma, the then Aztec leader. She is often depicted at the side of Cortés in the images made of this fateful meeting. According to some records, La Malinche learned of a plan by the indigenous Cholula people to cooperate with the Aztecs to destroy the small Spanish army. She alerted Cortés and as such she is often viewed as a traitor to this day by some indigenous peoples. 

Cortés defeated Moctezuma in 1521 and the following year La Malinche gave birth to his son. From 1524 to 1526 Cortés once again used her services to quell a rebellion in Honduras. The details of her later life are not clear. La Malinche eventually married a Spanish hidalgo by the name of Juan Jaramillo and had a daughter with him who was raised by Jaramillo and his second wife after La Malinche’s death. Her son was raised primarily by the family of Hernán Cortés.

The Muslims had been in Spain since 711, and several campaigns and battles were fought for centuries before Spain regained full control of the peninsula in 1492. This prolonged campaign came to be known as the Reconquista.  Sancho was assassinated in 1072 and the king’s brother, Alfonso assumed control. As a result, El Cid went into exile. While in exile, El Cid continued to fight in other areas of Spain, including Granada and Barcelona. King Alfonso ordered El Cid to return in 1087 after suffering a great defeat. Rodrigo took the opportunity to create his own principality near the city of Valencia by leading a combined army of Christians and Moors, in the victory of 1090. El Cid had married a woman named Jimena in 1075 and they had a son. El Cid lived a few peaceful years with his wife in his principality before this death in 1099.

El Cid was immortalized in a 12th century epic poem called El Canto del Mio Cid.  This poem gives a partly fictionalized version of his life and portrays him as a chivalrous hero of the Reconquest of Spain. Through this poem El Cid reached a legendary status within the history of Spain and many plays, movies and other poems have been based on the story of his life. He is also commonly portrayed in paintings and statues, particularly near his hometown of Burgos.

Goethe began traveling while young. He went through Europe and wrote many poems about women, the landscapes and suffering. Later in life, Goethe met the well-known writer Friedrich von Schiller. They worked together in the Sturm und Drang time. This period occurred from 1760 to 1790 when poets and musicians in Germany worked together to find a new artistic way. Goethe is known for his book The Sorrows of Young Werther, from 1779. It is about unrequited love and is still read a lot by young people today. He also wrote Faust, a tragedy. There are many statues of Goethe in Germany today and also numerous institutions named in his honor .

Severo Ochoa de Albornoz was a Spanish-American doctor and biochemist. He is best known for winning the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1959. He was born in Spain in 1905. From a young age he was very interested in biology and by 1923 he was studying medicine at the University of Madrid.

In 1927 he spent the summer in Scotland to improve his English skills.  He also worked in a biochemistry laboratory. Ochoa completed his medical degree in 1929 before moving to Berlin to join the laboratory of Otto Mayerhof, a well-known German physician and biochemist.  At the time Germany was at the forefront of the rapidly evolving discipline of biochemistry.

In 1930, Ochoa returned to Madrid and completed his doctorate of medicine. He also married but the marriage did not result in any children. During his postdoctoral studies in London, England he began researching enzymes. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Ochoa recognized his future was not in Spain and he and his wife moved to the United States.

By the 1940s, Ochoa was an assistant professor of biochemistry at the New York University School of Medicine. In 1956, he was awarded American citizenship and in 1959 he received the Nobel Prize for his work on synthesizing RNA or ribonucleic acid. Ochoa continued his work with RNA in the United States until 1985 when he returned to Spain. He passed away in November 1993 in Madrid.

Huerta began her own community activism while still in high school. She faced discrimination as a Latina growing up in the 1940s and 1950s and was an advocate for equal treatment for all. She trained to become a teacher, but she felt that she could do more by becoming an activist.

In 1962, she cofounded the National farmworkers Association with César Chávez. Together they organized numerous strikes on behalf of agricultural workers from various backgrounds. She also supported bills such as a 1960 bill to permit Spanish-speaking people to receive a driver’s license examination in Spanish in California. Like César Chávez, Huerta believed in nonviolent forms of protest. In addition to her work with farmworkers, she has also focused on women’s rights and actively encourages Latinas to run for political office.

Dolores is president of her own foundation that she started in 2002. For her activism, she has also received numerous honors and awards including the presidential medal of freedom which she received from President Obama in 2012.

Huerta has been married twice and has a total of 11 children. She was also in a long term relationship with Richard Chávez, the brother of her fellow activist César, until his passing in 2011.

Cervantes was born in Spain in 1547 near the city of Madrid. He received a Jesuit education for boys in Madrid. His parents were not wealthy and his father often struggled with debt. He had six known siblings but not much more is known of his childhood.

In 1570, Cervantes enlisted as a soldier in the Spanish Marines and left Spain. He traveled to Italy, Malta and other Spanish territories often being required to fight even while in ill health. He distinguished himself and received numerous commendations from the king. At one point he was shot in the arm and chest leaving him with lasting injuries. After recuperating for six months in Italy, he set sail for Spain but before reaching his destination his ship was intercepted and he was taken prisoner by Ottoman pirates. From 1575 to 1580 he was kept as a captive in Algiers. These experiences help lay the foundations for some of the details found in Don Quixote as well as his two plays set in Algiers.

Upon his eventual return to Spain, Cervantes began writing about his experiences but worked in other positions such as banking to support himself. In 1584, he married a much younger woman. It is said that her uncle, a man by the name of Alonso de Quesada y Salazar was the inspiration for the character of Don Quixote.

Over the following 20 years, Cervantes continue to write on and off while living in numerous Spanish cities before settling in Madrid in 1606. After publishing the first volume of Don Quixote in 1605, someone wrote an unauthorized continuation of the story prompting Cervantes himself to write a second volume published in 1615.

Don Quixote is arguably the first European novel. The story takes place contemporaneously in Spain as an older gentleman by the name of Alonso Quixana, roams the country as a self proclaimed Knight-errant. He travels under the name of Don Quixote de la Mancha (his home region) after reading too many stories of chivalry from the medieval period and falling in love with a local girl he would like to impress. The moral of the story is that humans cannot fight modernization as exemplified by a famous scene in which he charges at windmills, a new technology of the time, in an attempt to destroy them.

Luckily for students of Spanish, the language used in Don Quixote is quite similar to modern standard Spanish and therefore can be read by upper level students of Spanish without the notes generally reserved for works such as Shakespeare, his contemporary. The book is still widely read today in Spanish literature courses with often a full semester being dedicated to it. Today the two volumes are generally published as one long novel.

Cervantes died in Madrid on April 22, 1616 after having suffered briefly from diabetes in an age in which there were no treatments for this disease. In addition to Don Quixote, Cervantes also wrote numerous plays that are still performed today. His works have a special type of comedic element that influenced later writers particularly in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Numerous films, ballets and operas have also been written about his story of Don Quixote.

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a Benedictine nun and a German mystic of the Middle Ages. She dealt with such diverse disciplines as religion, medicine, biology and music. Von Bingen was the tenth child in her family and therefore went to church at the age of eight. The woman, who was a mother figure for her in the monastery was named Jutta. Von Bingen only told Jutta about her periodic visions, in which she spoke directly with God. She wrote down these experiences in her own alphabet so that she could keep the experiences secret. Although von Bingen was often sick in bed during her life time, she had a very long life.

Apart from the Bible, she also studied plants from her garden and how they could be used as remedies. In addition, she composed many songs that are sung to this day. Later in life von Bingen became an abbess and she traveled a lot in Germany to preach. For a woman in the Middle Ages, she had a lot of power. To this day, Hildegard von Bingen is known far beyond the borders of her homeland for all she contributed.

Selena was the youngest of her family and began singing in public at the age of nine with her older brothers. At the age of 11, she started recording professionally. Culturally, women could not sing Tejano music in the eighties, but Selena was persistent and won a music award in her genre in 1987, an award that she went on to win 8 more times!

In 1992, Selena married her guitarist Chris Perez and they moved to Corpus Christi. A song from her album of the same year, entitled Como la flor, is one of her best-known songs. In 1994 Selena released another album titled Amor prohibido that became one of the best-selling Latin albums in the United States.

Selena was a sensation. She was known for her hair styles and clothes, and began designing and manufacturing her own clothing line and even opened two stores. In 1994, she hired a woman by the name of Yolanda Saldívar to manage the new stores. Unfortunately, this woman stole money from the family and when Selena confronted her, Saldívar shot her. Selena died a few hours later in the hospital.

After her death in 1995, people began to refer to Selena as the Mexican Madonna. In her honor, Texas radio stations played her music non-stop for days. More than 60,000 people attended her funeral and Selena appeared on the cover of People magazine and the New York Times. Two weeks after her death, George W. Bush, then Governor of Texas, declared her birthday Selena Day in Texas because, according to him, she represented the essence of South Texas and its mixed culture.

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Chavez was born in Yuma, Arizona in 1927. His parents were Mexican farm workers. He was one of six children.  Sadly, his family lost their home during the Great Depression forcing them to emigrate to California in search of work. He had a difficult childhood and his family struggled for years to feed themselves. Chávez had to leave school in the seventh grade to start working in the fields.

At the age of 25, Chavez began to become involved in the labor movement. He encouraged Mexican Americans to vote and organize themselves to have a political voice. In 1962, he helped form the United Union of Agricultural Workers or UFW. He also began to organize strikes with leaders of other minority groups to fight for better working conditions and pay for all.

Chavez believed in a form of nonviolent protest and often fasted for long periods of time in protest. He also began working with another activist who was named Dolores Huerta in the 1970s. Together they held one of the biggest labor strikes ever in the history of the United States!

In 1948, Chavez had married Helen, his high school sweetheart, and together they had eight children. Throughout his life, he remained vegan because he believed in animal rights. Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66. Today, March 31, his birthday, is known as Cesar Chavez Day and is a state holiday in California, Colorado and Texas.