Chavela Vargas was a queer Mexican singer who is best known for transforming popular Culture Ranchera music with her smokey, sultry voice, resistance to changing to pronouns of the subjects of the music (to make her music straight), and lack of requisite Ranchera instruments, preferring to go acoustics. She is known to have wooed Frida Kahlo and other female celebrities and marched entirely to the beat of her own drum.
Read MoreThough there's not much known about her, Maria Andreu has the auspicious honor of being the first Hispanic woman to serve in the US Coast Guard. As a lighthouse keeper hailing from the United States' oldest settlement, St. Augustine, Florida, Maria Andreu kept the beacons lit and tended to wounded sailors, an important job that kept people ships from dashing to pieces on the rocks. Did we mention she got the job at the ripe age of 58 in the year 1859? This week, Deanna tells us about Maria Andreu and the history of lighthouses and their keepers in the US!
Read MoreLeona Vicario was a well-educated young woman of nobility who grew up in Spanish colonial Mexico. After beginning a relationship with a revolutionary named Quintana Roo, Leona made it her mission to help Mexico gain Independence - and spent a majority of her fortune funding the revolutionary effort. When Spanish investigators learned of her involvement, she fled, and continued her fight for independence as a boots-on-the-ground revolutionary. Leona was one seriously bad bitch.
Read MoreMaría Jesús Alvarado Rivera was a Peruvian journalist and feminist at the turn of the 20th century. She was inspired by her own childhood teacher and went on to speak about the importance of full equality for women in Peru. The most incredible thing about Maria was her dedication to achieving full equality for women - not only the vote, which was the primary feminist topic of the time. Later on, she got her message across through her work in the arts and the theater and though she lived long enough to see women achieve the right to vote in Peru, the victory was bittersweet because women's equality is still out of reach today. Maria was a seriously good witch, and we're honored to feature her during Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month.
Read MoreCarmen Contreras-Bozak was the first Puerto Rican woman to go overseas as a codebreaker for the army in WW2. She joined at a time when women's contributions to the war were not seen as military, and they were therefore not entitled to the same benefits as male soldiers, such as access to VA hospitals or overseas payment. Carmen was a patriot in the truest sense - a young American woman born in the territory of Puerto Rico who found a life she loved in the mainland, and volunteered without hesitation to defend it.
Read MoreDoña Queta and Enriqueta Vargas are two Mexican women whose devotion to Santa Muerte, the Saint of Death, has created a cultural revolution. Though Santa Muerte is condemned by the Catholic Church as a Satanic cult figure beloved by drug lords, the reality is she calls to people who have been rejected by their religion, families, and cultures. These women are responsible for bringing that faith to millions of lost people who thought themselves lost.
Read MoreAfter a malicious dictator in the Dominican Republic retaliated against Minerva Mirabal's rejection with imprisonment of her family members, torture, financial ruin, Minerva and her sisters turned to rebellion against the totalitarian regime. Las Mariposas, or, The Butterflies, are now remembered throughout the Dominican Republic as martyrs, whose death finally aroused the nation to action, and brought down a dictator.
Read MorePetra Herrera was a soldadera and hero of the Mexican Revolution who was known as a great leader, a fabulous marksman, and a destroyer of bridges whose story has been put together from eye witness accounts because the official papers conspicuously left her achievements out. We say screw That! Petra Herrera was one seriously bad bitch and we are gonna tell you about her.
Read MoreIn the early 1900’s, the United States instituted a policy that involved dousing Mexican immigrants and day workers with toxic chemicals in order to “delouse” them. The practice continued for decades, but in 1917, maid Carmelita Torres had had enough. And so had thousands of other women.
Read MoreIf you’ve been watching the news, you have probably seen the name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez splashed across the headlines. But what’s so special about this 28-year-old Democratic Socialist nominee for Congress from the Bronx? Listen and find out!
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