Latinas are gaining influence all around the world, not just in the United States. From presidents to Supreme Court appointee, many notable women have opened doors for the next generation to walk through.
Sonia Sotomayor, Michelle Bachelet and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were each named to the Forbes World's Most Powerful Women list for different reasons. Let's take a look at these women and their exceptional accomplishments:
Sonia Sotomayor
Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and only the th
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The Hortencia “Tessie” M. Torres Endowed Scholarship has been established by her children, two USC alumni, with a $250,000 gift.
The scholarship will be awarded to meritorious and deserving graduate USC Rossier School of Education students, with special consideration given to those whose background experiences are similar to those of Torres Ed.D. ’80.
Torres, 75, began her career as an educator in East Los Angeles at a time when many Latinas were not encouraged to go to college - let alone pu
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A magazine has ranked UnitedHealthcare the No. 12 best place for Hispanic women to work in the United States.
Latina Style Magazine cited UnitedHealthcare’s high percentage of Latina employees and Latinas in senior management positions as well as employee benefit programs in making its decision.
Hispanic women make up 6 percent of UnitedHealthcare’s total employee base, and more than 80 percent of its Hispanic employees. The company has also created wellness information and educational program
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A record percentage of minority students in the U.S. high school class of 2009 took standardized SAT tests, as more Hispanics sought college entry.
About 40 percent of graduating high school students taking the SAT were minorities compared with 38 percent in 2008, the College Board said in a statement today. Hispanics, the largest and fastest-growing minority taking the test, accounted for 13.5 percent of all SAT takers, according to the New York-based nonprofit group.
More than 1.5 million st
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Westchester County must spend millions of dollars to build affordable housing and integrate mostly white communities in a historic civil rights settlement stemming from a federal desegregation lawsuit.
The landmark agreement that was announced yesterday dictates that Westchester spend more than $50 million to build 750 units in the next seven years in parts of the county where there are few, if any, minorities.
The decision has national ramifications that could affect thousands of municipaliti
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The Senate’s sole Hispanic Democrat says Latinos lost one of their greatest champions in Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said in a statement this morning Kennedy “will always have a place of honor in the Latino community as someone who stood up and fought for the rights of immigrants and the issues that affected the community at a time when few others would.”
Menendez and Kennedy, a lifelong champion of civil rights, worked together to craft immigration reform legislation whic
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You may have heard the inspiring story of Jose Hernandez, who grew up a migrant worker in San Joaquin County, didn't learn English until he was 12, and is now a NASA astronaut preparing to blast off in the Space Shuttle Discovery currently scheduled to launch at about 10 p.m. Pacific Time Tuesday night.
What you may not have heard that the guy is a lifelong, die-hard Oakland Raiders fan. And he's taking a Raider flag with him to plant on the International Space Station, 220 miles above the fac
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The story going around Boron these days is that a shuttle landing is not complete unless it ends with dinner at Domingo's. While Domingo Gutierrez is often telling the story, it isn't idle boasting by this eastern Kern County restaurateur.
It's the truth.
Within four to six hours of a shuttle spacecraft landing on Edwards Air Force Base's dry lake bed, the crew is in Domingo's Mexican restaurant on Twenty Mule Team Road, chowing down on fajitas and enchiladas, and knocking back Boron water -
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Who do you share your iPod playlist with?
Your lover? Your lover's husband? Your colleagues at the office? The strangely smelling man who sits next to you on the bus?
Well, researchers at the University of Cambridge have a message for you. It reads: "Don't."
According to these flatland boffins, your values, your personality, even your ethnicity, and social class (well, it is England, after all) will be judged by what you slip onto your iPod.
Jason Rentfrow, the chap who dreamed up this vita
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Despite the recession, a large number of companies—“especially consumer-product companies and financial-services firms”—are aggressively targeting the U.S. Hispanic market through advertising in Spanish-language media and sponsorship of community events, Beatrice E. Garcia writes for The Miami Herald.
Quoting TNS Market Intelligence, a market research firm, Garcia explains that overall, “[m]ore than $5 billion was aimed at the Hispanic market in 2008.” As the fastest-growing minority group in
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For the first time since it was a Spanish colony some 200 years ago, New Orleans is getting revitalized by Spanish speakers.
One of the more dramatic and immediate impacts of Hurricane Katrina has been the influx of thousands of new Latinos who have moved to the city to detoxify, renovate and rebuild storm damaged roads, flood walls, businesses and homes.
Following a mini-boom in Latinos has been a growing number of Latino-owned businesses, especially in the retail and service sectors.
Two Me
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Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin on Friday, in a move that creates one of the world's most permissive narcotics markets and that opponents say could complicate President Felipe Calderón's war against illegal drug cartels.
The law goes beyond what is allowed in many other countries by making it legal to possess small amounts of a wide array of drugs. For instance, the new law allows the equivalent of about five joints of marijuana or four lines of cocaine.
T
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Florida Sen. Mel Martinez's resignation closes the latest chapter in the Republican Party's tumultuous, decade-long effort to woo the nation's Hispanic voters.
The Cuban-American's impending departure could leave no Hispanic Republicans in the Senate and three in the House — compared to 21 Democrats in Congress — and a sense that the national GOP is at a major crossroads with the nation's fastest-growing demographic group.
Although most Hispanics outside of Florida have long leaned Democratic
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Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro criticized the United States on Wednesday for being willing to spend billions on its high-tech military but finding it difficult to approve healthcare reform that would protect its poor people.
He wrote in a commentary published on a state-run Internet site that huge military budgets are approved easily by the U.S. Congress but U.S. President Barack Obama is struggling to convince federal lawmakers to pass a bill that would "deliver health services to 50 million
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Immigrant rights activists said Friday that a White House meeting this week to reaffirm support for immigration reform -- featuring a surprise appearance by President Obama -- had helped mollify growing frustration over what some perceived as backpedaling on reform promises.
But many said that action will be needed to keep the faith among immigrants and their supporters, particularly Latinos who turned out in record numbers to help elect Obama last year.
"We've heard all of the beautiful orato
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California's jobless rate reached a fresh post-World War II high in July, climbing to 11.9%, a sobering reminder that though the nation's deep downturn may be nearing its end, the state's employment woes are far from over.
Golden State employers cut their payrolls by 35,800 jobs in July, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. That's a significant improvement over monthly losses that averaged 76,000 over the first half of the year. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Health care reform plans don’t include any kind of public coverage for undocumented immigrants. President Barack Obama has even said that including the undocumented would create "a lot of resistance."
But this hasn’t stopped opponents, including anti-immigrant lobbyist groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), from denouncing supposed "loop holes" in the proposals that they say would benefit the undocumented.
"Many Americans have used town hall meetings to express the
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The White House is expanding its push for health care reform to Hispanics with a Spanish-language version of its "Reality Check" health care Web site.
The site provides all of the videos featured on the English version, with the option of adding Spanish subtitles. There is one more video from Luis Miranda, the director of Hispanic media for the White House, who in Spanish introduces the site and lays out President Obama's arguments for comprehensive reform.
Earlier this month, the White House
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If a golden résumé meant automatic election, Ted Cruz could start measuring the drapes in the Texas attorney general’s office.
The son of a Cuban immigrant, Mr. Cruz, 38, has degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He was a champion college debater, clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and has argued eight cases before the US Supreme Court. Among his victories in the high court, he defended the constitutionality of Texas’ Ten Commandments monument and congressional re
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