The Hall of Fame

Celia Cruz

This Puerto Rican baseball player used the fame from his eighteen years with the Pittsburgh Pirates to help the needy. He died in 1972 in an airplane accident during a humanitarian mission to Nicaragua. He was 38 years old.

Under his leadership, what was a local company known as Televisa went on to become one of the largest communication media conglomerates of Latin America and the United States during the 70's. He became one of the richest men on the planet. Azcárraga died in 1997 at the age of 66.

His comprehensive catalog makes Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, his real name, one of the literary forces in the Spanish language. His affiliations with the Chilean communist party delayed his receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, two years before he passed away at the age of 69.

When television was in its infancy, this Cuban musician, actor and producer took his music, his culture --and his accent-- to the small screen with his wife, Lucille Ball, to entertain in the series I Love Lucy, which he produced until 1957. Arnaz died in 1986 at the age of 69.

If Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera speak of the Spanish fashion designer as the inspiration for their designs, Balenciaga's influence is unquestionable. The fashion house bearing his name, even years after his death at the age of 77 in 1972, still sets the standards for style.

As one of the founders of the Cubist movement, this Spaniard changed both the theory and the practice of artistic creation. Picasso created thousands of paintings, drawings and sculptures in his 91 years of life, that today are among the most quoted by collectors around the world. He died in 1973.

Cantinflas, the magnificent rustic alter ego of this Mexican comedian, was the leading character in countless films from the golden age of cinema in Mexico during the 40's and 50's. He died at the age of 81 in 1993.

This Mexican-American activist's charisma was such that he achieved better wages and health care measures for unionized workers. He died in 1993, at the age of 66.

In 1995 the tragic murder of this Mexican-American singer at the age of 23, unleashed a wave of outrage, but even more, adoration for her career in Tejano music.

María FélixThe beauty of this Aztec actress bewitched more than one person throughout her 88 years of life, during which she obtained international fame. Today's generations admire her for her character of the indomitable woman, for which in her time she was very much in the vanguard. La Generala, as she was also known, passed away, in 2002.