Rigoberta went all over Guatemala helping other pueblos defend their rights. Her mother, father, and brother were murdered and she was threatened, too. She was forced to leave her country, but she never gave up. In exile, she wrote her famous testimony, I, Rigoberta Menchú, for the whole world to see and joined the United Nations to bring her country and her community peace. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and has been working ever since, defending Indigenous communities both in court and in the public’s eye to make sure everyone is treated with respect and dignity.
Mercedes Doretti
1959–present
Mercedes grew up during a dangerous time in Argentina. The military was in power, and people could disappear in the night just for saying the wrong thing or even for being friends with people the military didn’t like.
In the central Plaza de Mayo, abuelas would come together and demand to know what had happened to their hijos and nietos. “Are they still alive? Are they hungry or cold?” Month after month, day after day, the abuelas came. “We deserve to know!” they would say.
“I wish I could help,” Mercedes thought as she passed by.
One day, in Mercedes’ college anthropology class, a man from the United States walked through the door. “The abuelas asked me to come here,” he said. “I am going to uncover what the military has tried to hide. Who’s with me?”
Mercedes was scared. What this man was asking them to do was very different from looking at bones from ancient civilizations, like Mercedes was used to. But she knew how important it was, so she raised her hand. “I’ll go,” Mercedes said.
Mercedes worked with a team to dig up the bones of those who had disappeared. By analyzing them, they gave the abuelas the truth they had so long been waiting for. Finally, there was evidence to take to the courts. Mercedes was so inspired that she put together a group to continue working. She now leads projects around the world, discovering proof of crimes against humanity, and giving families who seek justice the respect they deserve. Thanks to Mercedes, truths that have been buried are getting the chance to be told.
Sonia Solange Pierre
July 4, 1963–December 4, 2011
Sonia’s name wasn’t Sonia. That name was just easier for her teacher to say. And her name wasn’t Solain Pié, either. The Dominican officials had just registered her any old way. It didn’t matter to them that her real name was Solange.
To many people living outside her batey, it didn’t matter whether Solange and her neighbors had running water or schools or a hospital to go to when they got sick. People living in the batey were seen as Haitian immigrants who had come to the Dominican Republic to work in the sugarcane fields. And that was it. But Solange had other ideas.
By the time she was thirteen, she was organizing from batey to batey. “We need schools, hospitals, and decent pay! Y no vale if we don’t strike together,” she would say. Once, while leading a march, guards arrested her and told her mami, “Get your daughter under control or we’re sending her back to Haiti!” But instead of stopping Solange, the guards’ racist comments only made her more determined. “I was born Dominican! I should be treated as a full citizen!” Solange declared.
Solange organized a group of women to take the Dominican government to court in the name of all Dominico-Haitians who hadn’t been given their rights as citizens. She traveled the world to get international support, and in 2005, the women won their first case with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights upholding the right for Dominico-Haitian children to have birth certificates! Finally, they would be recognized as Dominican citizens! Sadly, Solange died before the Dominican government complied, but thanks to her work, there are now schools and clinics in the bateys and an entire community committed to fighting for their rights.
Justa Canaviri
August 13, 1963–present
Growing up with three strong sisters and a mami who ran her own sandwichería in La Paz, Bolivia, little Justa learned early on never to let anyone tell her what to do. Especially not a boy. “Anything you can do, I can do, too!” Justa would say. And she did! Even in basketball, she was a force to be reckoned with. It didn’t matter that she was small.
So when she got the idea to be on TV, Justa didn’t worry that there was no one else like her anywhere onscreen. She marched up to television stations in her Aymara dress, with her pollera and shawl, looking her very best. And even with one rejection after the next, she didn’t give up or try to change. She was determined to succeed.
When she finally got a spot on the news, she became the first Aymara woman on TV. The public loved her immediately! Before long, she created her own cooking show. And, of course, she did things her own way. While mixing together salsitas or her famous fricasé, she would announce, “Mamitas y papitos, I have something to say…” She spoke out about racism, violence against women, and defended human rights. She brought many uncomfortable truths to light and inspired national conversations around the dinner table every night.
Her show soon became one of the most popular on TV and she used her fame to help those in need. She cooked for anyone she found who was hungry on the street and set up spaces for women who needed a safe place to sleep. Justa loved cooking, but what she wanted most was to help other women find the confidence to be brave. “La mujer que más les quiere” is still fighting for change today, and she wants her beloved fans to know that she’s never going to stop. “There are still barreras que hay que romper!” she says.
Evelyn Miralles
February 19, 1966–present
It was in little Evelyn’s garden in Caracas, Venezuela, where her imagination started to grow wild. Inspired by the TV show Lost in Space, she created an imaginary flying saucer with her brothers and sisters that could zoom through the galaxy. Together, they would pretend to land on undiscovered planets and walk around their garden like explorers seeing plants, trees, and animals for the very first time.
When Evelyn grew up, she knew she loved building and started studying to become an architect. But when she took a course in graphic computing, she realized she could build so much more and could create her very own tools, too. She loved thinking of all the new possibilities and began to dream beyond planet Earth. For her final project, she created a 3D model of the NASA spaceship. Her 3D work was so cutting-edge that it caught NASA’s attention and they offered her a job.
Soon, she was building NASA’s first virtual reality program and the engine it ran on, too. She began creating space environments so that astronauts could prepare for their missions and know what it is like to walk without gravity or any way to tell which way is up or down. Even though Evelyn has never been to space, the experiences she creates are so accurate that, when astronauts go for the first time, they say they feel like they have been there already!
In her office, which is covered in black blankets with glow-in-the-dark stars, Evelyn continues to create new realities every day and is now mentoring other women who want to work in the field. She imagines a future with many more women at her side and hopes they can join her for her next project to get astronauts ready for their mission to Mars!
Selena Quintanilla
April 16, 1971–March 31, 1995
“iÓrale! You’ve really got it, mija!” said her father as five-year-old Selena sang along with his guitar. Having been part of the music scene for years, Selena’s father knew talent when he saw it. He turned the family’s garage in Texas into a practice room and taught his children how to play together in a band. “Do we really have to practice?” Selena and her older brother and sister would whine. But when they got on stage at their father’s restaurant, they knew it was all worth it. Hearing all the applause and seeing the smiling faces, they were hooked.
There was only one thing left to do: learn to sing in Spanish! “What!? I want to sing like Donna Summer!” said Selena. But when their father insisted, they had an idea. While her brother and sister mixed R & B and techno music into Tejano beats, Selena created her own unique sound, br
inging together stylings from Mexico and the United States with a bit of cumbia dancing to shake up the stage.
Soon, Selena y Los Dinos were the coolest band around. They were the life of the party all over Texas and in Mexico, too! Selena felt like she was living a dream. “But it’s not only my dream. When I’m up on stage, I feel like I’m singing the hopes and dreams of everyone there!” she said. And she was right. When she became the first Tejano singer to win a Grammy, Mexican Americans all over the United States beamed with pride.
Sadly, Selena died tragically at only twenty-three. Fans from all over the world lined up for a mile to say their goodbyes and vowed to keep her memory and music alive. Selena’s spirit lives on whenever a recording of her singing “Ay, ay, ay como me duele” comes on and despite tears in their eyes, people smile and get up to dance.
Berta Cáceres
March 4, 1973–March 3, 2016
As a little girl, Berta and her brothers and sisters would huddle around their mother’s radio and secretly listen to the voices from Cuba and Nicaragua speaking out about equality. Berta’s mother knew that these radio stations were outlawed in Honduras, but as the mayor, governor, and midwife in their Lenca community, she needed to keep everyone up to date with pueblos defending their rights.
As Berta grew older, she found her own voice. She studied law and started a radio show like the ones she listened to as a child. She educated her neighbors about their civil rights and created an organization where everyone came together to talk about how best to run their community.
When a big electric company, Sinohydro, came to build a dam on their land without their permission, Berta’s pueblo was ready. The company sent in the military, but Berta and her community built a roadblock out of rocks, and day after day, they stood their ground, protecting their drinking water and all the animals who needed the river to survive. After several months, the electric company backed down. Their beautiful, sacred river, “El río Blanco,” was safe!
News of their pueblo’s victory spread, and when other communities started to resist, too, utility companies tried to stop the movement by sending Berta death threats. But Berta stepped up the fight, traveling to even more communities all over the Americas. “Wake up! There isn’t any more time!” she said. “We are the guardians of the land and rivers, and it is up to us to protect them for future generations.” Sadly, Berta was assassinated. But by then, her ideas had already spread far and wide. Pueblos everywhere were ready to take on la lucha, determined to honor Berta’s memory.
Serena Auñón
April 9, 1976–present
From the time Serena first watched a space shuttle shoot through the sky, she made up her mind to be one of the astronauts inside. Watching the launch again and again on TV, she dreamed of floating in space and doing somersaults right through the air.
“You know, NASA always needs engineers!” Serena’s papi said. And that got ideas buzzing around in her head.
When she grew up, Serena went to college and studied engineering. She loved learning about systems and figuring out how everything connects: how one part works with the next. But hearing her friends in medical school talk about their classes on how the body heals made Serena stop and think: “When we are up in space with no gravity, do things in our bodies change? Are there different rules in outer space, or do we stay the same?”
At the University of Texas, Serena found a program where she could study to become both an astronaut and a doctor. She was so excited to find out what happens to human diseases in space that as soon as she got her degree in aerospace medicine, she applied and was accepted as an astronaut on NASA’s team!
On her very first mission in 2018, Serena brought along a sample of cells and proteins, some from patients with cancer and some from patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Without gravity, she was able to study the samples in 3D. Her work has only begun, but she is already helping doctors on earth better understand and treat their patients. Now she can’t wait for her next missions: she hopes to go to the moon and then, maybe someday, to Mars!
Wanda Díaz-Merced
1982–present
“Five, four, three, two, one … blast off!” little Wanda and her sister would yell. And holding tight to their bedposts, they would shoot off into space and spin around Saturn’s rings, catch falling comets, and whirl through the winds of Neptune. In their imaginary spaceship, they would sail through the stars, millions of miles from their tiny town in Puerto Rico.
But it wasn’t until Wanda won second place in her school’s science fair that she started to imagine becoming a real scientist one day. She worked hard so that she could go to college and follow her dream of studying the stars.
Wanda made it to college, but something was terribly wrong. She didn’t want to tell anyone at first, but with every day that passed, she was losing her sight. She learned braille and tried to show her professors how to explain to her the graphs and charts that she couldn’t see. But as her classmates shot ahead in their studies, she knew she needed to do more in order to succeed. She thought long and hard about it until she came up with an idea. “I could listen to the stars!” she thought to herself. Soon, Wanda went to work turning data points into rhythms, pitches, and tones. Before long, she had created an entire symphony of sounds for the stars, asteroids, and planets!
Using her sonification system, she mapped out the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Then, studying light bursts that even sighted astronomers couldn’t see, she started discovering new patterns in star formation that led to breakthroughs in astronomy.
Now, working with a school for people who are blind in South Africa, Wanda is developing her techniques so that every scientist has a chance to shine. As Wanda says, “Science is for everyone and should belong to everyone because we are all natural explorers.”
Marta Vieira da Silva
February 19, 1986–present
When Marta wasn’t selling fruit at the public market to help her family, she was playing futebol at her vovó’s house with all her primos. “Why don’t you play with dolls? You’re a girl!” her vovó would say. But running, jumping, and tumbling through the streets of Dois Riachos, Brazil, with her primos was how Marta loved to play.
Neighbors sitting on their stoops gave her funny looks as she went by. But Marta didn’t let any of that keep her from training every day. By ten years old, Marta started playing on a local boys’ team. Together, they won the championship two years in a row! Marta was very happy, but one of the other coaches got angry. “If you keep letting that girl play, I’m pulling my team out of the league,” he said.
Marta couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “I’m just as good as any of those boys,” she insisted. But Marta was banned all the same. Her coach told her that her only chance to keep playing was to try out for the national women’s team in Río de Janeiro. But it would take three days to get there by bus, and Marta didn’t want to leave her family …
Marta was so scared, but she got on that bus, went to the tryouts, and made the team! She’s been playing ever since. She has been the FIFA World Player of the Year six times and holds the record for the most goals scored in the World Cup!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
October 13, 1989–present
When Alexandria was five years old, her mami and papi decided to leave their family in the Bronx and move to the suburbs. They told her she would have better opportunities at her new school. Alexandria started to see that her zip code could make it easier or harder to be who she wanted to be.
But it wasn’t until going on a road trip to Washington, DC, that Alexandria began to dream. As she and her papi sat by the reflecting pool and looked at the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building standing tall against the sky, he said, “You know, this all belongs to us. This is our government, and it belongs to you and me.”
Even though many things didn’t feel like they belonged to Alexandria—her school where nobody looked like her or all the places she di
d her homework while her mami cleaned—she believed what her papi said. And when she grew up, she had an idea that could make the government feel like it really did belong to everybody. She decided to run for Congress and took to the streets to register voters and get to know her neighbors’ needs. And night after night, she researched and planned. When it was time for her first debate on TV, her opponent said, “You’re too young.” But she stood up to him. And she won!
At twenty-eight years old, Alexandria became the youngest member of Congress in history. As she fights to make healthcare a right, to protect our environment, and to make public colleges free, she is giving people hope for a country where, as she says, “your zip code no longer determines your destiny.”
Lauren Zoe Hernandez
June 9, 2000–present
In Laurie’s house, music framed the days. It marked each new year, when her family and friends would dance right up until the ball dropped at midnight. It marked weekend mornings, when it was time to snuggle up and relax with her papi and his jazz records. And it even marked the cleaning parties, when everyone in her family would drop their mops and brooms to dance.
So, when Laurie started taking gymnastics at five years old, she naturally thought to put her routines to music. Music helped her remember all the different steps and flips. The beats let her know how and when each of her moves came together. But one day, just as she was about to turn on the music for her beam routine, her coach stopped her. “Today, I want you to do your routine in silence,” she said. “It’s the way it’s done in competitions.”
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