Celia Cruz, the ancestor of the world’s sweetest expression — “Sugar! —, left us 20 years ago. Considered a cultural icon and the queen of salsa, the United States wants to honor her figure by minting 25-cent coins with her face starting in 2024.
La Casa de la Moneda has announced that the Cuban artist, along with four other important women in American history, will appear in the next series of money that will be released next year. This production is part of the program American Women’s Quarters, which commemorates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; that is, women’s right to vote.
Among the great achievements of the singer, we find that she recorded cAbout forty recording projects that have earned him several Grammy and Latin Grammy awards throughout his career, as well as the highest recognition given by the United States government to an artist, the National Endowment for the Arts award, of then-President Bill Clinton in 1994.
Besides Celia, Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to hold a seat in Congress; Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, women’s rights advocate and Civil War-era surgeon; the poet, activist and lawyer Paul MurraAnd; and Native American writer, composer, and educator Zitkala-Sha they will also have the reverse of the quarter dollar coins with their face stamped.
The American Women’s Neighborhoods Initiative
The American Women Quarters program was born in 2021 on the occasion of the centenary of the recognition of civil rights in favor of women. So every year five women – for a total of 20 – will be honored on the reverse of each coin for his “contributions to the United States in a wide range of achievements and fields, including, but not limited to, suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, ‘space and letters’.
Last year Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren and Anna May Wong They were the first recipients of this program. Thus, the first black woman, the first LGBT person, the Cherokee community activist, the first Hispanic American and the first Asian American, respectively, were among the coins that entered circulation in 2022.
Last year, the women honored were: Bessie Colemanthe first African-American and Native American woman pilot; Edith Kanakaolenative Hawaiian songwriter; Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady, author and civil rights advocate; Jovita Idar, Mexican-American journalist, activist, teacher, and suffragist; Maria Tallchief, America’s first classical ballet dancer.
“All of the women we honor have led multi-talented lives through which they have made enormous contributions to our country,” Ventris C. Gibson, director of the United States Mint, said in a statement. “These women they were pioneers of change throughout their lives, without giving in to the status quo that prevailed throughout their lives. By honoring these pioneering women, the Mint continues to connect America through coins that are like little works of art in your pocket.”