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Singer Celia Cruz gets US quarter coin
Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz received a Latin Grammy in 2002 for “Best Salsa Album”. photo
© Lucy Nicholson/epa afp/dpa
Born in Cuba, she became famous in the USA as the “Queen of Salsa”. A 25-cent coin with her likeness is to be circulated in her honor next year.
A US quarter coin will be dedicated next year to the Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz (1925-2003). The singer, known as the “Queen of Salsa,” is the first Afro-Latina to be featured on a 25-cent coin, several US newspapers said on Wednesday. The salsa singer has won several Grammy Awards, the coveted US culture award “National Endowment of the Arts” and after her death a “Lifetime Achievement Award” for her complete works.
According to the responsible authority, the United States Mint, the coin is to be brought into circulation in the USA in 2024. She is part of the American Women Quarters Program. All of the women depicted on the coins as part of the program pioneered America during their “remarkable and multifaceted” lives and did not succumb to the status quo, it said. In 2022, a quarter coin was dedicated to the writer Maya Angelou (1928-2014) as the first black woman.
Cruz left her native Cuba in 1960 after Fidel Castro came to power and moved to the USA, where she became famous as the “Salsa Queen” with songs like “La Vida Es Un Carnaval”, “Quimbara” or “La Negra Tiene Tumbao”. She recorded over 70 albums. Cruz died of a brain tumor in New Jersey in 2003. In Cuba, Cruz was officially a “persona non grata”. She was not even allowed to enter the island state for her mother’s funeral.