Coin in honor of Celia Cruz is put into circulation in the US

The US Mint has put into circulation the 25-cent coin honoring Cuban singer Celia Cruz, reported the US embassy in Cuba, which celebrated that ‘the Queen of Salsa’ became the first Afro-Latin figure to receive this tribute.

The coin dedicated to the ‘Guarachera de Cuba’ is part of a series called ‘American Women Quarters’, which began to be issued in 2022 and will continue until 2025 in order to honor the advances and contributions of women to this country.

The program calls for five of these new coins to be issued each year, and in 2024, in addition to the Celia Cruz coin, coins were minted in honor of the Episcopalian Reverend Pauli Murray, Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to be a congresswoman, the surgeon and women’s rights advocate Mary Edwards Walker, and the political activist and educator Zitkala Sa.

When introducing the coin last year, the Mint defined Celia Cruz on the coin as “a Cuban-American singer, cultural icon and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century.”

The obverse of the coin depicts a portrait of George Washington, originally composed and sculpted by Laura Gardin Fraser to commemorate his 200th birthday.

The reverse shows Celia Cruz flashing her dazzling smile in a performance dressed in one of her signature outfits and an inscription to her right: “¡Azúcar!”, her cry to get people dancing.

||EFE