Omer Pardillo-Cid, Celia Cruz’s executor, keeps a photo where the singer stands with her arms open, a reddish wig and an extravagant smile in front of a wall full of trophies, statuettes and awards of all sizes and shapes. This is the fourth floor of her townhouse in Edgewater, on the banks of the Hudson River, the place where she lived for the last 30 years. Celia Cruz loved awards, she displayed them in her house as if it were a gallery, and on more than one occasion she asked the cleaning assistant to please not damage or break any of them. Now comes the last of her awards: her excessively happy face and the iconic word “Azúcar”, like a metallic cry, stamped in nickel and copper on the twenty-five cent coins that have just come onto the market in the United States.
The Mint has put up for sale the quarter of the Queen of Salsa, the first Afro-Latina to have this tribute, and has urged fans, collectors, numismatic lovers or curious people not to miss the opportunity to be “one of the first to get the 2024 American Women Quarters coins that celebrate Celia Cruz, Cuban-American singer, cultural icon and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century.”
Pardillo-Cid, who was also her last artistic representative, told EL PAÍS that it took a long process for the Cuban singer to be among the four women chosen by the American Women’s Quarters 2024 program, which honors women who have contributed to the country in different fields such as the arts, science, civil rights, and the humanities. This year, it also recognized civil rights activist and jurist Pauli Murray; Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color to be a congresswoman; surgeon and women’s rights advocate Mary Edwards Walker; and political activist and educator Zitkala Sa.
“Before Celia was included in the proposal, they called me and asked for permission to agree to submit her name,” said Pardillo-Cid. “That was the beginning of a very long selection process, a year and a half of voting among its members. I think she was chosen because, apart from Celia’s great musical career, she was a woman who did a lot for others, very charitable, with a clean career.”
The new coin, sculpted by artist Phebe Hemphill and printed in factories in Philadelphia and Denver, has a composition of 8.33% nickel and copper, weighs 5.670 grams and has a diameter of 24.26 millimeters. The artist tried to contain the soul of the singer on the scale of a coin: the stunning laugh, the symbolic dress and wig, her most distinctive gestures when taking the microphone and raising her voice. “I knew I had to make the design for superstar Celia Cruz as dynamic as she is,” said Hemphill in statements published on the official website of the Mint. “I saw her perform in her famous rumba dress and I tried to create a design that truly reflected her greatness and vitality.”
The family has also received the coins with pride. Celia Maria Cody, her niece, said in a statement sent to this newspaper that she “feels honored that our beloved aunt, Celia Cruz, is the first Afro-Latina to appear on the quarter.” “Celia came to this country in search of freedom. The United States fully embraced her and provided her with an environment in which she could safely express herself, especially musically. Her music transcended borders and has transcended generations,” she said. Linda Becquer Pritchett, another of her nieces, said that they were “very grateful that the legacy of Celia Cruz’s memory is honored in such a significant and historic way.”
The reverse of the coin features a portrait of George Washington, a design by Laura Gardin Fraser dating from 1932, and the mottoes “Liberty” and “In God we trust.” In series of two and three rolls, or bags of 100 coins, the face of Celia Cruz can be purchased for prices between $40 and $60, with specific limitations for hoarders. There are already 500 million 25-cent coins in circulation, equivalent to about $125 million. The coin with the face of the Cuban singer is the 14th in the four-year program that began in 2022 and will run until 2025, and which previously recognized women such as the first lady and writer Eleanor Roosevelt, the first prima ballerina Maria Tallchief or the first Chinese-American movie star in Hollywood, Anna May Wong.
Celia’s executor, personally, does not remember having experienced a more emotional moment than this week, when he touched his friend’s face in metal. “It is the most important moment I have experienced since she was alive,” said Pardillo-Cid. “It is to be forever on the coin of a country. I saw the design process, everything, because I was involved the whole time, and it made me very proud as a Cuban-American, as an exile. I worked with her all my life and I had never been so moved, I had not realized the importance until yesterday when I received the coins. One hundred years will pass and Celia will still be on this coin. A woman, Cuban, poor, who left that country and conquered the world with her voice. I said to myself, my God, how could a country that was not Celia’s do her such a great honor.”
“The United States, despite not being her country of birth, recognized her tremendously”
Certainly, since she boarded a plane with the members of the group La Sonora Matancera bound for Mexico in 1960, just one year after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Celia Cruz did not receive any more awards from her country’s government, not even a mention on the radio, television or any state-run channel. Cubans continued to listen to her, dance to her, and enjoy her on her own. New York became her home, and she repeated it over and over again on the countless times she arrived at one of the city’s airports after returning from her tours that lasted almost eleven months a year.
“She adopted the culture of this country, especially the culture of New York,” says her executor. “After Martí, I believe that the most New York Cuban who ever existed is Celia.”
She lived a solitary life. She didn’t visit anyone, nor did she accept many visitors. She walked around Soho, entering her boutiques to find “strange things.” She frequented the Cuban restaurant Victor’s Café, and had lunch at the well-known Pastis or Balthazar. “She liked to get lost in New York and not be known for a moment, which was very strange,” says Pardillo-Cid. In the sixties, seventies, and eighties, her music was part of the New York soundtrack when she became one of the voices of the Fania All-Stars, which brought together the best exponents of the club at the time.
There is a music school in the Bronx named after Celia Cruz, and there is a stamp in her honor that was made years ago by the United States Postal Service. Fifth Avenue was given over to her coffin so that it could travel to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Mayor Eric Adams declared July 16, the date of her death, as “Celia Cruz Day.” Her remains rest nowhere else but in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. There is a Doodle in memory of the singer, an asteroid named after her, a mulatto and extravagant Barbie that seems to imitate her, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and another on 8th Street, that altar of Cubans. Celia has, among many other awards, three Grammys, four Latin Grammys, a posthumous Grammy and the Presidential Medal of Arts.
“The United States, even though it was not her country of birth, recognized her tremendously,” said Pardillo-Cid. “She received the best awards, she was in the best theaters, the best festivals, she had the affection of the public. Celia received the best of all recognitions from the United States, the one that her country did not give her, where she remains banned. She said, God took my country from me, but gave me the United States, because Celia was also very American. She always carried the pain of not being able to return, but she said that she was Cuba outside of Cuba. Celia left Cuba but she does not belong to Cuba, she is from Latin America, she is from the world.”
The prize that Celia wanted from her country she never got. She got another one, the one that Cubans gave her on the Island and elsewhere. In 1961, due to government prohibitions, she could not attend her mother’s funeral. That was the end of it. Celia not only showed her radical position against Fidel Castro in every one of the scenarios she was in, but she also promised not to return again, while she was under his power. And so it was. She died at the age of 78, in New Jersey, with a dream: she had planned her return many times.
“She said she was going to arrive in a free Cuba, at the José Martí airport, and she was going to get on a double-decker bus, open at the top, with the orchestra. She was going to start from the airport and go around all of Havana until she reached the Central Park, and there she was going to give a great concert to her Cubans, and then she would continue on a tour of the entire island,” says her executor.
Ventris C. Gibson, director of the United States Mint, said that choosing the Cuban singer as one of the four honorees is a way to celebrate “the life and legacy of Celia Cruz.” “Celia Cruz’s influence reached far beyond her music. She was proud of and celebrated her Cuban culture, which empowered Afro-Latino Americans to embrace their heritage, making her an important and enduring cultural icon,” she said.
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