Hispanic American History
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50 free Hispanic American History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hispanic American history is older than the United States itself. Spanish ships reached these shores generations before the English did, and Spanish-speaking communities have shaped the country ever since, through exploration and settlement, war and treaty, migration, protest and a long list of firsts. This quiz follows that story from the age of the conquistadors to the modern era. You will find questions on early colonial towns and missions, the shifting border with Mexico, the arrival of Puerto Rican and Cuban communities, and the court cases and marches that widened civil rights. There are also questions on the scientists, soldiers, athletes, writers and performers whose achievements opened doors for those who came after. It is written for Hispanic Heritage Month events, history classes and anyone who enjoys a good American history quiz. Most questions can be reasoned out with a little thought, a few will test the specialists, and every answer comes with a short explanation. Play it on screen or print it for a classroom or a trivia night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Florida city, founded by Spain in 1565, is the oldest lasting European settlement in the contiguous US?
St. Augustine
St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish admiral Menéndez de Avilés, 42 years before the English landed at Jamestown. It has been lived in ever since.
Q 02Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, grew up in public housing in which New York City borough?
The Bronx
The Bronx was home to Sotomayor's family, who moved into the Bronxdale Houses project in 1957. In 2010, a year after she joined the court, the buildings were renamed in her honor.
Q 03Cinco de Mayo, a major celebration for Mexican Americans, marks an 1862 battlefield victory over which country's army?
France
France sent a well-equipped army of about 6,000 that lost to a smaller, poorly armed Mexican force at Puebla. The day is often mistaken for Mexico's Independence Day, which falls on September 16.
Q 04Which Pittsburgh Pirates star died in a 1972 plane crash while flying earthquake relief supplies to Nicaragua?
Roberto Clemente
Roberto Clemente had chartered the cargo plane himself for a New Year's Eve flight from Puerto Rico. The Baseball Hall of Fame changed its rules so he could be inducted the following year.
Q 05Which Boston Red Sox legend, who batted .406 in 1941, was the son of a Mexican American mother from El Paso?
Ted Williams
Ted Williams was raised in San Diego by May Venzor, a lifelong Salvation Army evangelist. He entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, in his first year of eligibility.
Q 06Which California city was founded in 1781 by 44 settlers from New Spain, most of African or Indigenous descent?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles began as a farming pueblo of eleven families: 11 men, 11 women and 22 children. Only two of the adult founders were recorded as Spaniards.
Q 07Which Mexican American teenager from Pacoima turned the folk song La Bamba into a 1958 rock and roll hit?
Ritchie Valens
Ritchie Valens was only 17 when he died in the 1959 Iowa plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly. His breakthrough had come just eight months earlier.
Q 08Which baggy outfit gave its name to the 1943 riots in which US servicemen attacked Mexican American youths?
Zoot suits
Zoot suits used so much cloth that, with fabric rationed for the war, critics called them unpatriotic. For several days that June, mobs beat the wearers and stripped them in the street.
Q 09Which actress won an Oscar for playing Anita in the 1961 film West Side Story, a first for a Hispanic woman?
Rita Moreno
Rita Moreno took the role that Chita Rivera had played on Broadway. She later added an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony to complete the rare EGOT.
Q 10Soldiers sent by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540 became the first Europeans to see which Arizona landmark?
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon was reached by Captain García López de Cárdenas and his Hopi guides, who were hunting for the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola. No Europeans came back for more than two hundred years.
Q 11Which 1848 treaty ended the war between Mexico and the US and transferred California and Utah to American rule?
Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo cost Mexico 55 percent of its territory, for which the United States paid $15 million. Mexicans living in the ceded lands suddenly found themselves on US soil.
Q 12What did the Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917 grant to people born on the island of Puerto Rico?
U.S. citizenship
U.S. citizenship came with a bill of rights and an elected Senate for the island. Woodrow Wilson signed the law about a month before the United States entered World War I.
Q 13Which engineer became the first Hispanic woman in space aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993?
Q 21The Chicano Moratorium, whose largest march drew some 30,000 people, united Mexican American groups against which war?
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was killing and wounding Chicanos in disproportionate numbers, organizers argued. Spanish-surnamed soldiers were 19 percent of the Southwest's casualties but under 12 percent of its people.
Q 22Which subject did Jaime Escalante teach at Garfield High School, a story told in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver?
Calculus
Calculus was Escalante's answer to low expectations: instead of gearing classes to struggling students, he offered the AP course. He had already taught for 12 years in his native Bolivia.
Q 23During which crisis were hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans deported or pressured to leave the US?
Ellen Ochoa
Ellen Ochoa, a classical flutist with three patents in optics, flew four shuttle missions. She went on to become the first Hispanic director of NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Q 14Which Spanish explorer, the first governor of Puerto Rico, named Florida during an Easter-season voyage in 1513?
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León took the name from Pascua Florida, the Spanish term for the Easter season. Most modern historians dismiss the tale that he was hunting a Fountain of Youth as a myth.
Q 15Which city, founded by Spanish colonists in 1610, is the oldest state capital in the United States?
Santa Fe
Santa Fe became the capital of the Spanish province of Nuevo México in 1610, ten years before the Mayflower reached Plymouth. It has held the role almost without a break ever since.
Q 16Which Florida city's Little Havana took shape in the 1960s as Cuban refugees settled along Calle Ocho?
Miami
Miami's Little Havana had been home to a thriving Jewish community in the 1930s. It is named for Cuba's capital, and its Calle Ocho street festival is televised around the world.
Q 17Which Cuban-born bandleader, whose family fled the 1933 revolution, played Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy?
Desi Arnaz
Desi Arnaz popularized the conga line in the United States before television made him a star. He and Lucille Ball also ran Desilu Productions, the studio behind The Untouchables.
Q 18Which Texas singer, known as the Queen of Tejano Music, won a 1994 Grammy the year before her death at 23?
Selena
Selena was shot in 1995 by the former manager of her boutiques. Soon afterward George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, declared her birthday, April 16, Selena Day in the state.
Q 19Which co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012?
Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta later lobbied for California's 1975 farm labor law, the first in the state to recognize farmworkers' right to collective bargaining. Her union grew into the United Farm Workers.
Q 20Which wartime scheme, launched in 1942 to ease labor shortages, brought Mexican workers to US farms and railroads?
Bracero Program
The Bracero Program took its name from a Spanish word for a manual laborer. It outlasted the war by nearly two decades, offering 4.6 million contracts before it ended in 1964.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression made Mexican workers a scapegoat for lost jobs. An estimated 40 to 60 percent of those who left were US citizens, overwhelmingly American-born children who went with their families.
Q 24Hernando de Soto, who led an expedition through the Southeast, was the first European documented crossing which river?
The Mississippi
The Mississippi was reached by De Soto's troops in May 1541, and he died on its banks the following year. His men were anxious to hide the death from local peoples he had told he was a god.
Q 25Which Franciscan friar from Mallorca founded the first of California's 21 Spanish missions at San Diego in 1769?
Junípero Serra
Junípero Serra went on to plant missions up the coast as far as San Francisco. Pope Francis made him a saint in 2015, over the objections of Native American tribes who condemned the mission system.
Q 26Tejano captain Juan Seguín survived which 1836 siege because he had been sent through enemy lines with a message?
The Alamo
The Alamo fell before Seguín could get back with reinforcements. A year later he was ordered to arrange the burial of the defenders' remains.
Q 27Which folk singer, daughter of a Mexican-born physicist, sang at the 1963 March on Washington and at Woodstock?
Joan Baez
Joan Baez's father, Albert, was born in Puebla and was later credited as a co-inventor of the X-ray microscope. As a child she faced slurs and discrimination because of her Mexican heritage.
Q 28Which Havana-born singer, who left Cuba in 1960, became known around the world as the Queen of Salsa?
Celia Cruz
Celia Cruz left after the revolution nationalized the music industry and became a symbol of the Cuban community in exile. She recorded 37 studio albums and often performed with the Fania All-Stars.
Q 29Which Mexican-born guitarist's band stunned the Woodstock crowd in 1969 before its debut album had even been released?
Carlos Santana
Carlos Santana learned his trade in Tijuana, where his family had moved from the town of Autlán. Promoter Bill Graham, a fan from the start, arranged the festival slot.
Q 30From which Cuban port did about 125,000 people set sail for Florida during a mass boatlift in 1980?
Mariel
Mariel, about 25 miles west of Havana, was opened by Fidel Castro to anyone who had someone to collect them. The exodus began after 10,000 Cubans sought asylum at the Peruvian embassy.