The American Latino Media Arts Award, or ALMA Award is a distinction awarded to Latino performers (actors, film and television directors, musicians, and designers) who promote positive portrayals of Latinos in the entertainment field. In Spanish, the word alma means spirit or soul.

Created in 1995 by the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), it takes over from the previous Bravo Awards. The awards are part of NCLR's strategy to counter the alleged negative stereotyping of Latinos in U.S. entertainment. The awards are given during an annual ceremony generally held in the summer.

The awards festival is sometimes referred to as the "Latin American Oscars" in North America.^{[citation needed]}

Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García de Estefan, known professionally as Gloria Estefan (born September 1, 1957) is a Cuban-born American singer, songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Known as the "Queen Of Latin Pop", she is in the top 100 best selling music artists with over 100 million albums sold worldwide, 31.5 million of those in the United States alone. She has won three Grammy Awards, and 4 Latin Grammys, and is the most successful crossover performer in Latin music to date.

Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo was born September 1, 1957 in Havana, Cuba, to Jose and Gloria Fajardo. Her maternal grandfather, Leonardo Garcia, immigrated to Cuba from Pola de Siero, Asturias, Spain, where he married Gloria's maternal grandmother, originally from Logroño, Spain. Prior to the Cuban Revolution, her father was a Cuban soldier and a bodyguard to Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The Fajardo family fled to Miami, Florida as a result of the Cuban Revolution and settled down there. Shortly after they moved to the United States, Gloria's father joined the US military and fought in the Vietnam War and moved to Houston, Texas, also having participated in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. Gloria attended St. Michael-Archangel School and Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami. Her father became ill after returning from Vietnam and Gloria helped her mother, Gloria Fajardo, care for him. Her mother worked as a school teacher for the Dade County Public School system. Gloria Estefan graduated from college in 1979 with a B.A. in psychology, with a minor in French, from the University of Miami. When she was studying at the university, she worked as an English/Spanish/French translator at Miami International Airport Customs Department and, because of her language abilities, was once approached by the CIA as a possible employee. Estefan was raised Catholic.

Rosario Isabel Dawson (born May 9, 1979) is an American actress, singer, and writer. She has appeared in films such as Kids, Men in Black II, 25th Hour, Sin City, Clerks II, Rent, Death Proof, The Rundown, Eagle Eye, Alexander, Seven Pounds, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Unstoppable.

Dawson was born in New York City. Her mother, Isabel Celeste, is a writer and singer who is of Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent. Isabel was seventeen years old when Rosario was born; she never married Rosario's biological father, Patrick C. Harris. When Isabel was eighteen, she married Greg Dawson, a construction worker, who "loved and raised Rosario as his own daughter" (Dawson has stated that "He's always been my dad"). Dawson has a brother, Clay, who is four years younger. Her parents divorced in 2006.

At the age of 21, Isabel moved the family into an abandoned building squat on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she and her husband renovated an apartment and installed the plumbing and electrical wiring for the building, creating affordable housing where Rosario and Clay would grow up. Dawson has cited this part of her history when explaining how she learned that "If you wanted something better, you had to do it yourself."

Demetria Devonne "Demi" Lovato (born August 20, 1992) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and actress. Her earliest roles included Angela on Barney & Friends, before she became better known for her starring roles in the Camp Rock movies, as Sonny Munroe in the Disney sitcom Sonny with a Chance, and as the star of the 2009 movie Princess Protection Program. She is also involved in philanthropic activities through charity work and various social and environmental causes.

As a solo musical artist, Lovato released her debut album Don't Forget on September 23, 2008. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 selling 89,000 copies in the first week. It has since shipped over 500,000 copies, earning a gold certification in the United States. Lovato released her second album, Here We Go Again, on July 21, 2009. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 108,000 copies in the first week. Her third studio album, Unbroken, was released on September 20, 2011 and peaked at number four on the Billboard 200. She is working on her fourth studio album.

Robert Anthony Rodríguez (born June 20, 1968) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet Terror, and Machete. He is a friend and frequent collaborator of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.

Rodríguez was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Mexican-American parents Rebecca (née Villegas), a nurse, and Cecilio G. Rodríguez, a salesman. He began his interest in film at age 11 when his father bought one of the first VCRs, which came with a camera.

While attending St. Anthony High School, he was commissioned to videotape the school's football games. According to his sister he was fired soon after for shooting them with a cinematic style, getting shots of parents' reactions and the ball traveling through the air instead of shooting the whole play. There he met Carlos Gallardo; they both shot films on video throughout high school and college. After graduating Rodriguez went to the College of Communication at the University of Texas where he also developed a love of cartooning. His grades were not high enough to get into the school's film program, so he invented a daily comic strip entitled Los Hooligans with many of the characters based on his siblings – in particular, one of his sisters, Maricarmen. The comic proved to be quite successful, running for three years in the student newspaper The Daily Texan while Rodríguez continued to make short films.^{[citation needed]}