Romana Acosta Bañuelos (born March 20, 1925) was the thirty-fourth Treasurer of the United States

Treasurer of the United States

The Treasurer of the United States is an official in the United States Department of the Treasury that was originally charged with the receipt and custody of government funds, though many of these functions have been taken over by different bureaus of the Department of the Treasury...

. Appointed by President

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 on September 20, 1971, she served from December 17, 1971 to February 14, 1974.

The story of Romana Acosta Bañuelos is a real-life American rags-to-riches adventure. Born into a poor family of Mexican-Americans, she became the first hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

 treasurer of the United States (1971–1974) and owner of a multimillion-dollar business, Ramona's Mexican Food Products, Inc.