Yalitza is a 20th-century Latin American name of contested etymology — possibly from Mixtec or Zapotec roots, or a Spanish elaboration of Lita / Lupita. **Yalitza Aparicio Martínez (born 1993)** — **Mexican actress of Mixtec and Trique Indigenous heritage; in her acting debut, played Cleo, a domestic worker in 1970s Mexico City, in Alfonso Cuarón's *Roma* (2018) — for which she received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress**. **The first Indigenous Mexican woman, and the second Indigenous woman in history (after New Zealand's Keisha Castle-Hughes), to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar**. **Before acting, she was studying to become a preschool teacher in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca**. **UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Indigenous Peoples (2019)**. **Her *Vogue Mexico* September 2018 cover was the first time an Indigenous Mexican woman appeared on a *Vogue* cover anywhere in the world**. **Her presence at the 2019 Oscars sparked Mexico's reckoning with the exclusion of Indigenous women from cinema**.
Subject of countless 2019 cultural-criticism profiles.
Yalitza reduces to eight — the number of Indigenous representation.