He made presentations in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile Uruguay and Argentina. Being in Buenos Aires, he made radio presentations and recorded for the Odeon label the Waltz “Dices que tengo celos.”  This album made him the winner of his first gold record, surpassing the million copies sold.  Also, at the beginning of the 1950’s he performed in cities of Europe like Lisbon, Madrid and on French television.  He left Cuba in 1960 and went to Venezuela, settling in Caracas for many years.  He recorded his first album in Venezuela and this includes his famous theme “El Son se fue de Cuba”.   Albuerne moved to Miami in the 1970s. In 1979 he participated in this city in “The Show of the Greats.”  During these years he recorded his great compilations and records that nowadays are sold.  He died in July of 2000.

Born in Union de Reyes, Matanzas, in June 1927, Guedes was known to be an entertainer since childhood. From parties to town gatherings, locals and family members alike remember him as a child who enjoyed to sing and dance for others, so much so that he moved to Havana to start a life in show business. Working across a variety of platforms, from theater

to radio shows, Guedes began to make a name for himself in the Cuban world of comedy and entertaimnent. However, it was his start on television that launched him into an even bigger national, and global, spotlight.

Taking hold of the bustling Havana nightlife scene in the 1950’s, Guedes secured many television and film roles in comedy, often portraying “el borracho,” or the drunk. His style of comedy included spoken and physical elements that captured his audience’s attention, and sense of humor. In the midst of the exile, Guedes left the island in 1960, and arrived in Miami with hopes of creating an even bigger name for himself in the world of entertaimnent. He began to record comedic albums, and over the course of his career, would go on to produce over thirty albums that captured his listeners more and more each time. Guedes’ sense of humor resonated so much with his listeners because he made light of situations and events that not only all Cubans, but all Spanish speakers and non-Spanish speakers alike could appreciate and understand. He thrust Cuban culture onto the global scale, and incorporated various aspects of the Cuban accent, lingo, and mannerisms to resonate with Cubans in Miami, on the island, and around the world.

Guedes’ career can be recognized and remembered for his transgressor characteristics. His albums and stand-up routines include various vulgar aspects that, while at times unheard of, were greatly appreciated and recognized as a marker of his Cuban roots. Guedes always encouraged his listeners to see the lighter side of life, and through his radio show on Miami’s Clasica 92.3FM, was known to remind his audience and supporters to make a joke out of everything.

Guedes died in his Miami residence in July 2013.

She also hosted programs at Miami radio stations, such as La Poderosa and Cadena Azúl, for many years. In Miami in 1980, she made her last film, How Hot Miami Is! with Olga Guillot, Raymundo Hidalgo-Gato and Pedro Romàn. She also won plaudits for her performance in the play Stolen Lives, and in the comedy The Close Friends. For 28 years, Amaro presented Cuba Sings and Dances, a variety show directed by her daughter Idania and produced by Manolo del Cañal, her son-in-law, at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium. One of Amaro’s final public appearances was on January 27, 2007, at Miami’s Artime Theater. She received an ovation from the public at a concert by soprano Alina Sánchez, who dedicated the concert to her. Blanquita Amaro died in 2007 in Miami.

Born into rural poverty in Cuba, in 1959 he became an early supporter of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. But Arenas became increasingly disenchanted with the revolution’s homophobic rhetoric and policies. Moving to Havana in 1963, he worked as a researcher and later as editor and journalist for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. His first novel Celestino antes del alba (1967) (Singing from the Well) was his only book published in Cuba. When open persecution of homosexuals began, in the 1960s and 1970s, he rejected the revolution. As his writings grew increasingly critical, he was no longer allowed to publish on the island. His second and best-known novel, El mundo alucinante (1969) (Hallucinations), was smuggled out of the country and published abroad. During the mid-1970s Arenas spent three years in prison for his writings and public, open homosexuality.

He arrived to the U.S. as part of the Mariel boatlift and eventually settled in New York. In 1980, he published the novella, Old Rosa. The novel Farewell to the Sea – a manuscript once confiscated by the Cuban government – followed in 1982. The heterogeneous collection of poetry, essays and letters Necesidad de libertad (1986), was followed by the novels Graveyard of the Angels (1987) and The Doorman (1988).

Suffering from AIDS and too sick to continue writing, Arenas committed suicide in 1990. In a farewell letter to the Miami newspaper Diario las Américas he wrote, “My message is not a message of failure, but rather one of struggle and hope. Cuba will be free. I already am.”

By the time of his death, the writer turned activist had completed nine novels, an autobiography, scores of poems, plays, and short stories, and dozens of political and literary essays. Among his posthumously published works were Journey to Havana (1990) and the autobiography Before Night Falls (1992) which was made into an Academy-Award nominated film in 2000.  The Reinaldo Arenas Papers, a collection containing essays, interviews, newspaper clippings, correspondence and other documents, is held at Princeton University Library.

The Santiago native also lead the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, through which he brought Cuban music to American audiences. The Orchestra’s Babalu became an instant hit in the US and abroad in 1947.

Before Arnaz’s rise to stardom, he and his family fled Santiago de Cuba in 1933 when Fulgencio Batista overthrew Gerardo Machado.  The Batista regime imprisoned Arnaz’s father, confiscating all of his family’s properties on the island.  Upon being released from prison, the Arnaz family fled to Miami, Florida.  Though eventually moving to New York City, a young Desi got his start in South Florida playing gigs throughout town, particularly in Miami Beach.

Desi Arnaz is also credited with helping to develop the three-camera shoot for situation television comedies which is still used today.

He graduated from Miami Coral Park High School in 1974. Bauer began acting while attending Miami-Dade Community College, and later transferred to the University of Miami. There he studied in its Department of Theater Arts and performed at its Jerry Herman Ring Theatre.

As a child, he studied clarinet becoming recognized as a child prodigy on the instrument and was featured with the Havana Symphony at the age of 11. Bauzá then performed on clarinet and bass clarinet with pianist Antonio María Romeu’s charanga (flute and violins) orchestra. For that reason, he visited New York City as the orchestra travelled to that city to record in 1926. Bauzá stayed with his cousin, trumpeter René Endreira, who was a Harlem resident and played with The Santo Domingo Serenaders (a band made up of Panamanians, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans playing jazz). The teenage Bauzá was impressed with Harlem’s African American community and the freedom they had. Upon his return to Cuba, he vowed he would return to New York City to become a jazz musician doing so in 1930 learning to play the alto saxophone while maintaining his clarinet technique.

A chance encounter with Cuban vocalist Antonio Machin, who needed a trumpet player for an upcoming record date, gave Bauzá an unusual opportunity. Machin was the vocalist for the Don Azpiazú Havana Casino Orchestra who had taken New York City by storm with their public performances and hit recording of “El Manisero,” All the trumpet players that knew how to play in the Cuban style who were part of Azpiazú’s orchestra had returned to Cuba. Bauzá offered his services to Machin because he knew the finger positions on the horn buying a trumpet and in two weeks developed enough technique to play on the recordings. By 1933, Bauzá had been hired as lead trumpeter and musical director for drummer Chick Webb’s Orchestra, and it was during this time with Webb that Bauzá both met fellow trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and allegedly discovered and brought into the band singer Ella Fitzgerald.

Bauzá’s musical relationship and friendship with Gillespie created the fusion of Bauzá’s Cuban musical heritage and Gillespie’s bebop, which culminated in the development of cubop, one of the earliest forms of Latin jazz. In 1939, Bauzá became co-founder and musical director of Machito and his Afro-Cubans with his vocalist brother-in-law, Francisco Raúl Guittierez Grillo (known as Machito). The band produced its first recordings for Decca in 1941, and in 1942 Bauzá brought in a timbalero named Tito Puente.

In 1943, the success of “Tanga,” the first truly Afro-Cuban jazz tune (attributed to Bauzá), were followed by “Cubop City” and “Mambo Inn.” Machito and his Afro-Cubans often played straight-ahead big band jazz as well as mambo music. Many of the numbers were covers of recordings which had proved popular in Cuba hut with updated arrangements using jazz harmony. Bauzá kept his post as director of the Afro-Cubans until 1976. After this, he worked sparingly, eventually retiring to almost total obscurity. In 1979, New York City’s Caribbean Cultural Center gave a tribute to Bauzá in an outdoor concert at Lincoln Center featuring Bauzá and his big band. The concert featured pianist Billy Taylor, singers Bobby Capó and Graciela, Machito, Jorge Dalto, Chocolate Armenteros and Mario Rivera and was a follow up to CCCADI’s 1979 tribute at Alice Tully Hall which revived Bauza’s career. A 1990 Celebration of his 80th birthday with his big band with special guests Dizzy Gillespie, Chico O’Farrill, Celia Cruz, José Fajardo, Marco Rizo, at Symphony Space in Manhattan, gave Bauzá the opportunity to record again for the German based Messidor label. The subsequent recordings, Tanga – The Original Mambo King, 944 Columbus Avenue, and My Time Is Now, brought Bauzá two Grammy nominations and out of the shadows into the public’s eye with critical acclaim.

He died on July 11, 1993 in New York.

Bermúdez studied painting in the 1930s at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, Cuba’s oldest and most prestigious fine arts school. He also studied briefly at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City (1938) where he became familiar with the murals of Mexican modernist artist Diego Rivera and befriended artist Rufino Tamayo. Upon his return to Cuba, he began a successful career as an artist and was featured in a number of exhibitions in Havana.

By the 1940s-1950s, Bermúdez had reached international recognition through exhibitions in New York (at the Museum of Modern Art), Mexico City, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Paris, and Munich. In the 1960s, he became disillusioned with the Cuban government of Fidel Castro and emigrated to Puerto Rico where he lived for nearly 30 years.

In 1996, he moved to Miami, Florida, where he lived the remainder of his life. He died in 2008 at the age of 94. There is a Cundo Bermudez Museum & Gallery in Hialeah, Florida.