Trivia

During her controversial visit to Miami in 1996 and after an absence of 40 years from the American stage, she announced five performances at the famed Centro Vasco. The shows were sold within hours, faster than any previous presentation by any other performer in this club. These presentations had to be canceled after a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the property by hard-line Cuban exiles opposing her performances in Miami.

It is said in Cuba that she is the only person in the island capable of competing with Fidel Castro for public attention and adoration (Alicia Alonso would be a distant third). Myth or not, the fact is that in those nights when Castro is scheduled to speak, her producers make sure to cancel or postpone her stage of TV appearances on the same night.

To this day she is the only performer in Cuba (and, possibly, one of the few left in the world) to still have her own costume designers/dressmakers and her very own make-up artist and stylist (his name is Tony Besteni).

It was said that at the peak of her beauty she was the most desired woman in Mexico and Cuba. Among the men of power who allegedly competed for her affections were Mexican President 'Miguel Aleman', Cuban President Prio Socarras, former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and Argentine revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. Being a very private and discreet woman, she vehemently dismisses these rumors as nonsense, but does admit that at a certain period in her life she felt besieged by men in very high places.