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Yeah. And we continue with our American stories. And as you know, we love telling immigrant stories, stories about folks who came here to get their piece of the American dream. And today, Joey Cortez brings us a story of an immigrant who would make his mark on the American advertising industry. Here's Joey.
Mark Barrios lives in Colorado. and he designed the arts for a product all of us know and many of us love. but before he became a successful commercial artist, His journey began somewhere far warmer than the Colorado Rockies. Here's Mark. I was born in 1944 in Havana, Cuba.
way before the revolution. My parents were divorced at an early age, but life in Cuba was like a regular teenage Kid, I mean, we were raised in a middle class. I was able to go to a private school. We spent the time. Summer in the days and to me was kind of paradise.
So then I was 14 years old when Castro took power and That's basically when my life completely changed. within weeks he started National license be industry like the electrical industry, the sugar. After my grandfather had passed, he had left my grandmother like A total of six houses, and she lived in one, and she was renting the other five.
Well, right away they confiscated those five houses and they said, Well, we're gonna keep giving you the rent that you're collecting from the houses, but those houses now belong to the state.
So I was not gonna inherit the houses, my mother or my uncle. Those houses were. taken by the state. A lot of the My books were burned in some of the major Streets And they were introducing new books into the school system. My school was confiscated.
and turn into friends of the Soviet. Revolution. in every city block They will have a committee of the revolution.
So If you did, if you were to school, if you did the daily affair, They knew what you were doing, but let's say that you wanted to go and spend two days in, like we used to do, spend some days in the beach. you will have to let them know. They have they needed to know where you're going to be every single day of the week. And that's the way to control the people. Obviously the freedom of the press, that right away, that's one of the first things that they took down.
They took out Freedom of religion. I mean, my God, they all the They confiscated a private school, especially those belong to the Catholic Church or any religious group like the one that I was. uh attending to I mean all our freedoms are taken away. They took away Our guns, for the sake of the revolution, they took away your guns. sins that you take for granted.
are taken away. And then Yeah. They will put people in the firing squad just for disagreeing with the revolution.
Some people were put in the firing squad because they were. trying to conspire against the but that's no reason to put them in the fire squad they get They get rid of all of them. And Che Guevara, which wasn't even a Cuban, and then here this guy, he was a. Of all the criminals in Cuba, he was probably the worst one. Originally, when Shea was brought in, he was.
brought in as the treasurer the of the country. After that Then he took over the tribunal. To start processing the people that they have caught, and that's when since got out of hand. He wanted to get rid of anybody that disagreed in any way with the government. There was no.
Mm-hmm. You know, they were not taking anybody, leaving anybody alive. If they disagree, if they can prove, or not even proof, if they had a hint that you were. anti uh anti-government you could end up in that firing squad. But they think that into the thousands and thousands that were killed.
Bye Che. As a matter of fact, I think the only reason that Che Guevara left Cuba, I don't know really obviously what happened. I think Castro finally said, hey, go someplace else because you're really. you know, if you continue in this path, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna Um you're going to kill the revolution. And that only has to do, and then take every sin away, whether you have a house or you have a business, and then you put.
people in charge that were brought people that were not qualified to Um to run those businesses, so they took the whole economy was, the economy collapsed. It didn't make any difference whether Russia was buying the sugar from Cuba. It was basically. A lot of the Middle-class business owners started leaving Cuba, a million of them left, and then you start putting people that were not even trained or qualified to run the businesses until the economy collapsed. Once the economy was collapsed, then they had full control.
I mean, they relied on on the government. They they nationalize The banking industry, they nationalized the energy sector, the petroleum industry, and everything was controlled by the government, and still controlled by the government. Yeah. You know, you you In Cuba nowadays you make more money as a As a taxi driver of one of the old. American touch and you are I've saved as a doctor or or as a professional.
So Um Ah man. And also. Very scary days back then and and um And I was kind of lucky when I was told to put my with my when my uncle told me to Tell my mother to whatever it takes to get me out of there. It's because after the day of pig, Sure enough, Castro the first scene after quite a question the the the invasion Here's the Grabbing all the teenagers and send them to what he called help the farmers, but it was really basically. send them to concentration uh camps to help with the with the sugar, got the sugar canes, but it was really basically Um a concentration camp to take them away from the families, at least for a period of times.
So yeah, it it w those were very Sad, sad days. Arriving on a student visa, Mark and his mom managed to escape the sadness for a place of hope. The United States. Ina's mother made Colorado their home. while maintaining a full-time job.
Mark attended the University of Boulder as a full-time student. And although his mother and uncles who lived in the States wanted him to become an accountant, Mark had a different vision. Yet a passion. Yeah. My major was in fine art and anthropology, which, you know, I don't know how you do either become a starving artist or Or a teacher.
So a friend of mine. Taught me about a school called Colorado Institute of Art, which was more of a commercial art advertising. And that was really fascinating to me. I mean, what a way to communicate with people. visually so Hi.
I started attending there. I found a job at the hospital, at a hospital I worked in the x-ray department from Friday to Sunday. Forty hours, so it was great. I didn't have a life, but at least I have it. A full-time job, but I must be able to go to school at the same time.
I graduated in 1966. from the Colorado Institute of Art. I'm sorry. And you're listening to the story of Mark Barrios, and what a story he tells about Cuba. And we've had several other remarkable stories told.
about Cuba before Castro and then after. They took freedom of the press away. freedom of religion. They took away our guns, the things that you take for granted. They were all taken away.
The economy collapsed, he noted, because all the middle-class business owners left. and the people unqualified to run the businesses handouts from the Castro government.
Well, they ran them into the ground, and the economy got run into the ground. You noted that you could make more money as a cabby. than you could as a professional or a doctor. All the incentives of work and moving up. were just taken away and stripped for the greater good.
for the revolution. when we come back more of Mark Barrios's story Tear. on our American story. Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts. Why did I search the internet for answers to my cold sore problem?
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And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
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terms apply. And we're back with Our American Stories and with Mark Barrios' story. Mark was born in Havana, Cuba, escaped the Castro regime, and moved to Colorado with his mom, where he graduated from the Colorado Institute of Art. Let's return to Mark. with the rest of his story.
Spending about a year working for some smaller agency, I was approached by Coors. They had an opening in their art department.
So I took that job. I was also married at the time. A previous marriage, and so I figured that that might be a more secure job to have a course. And then in nineteen seventy-five. Core's biggest competitor, the Miller Brewing Company, took the industry by storm with their release of a light beer.
Miller White. That changed the whole industry. Miller and Lighter started taking a lot of chairs away from Coors. Coors already had a hot product. The Banquet Beer.
which they marketed as America's finest light beer. Not based on calories, but flavor. But with Miller Light's success, Some folks in the company began to question. Maybe we should make an even lighter beer to compete. the management of the company, they felt that Miller Light was going to be a fad, that Light Beer was not going to be around for a long time.
Obviously, they were wrong. But at the same time, the company had brought a new guy into the picture, one of the family's son, and that was Peter Coors, and he was in charge of the marketing department at the time.
So Peter took over and he felt that we needed to introduce a live beer. Um I guess you're in the right time at the right place. They have created a light product before, but. He was too close to our existing Cours banquet.
So basically, not only Miller Live was taking business away from Cools, then. Here we are. this new course lie Package was so similar, and look was so similar, and advertising was so similar to the existing course that that brand was cannibalizing. our own brand, our at the banker. the Banquet brand.
I'm sitting one day in my desk during lunchtime having my lunch. Peter approached me and he said, What do I thought of the program? And I told him basically it's just to. It's just too close to the original Cools and I didn't care too much for it, so he told me, I would like you to start designing a new package.
Well, so I was pretty excited and after my boss got back that afternoon. for lunch. I told him, I said, Man, Peter was here. He was really asked me to design a new package.
Well, because he had designed the previous package, he didn't want anything to do. But then he basically told me, No, I don't want you to to do it. And I said, well, I cannot be in the middle. You're going to have to. To make this story short, Peter came back and he basically told him, no, Mark is going to design this, he's going to work on this package.
So I started working on it and one of the packages I was designing was playing with the using the silver. I thought that the light category they were used was both both Weiser and Miller was using the white and to me it was too medicinal so when I was playing around with the colors I noticed that this silver because it was really attracting, was very clean, was very fresh. very contemporary, it reflects in these shells.
So I ended up kind of pushing for that color as a background color and the brand supported me on that. We took it to Focus Group. Um They like the product, but they didn't think it looked Like beer. But anyway, Peter decided to roll with it, and because the other package was not doing any good. And Obviously The resistory became grew very rapidly.
There was college kids that started calling of course like the silver bullet, so what a better place. We were probably smart enough at the time.
So Accept that phrase. You know, sometimes you spend years and years trying to. develop a slogan, this was created by the consumer.
So coursewide became the and a silver bullet. I was promoted to the head of the department.
So Basically, I was in charge of All the advertising, all the promotion, the point of sale, the packaging. for the different brands.
So Little by little, I will be able to build in our department to a creative services department of over 36 people including. you know including Creative directors, copywriters are directors, production people, multimedia people. we probably became one of the largest in in-house Creative services. I tell you what, if I had to Uh yeah. Give credit to somebody who changed my that changed my life basically and in a very unexpected way.
It was Peter. Mark went on to open his own business and landed promotional jobs with several blockbuster hits like Batman, Jurassic Park, Apollo 13 and Space Jam. He has truly lived the American dream. Even in immigrants with a thick Cuban accent, can be successful. in the American advertising industry.
Uh Sometimes you talk to an accent, people don't listen to you too well. And that's human nature. I'm not throwing anything there other than human nature. This visual thing I was able to do was very, to me, it solved a problem, it solved a way for me to be able to communicate visually. I'm creating And then There are people accepting them.
I don't even have to talk to them one-on-one. They're accepting me or a product of me. They don't even know me. I think that was done in Jurassic Park, was done in in cool slide obviously very successful.
So yes, when I go by, I mean changes that are taking place in cool, some of them have been good. Believe it or not, I think they have done a very good job in protecting. The essence of what my vision was.
Now, the package today is so much different when the package that was done in 1978. It's almost like day and night, but that essence, that feeling that crispness that I envisioned is still there. Mark is now retired and married to a spouse he dearly loves. They have three children together. who now as adults.
Wish to further connect. with their Cuban roots. At the end of 2019, Audrey and Alex and Christopher, my middle son. They said, hey dad, you know, they wanted to go to Cuba. I said, you guys should go to Cuba.
I said, well, we're not going to Cuba without you because we want to, you know, we want to see our roots and you have to come along. And I really didn't want to. I said, you know, I. I just don't want to go and be depressed. Because I've seen pictures of my high school, places I used to live, places I used to visit, you know, and I really wasn't.
I don't want to go to that. to that place. But then I said to them, you know what, let's go ahead. I will do it. Just because of you guys, I will do it.
So we were all excited to start making the plant. At the last minute, my wife Um mother cheese You know, 81 years old, she can hardly walk. She decided she wanted to come. And we felt that wasn't, you know, that wasn't really.
So we're going back and forth about it because if we go to Cuba, you won't be able to move around, there's nobody there left.
So we and then suddenly COVID hit and We did cancel the trip because obviously we were not going to go there.
So that happened at the beginning of two. We were scheduled to leave on. Marsh. And that's when, you know. As a matter of fact, we had uh Uh playing tickets already and and that's when COVID hit, so we never got to visit Cuba.
So I still don't know if, you know, I'm getting older and I'm still in good, fairly good shape. you know no fart but Um I will do it for them. I won't do it for myself. I find myself very, very lucky that I was able to. I'm here with the $5 in my pocket.
exchange of clothes and You know, have a wonderful Over time, have been able to raise a wonderful family, give and give the family the The freedom To be living in this country, because obviously, if I would have had the family, it could have been the same family, it could have been in Cuba.
So, at least the family here be able to have the freedom that. That they have by living in this country. And now I have. and next generation family the grandkids are growing up and and be able to see them grow and it's just just Just very gratifying. I know that you're interviewing me, but man, how many...
Oh my god, I have millions of stories probably like mine. I'm only one of those stories in the naked city. I mean, I'm sure that there's a, you know, and I think that's the beauty of a country like ours, man. It's just so many. Opportunities for anybody that have a passion that are willing to do things a little bit different.
Um opportunities. Are there And my goodness, there's just so much here. And it's so beautiful. He comes to this country in the end with five dollars. in his pocket.
and a change of clothes. But as he put it best, He was given the gift by his mom of freedom, and he's passed that freedom gift along to his kids. Mark Barrios's story on Our American Stories. Professional wrestling fans, the action continues every week. Yes!
This total non-stop action! TNA Thursday Night Impact every week on AM Sing. For showtimes and more information, visit TNA Wrestling.com. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Save up to 30% your first year.
Visit lifelock.com/slash iHeart. Terms apply. In football, you've got guys from everywhere. Different backgrounds, different beliefs, all of it. You don't agree on everything.
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