Celia

Wednesday, 9 December 2015 English is my first language, but I speak, read and write Spanish well, all self taught. I am thrilled this show is on the aire. I love this show although it is Not an official authorized version, but I love it for a few reasons.

1. This is the second time ever or in many years that on a major Spanish television network such as Univision or Telemundo that there have been my people {Mi gente} African Latinos represented on the two biggest Spanish networks. I have often felt and said that Univision and Telemundo are prejudice and racist in the fact that every single soap opera/telenovela only show White skin Hispanics on all of their soap operas, which is Not a fair representation of All Latinos.

The same racism exist on Spanish magazine covers such as "People in Español", "TV & Notas" and other Latin American magazines. For years, I subscribed and supported such Spanish language magazines until about 4 years ago due to there were Never in any dark skin Latinos on their magazine covers. Only when Celia Cruz died was she put on the covers. Once in a rare while when there was a dark skin Hispanic, they would be inside the magazine or on the cover with several White skin Hispanics thereby reducing the dark skin Hispanic on the cover. I cancelled my subscription nearly 4 years ago.

The Univision and Telemundo producers seem to either forget or ignore that there are thousands of dark skin Latinos from Cuba, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic who are equally talented and gifted equal to their White skin Hispanic counterparts.

If it were Not for the United States America giving African Spanish speaking Latinos such as Laz Alonso, Tatyana Ali, Gina Torres, Zoe Saldaña, Lauren Velez, Cristina Milian and former t.v series Starsky & Hutch co-star, Antonio Fargas and others a chance to work in films, they would not be working at all. All of the dark skin Hispanics speak Spanish fluently,but you will never see them on Univision nor Telemundo. There is only one pretty dark skin Colombian newscaster on Telemundo, Ilia Calderon. Yo soy un Africano Americano con un corazon Latino. Ellos son Mi gente. I am so happy and proud to see dark skin Latinos in film and television. The music of Salsa was created by Africans and Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians Latinos. Merengue was created by Africans and Dominican Latinos.

The only other all Hispanic show that was shown with a very dark skin Latino in a lead role was Colombian actor, Walter Diaz in the soap opera/telenovela "Adrian Esta Visita" aka "Luzbel Esta Visita" in 2001.

2. The pretty JeirMaria Osorio {Puerto Rico} who was in a small supporting role of a Brazilian wife in the "Fast & Furious 5" plays the lead role of African Cubana salsa superstar Celia Cruz. She is excellent in this role, but she is so much prettier than Celia was in real life. Also, African Latino actor Modesto Lacen of Puerto Rico is doing a great job as well as the rest of the cast.

Pretty Colombiana, Carolina Gaitan and African Colombiana, Brenda Hanst are equally talented as well as cute. All of these talented dark skin Hispanics truly deserve to been seen on prime time Univision and Telemundo soap opera shows, but sadly due to racism in the Latin TV industry they will Not be seen beyond "Celia" program until another program based on a famous African Latino/Latina is made famous.

I am a big fan of Celia Cruz. I loved her. She was a unique world-class talent. I don't know where to start in listing the worst aspects of the telemundo series. But It may be helpful to start out by saying that, despite the fact, that they cast an excellent singer in the role, she rarely sang. I scanned through the ridiculous story line to find moments where she was actually singing. Not surprising they got the racial aspects all wrong for Cuba at the time. Celia was a black singer, singing an African based musical form they could've done so much to educate the audience about its origins and history. Despite the fact that Cuba has many people of mixed race at that time black people knew who they were and Sonora Mantancera was predominantly a black group. Almost all of the plot lines were ridiculous.But most egregious was the depiction of Pedro Knight as a horny buffoon. Shame on Telemundo!

Some characters turned 45 or older and the others hardly aged. raquel's child was only about 6. pedro's kids were still in high school. the inconsistencies were distracting. the original cast, the younger versions of the characters, particularly carolina gaitan was more enjoyable to watch. good, convincing acting. the mature Lola overdid the fingers over the mouth gestures, like she had to make sure to do the thing that Lola does, all the time! would've given more stars if not for those inconsistencies. Loved the representation of Afro Latins, loved Celia and the bands, salsa, rumba, the rhythm and music ! that's a 10!

****Some spoilers***

I watched a few episodes back when it first came out and decided to watch it on Netflix as my next binge show. First and foremost this a biopic telenovela. As such characters and story lines have been embellished or created for drama and entertainment. If you expected a accurate biopic move along. People were upset about the additional characters and story lines taking center stage must understand what medium this show is produced for telenovelas are shown long runs and the main story is sprinkled in to milk the episode#.

That said the production value is superb almost movie-like. Costumes, set designs and such were very nice, the acting was pretty good and they choose people who resembled the real life Celia and Pedro albeit much more attractive as TV shows do.

The music had the Cuban-flavor despite it not being completely accurate as others noted only 3 songs of hers actually being sung in the show, blame Sony for that they own her music catalogue and charged the studio an arm and a leg for the rights.

Overall its really entertaining, beautiful to look at from costumes, sets and actors overall an easy 10/10 as a telenovela, as a TV drama i would say its a 7-8 out of 10.

I was really into this for the first 50+ episodes, as I thought the "young"/"original" versions of the key characters were great actors...and then they replace half of the characters and age them to their mid 40s, all in one episode. To make it more confusing, they keep some random people the same, and the storyline itself only passes about 2 years max...smh. And then you're stuck trying to decide whether to sit through the next 30 episodes because you just watched 50 of them...and be annoyed the whole time by the character change. Whyyy does this always happen in telenovelas? Am I missing something? Are makeup artists not in the budget??