Here on Our American Stories, we often share the journeys of folks who came here to find their piece of the American Dream. Today, we meet Mark Barrios, a Cuban immigrant whose vibrant childhood in Havana was dramatically upended by the rise of Fidel Castro. As homes were seized, freedoms vanished, and a sense of paradise crumbled, Mark and his family faced a harrowing decision, one driven by the universal human desire to escape oppression and build a life rooted in peace and opportunity.
From the challenging days in Cuba to a hopeful new beginning, Mark’s path led him and his mother to the United States. They found a fresh start and a home in the Colorado Rockies, where Mark would eventually make his indelible mark on the American advertising industry. His inspiring story is a powerful testament to resilience, the enduring pursuit of freedom, and the boundless possibilities that await those who courageously seek a better future in America.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Mark Barrios: Mark Barrios lives in Colorado, and he designed the arts for our products 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 a early age, but life in Cuba looked like a regular teenage kid. I mean, we were raising a middle class. I was able to go to a private school. We spend the time somewhere in the beach, and today, it was kind of paradise. And then I was 14 years old when Castro took power, and that’s basically when my life completely changed. Within weeks, he started nationalizing the industry, like the electrically indity, the sugar. After my grandfather had passed, he had left my grandmother a total of six houses. And she lived in one, and she was renting the other five. Right away, they confiscated those five houses, and they said, “Well, we’re going to, we’re going to keep giving you the rent that you’re collecting from the houses, but those houses now belong to the state.” So I wasn’t going to hear the houses, my mother or my uncle. Those houses were taken by the state. A lot of the books were burned in some of the major streets, and they were introducing new books into the school system. My school was confiscated and turned 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, 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 had, 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, all; they confiscated the private school, especially those below to the Catholic Church or any, any religious group like the one that I was attending to. I mean, all our freedoms, they taken away. They took away our guns—in, for the sake of the revolution—they took away your guns. Since that you take for granted, are taken away. And then they will put people in the firing squad just for disagreeing with the, with the, with the revolution. Some people were put in the firing squad because they were trying to conspire against it, but that’s no reason to put them in the firing squad. They got, they get rid of all of them, and Zekeevara, which, not, it wasn’t even a q one. And then here they, this guy who was, you know, of all the criminals in Cuba, he was probably the worced one. Originally, when Shay was brought in, he was brought in as the treasure 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 with, in any way, with the government. There was no, you know, they were not taking anybody living, anybody alive. If they disagree, they can prove or not even prove they had a hint that you were anti, anti-government, they would, you could end up and that fire in a squad. But they think that into the thousand some thousands that were killed by Shay, that’s a matter of fact. I think the only reason that Gabara left Cuba, I don’t know. I don’t know, really, obviously, what happened. I think Castro finally said, “Hey, goes someplace else, because you’re really, you know, if you continue in this path, you’re going to, you’re going to, you’re going to kill the revolution.” And that only, that only has to do. And then take every seat away, whether you have a house or you had a business, and then you put people in charge. They were brought people that were not qualified to, to run those businesses, so they took the whole economy. Was the economy collapse? It didn’t make any difference where the 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 till the economy collapse. Once the economy was collapsed, then they have full control. I mean, they relied on the government. They nationalize the banking industry, they nationalize the energy sector, the controllum industry, and everything was controlled by the government and still controlled by the government. And, you know, you, you make in Cuba nowadays, you make more money as a, as a taxi driver of one of the old American cars, and you are, as say, as a doctor or as a professional. So, man, those are very scary days back then. And, and I was kind of lucky when I was told to put up when my, when my uncle told me to, to told my mother to whatever it takes to get me out of there. Is because after the Bay of Big, sure enough, Castro, the first scene after quention the, the, the invasion, he started grabbing all the teenagers and send them to what he called “help the farmers,” but it was really, basically, um, a concentration camp to send them to help with the, with the sugar, to God the sugar canes. But it was really, basically, um, a concentration camp to take him away from the family, at least for a period of times. So, yeah, those were very sad, sad days.
Speaker 1: Arriving on a student visa, Mark and his mom managed to escape the sadness for a place of hope: the United States. In, his 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. He had a passion for art.
Mark Barrios: My major was in fine art and anthropology, which, you know, I don’t know how you either become a starving artist or, or a T shirt. So a friend of mine told me about a school called Colorado Institute of Art, which was more of a commercial art, advertising, and that was really fascinating to me, and what a way to communicate with people visually. Sold, I started attending there. I found a job but the hospital. At a hospital, I work in the X-ray department from Friday to Sunday at 40 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. So I graduated in 1966 from the Colorado Institute of Art.
Speaker 1: 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 business, handouts from the Castro government, well, they ran them into the ground. And the economy got running to the ground. He 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, we’re just taken away and stripped for the greater good, for the revolution. When we come back, more of Mark Barrios’s story, tier are on our American Stories. And we’re back with our American Stories and with Mark Barrios’s story.
Mark Barrios: Mark was born in Havana, Cuba, escape 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. After spending a couple of o’clock, spending about a year working for Miss Moller Agacy, I was approached by Coursh. They had an open in the art department, so I took that job. I was also married at the time, a previous marriage, and so I figured that might be a more secure job to have a Coursh. And then in 1975, course biggest competitor, the Miller Brewing Company, took the industry by storm with their release of a white beer, Miller White, that chase the whole leading the street. Miller Light has started taking a lot of shares away from Coursh. Course 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 Lie was going to be a fad, that live beer was not going to be around for a long time. Well, obviously, they were rung. But at the same time, the company have brought a new guy into the picture, one of the families son. And I was Peter Course, 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 bear, and I guess we’re in the right time at the right place. They have created a live product before, but he was too close to our existing, the existing course banquet. So basically, not only Miller Lie was taking business away from Course. Then here we are, this new Course Lie package was so similar, and look was so similar, and advertised it was so similar to the existing course, that that brand was kind of alze in our own brand, the banquet, the banquet brand. So I’m sitting one day in my desk, lunchtime, having my lunch at Peter approachment. He said what I thought of the producram, and I told him, “But it’s basically, it’s just too, it’s just too, too close to the original course,” and had he cared too much for it. So he told me, “I would like you to start deciding a new package.” Well, so I was pretty excited, and after my boss got back that, after that afternoon, for lunch, I told him, I said, “Man, Peter was here. He was really asked me to decide a new package.” Well, because he had designed the previous package, he didn’t want to see to do. But then he basically told me, “No, Mark is going to design this. It’s going to work on this package.” So I started working on end, and one of the packages I was designing, it was playing with the still were. I thought that the like category they were used to. Both whis Miller was used in 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 attractive. It was very clean, very fresh, very contemporary. It reflects in these shelves. So I ended up kind of pushing for that color as the background color, and the brand, you know, supported me on. Then they took a good focus group, and they liked the product, but they didn’t think it looked like beer. So, but anyway, Peter decided to roll with it. And because the other, the other package was not doing any good, and obviously, there was a history. Course like became, grew very rapidly. There was college kids that started calling course like “the silver Ballet.” So what a better place. We were probably smart enough at the time to accept that phrase. You know, sometimes you spent years and years trying to develop a slogan. This one was created by the consumer. So of course I became “The Silver Bullet.” I was promoted to the head of the department, so basically, I was in charge of all the advertising, all the promotional de point of sale, the packaginge for the different brands. So little by little, I was be able to build in our department to a creative services department of over 36 people, including, you know, including creative directors, copywriters, our directors, production and people, multimedia people. So we probably became one of the largest in-house creative services. I tell you what: if, if I had to give credit to somebody who changed, that changed my life, basically, and in a very unexpected way, it was Peter.
Speaker 1: Mark went on to open his own business and landed promotional jobs with several blockbuster hits like Batman, Jurassic Park, A, Power Thirteen, and Space Jam. He has truly lived the American dream. Even an immigrants with a thick human accents can be successful in the American advertising industry.
Mark Barrios: Sometimes you talk to an accident, people don’t listen to you too well, and that’s human nature. There’s, I’m not throwing any, anything there other than human nature. So this visual sin I would be able to do was very to. Maybe, became, it solve a problem. It’s a wait for me to be able to go to communicate visually. I’m creating a look, and then there are people accepting them. I don’t have to talk to them one on one. They’re accepting me, or a product of me, and they don’t even know me. I think that was done in Jurassic Parkton and in Cool’s light, obviously, very successful. So, yes, I mean, when I go by, I mean it’s changes have taken 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 I was done in 1978. It’s almost like day and nine. But that essence, that feeling, that Christmas that I envision is still there.
Speaker 1: Mark is now retired and married to a spouse he dearly was. They have three children together, who, now as adults, which to further connect with their Cuban roots.
Mark Barrios: At the end of 2019, Audrey, and Alex, and Christopher, my middle son, they said, “Hey,” that, you know, they wanted to go to Cuba and said, “You guys should go.” They said, “Well, we’re not going to que it 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 just don’t want to go and be depressed by, because I’ve seen a picture of my high school, places I used to leave, 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, let’s go ahead. I will do it, just because, so do you guys. I will do it.” So we were all excited. I started making the plant. At the last minute, my, my wife mother, she’s, you know, 81 years old. She can either 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 because if we go to cue, what you won’t be able to move around. There’s nobody there left. So we, and then suddenly covered head, and we did cancel the trip because, obviously, like we were not going to go there. So that happened at the beginning of the beginning of two. That’s who were scheduled to live on marsh. Uh, and that’s when, you know, as a matter of fact, we had playing tickets already, and that’s when COVID hits. So we never got to visit Cuba. So I still don’t know if, you know, I’m getting older, and I’m still good, fairly good chape, or we don’t know fart. But I will do it for them. I won’t do it for myself. I find myself very, very lucky that, you know, that I will be able to come here with $5 in my pocket, exchange your clothes in, you know, have a wonderful over time, have to be able to, to raise a wonderful family and give that family the freedom to be living in this country. Because, obviously, if I would have had the family, could have been the same family, could have been in Cuba. So at least the family here be able to have the freedom that they can, that they have by living in this country. And now I have the 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, 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, since a little bit different. Opportunities are there.
Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, there’s just so much here, and it’s so beautiful. He comes to the country in the end with $5 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 here on our American Stories.
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