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Afterthoughts on Margarita Henriquez Winning Latin American Idol

The 3rd season of Latin American Idol ended Thursday night and in a barely surprising turn of events, Panamanian contestant Margarita Henriquez defeated Costa Rican Maria José Castillo thanks to the votes via chat messages from people in Panama and all of Latin America. Panama’s odds of winning were good from the start, with 3 Panamanians present out of the 10 finalists; Margarita has pipes and in the last three months she, surely with the help of vocal coaches and some of the most renowned Spanish-speaking performers in the world, has fine-tuned her instrument into a lethal weapon of song. She deserved to win the contest, and I’m glad that Latin America agreed with the notion. As black-and-white as Margarita’s indisputable win is though, what is truly fascinating is what she has managed to inspire in just a few short weeks simply by the raw power of her presence in LAI: Panama, as a whole, came together for a common goal in such a way that the I can only compare it to how a country deals with acts of war. In many ways (but by no means in the same scale), Margarita’s presence and win in Latin American Idol brought a country together in the same manner that 9/11 brought the U.S. to unity.

I followed the contest on-and-off because I like reality shows out of morbid curiosity and, well, I have an affinity for the arts. Now, let’s get a couple of things out of the way first: Yes, the whole show is a business and yes, in a way it exploits the dreams of young hopefuls and exposes their lives for the entertainment of millions of people across the continent. It’s true that million-dollar profits are made out of the chat-voting system alone and there’s a lot of room for tweaking and calibrating to garner more ratings. I don’t want to address that aspect, though. What I want to deconstruct is how millions of Panamanians could mobilize, organize and successfully execute a weeks-long campaign in order to take Margarita to LAI victory. I can’t even agree with people I work with half the time, and worker unions can’t agree with the government ever, but for some reason this one delightful girl can whisk away all the ill will people have for each other and unite for a common goal. It seems it was the same in Costa Rica, and in a warped way it seems like the countries the girls represented in the contest were having a bigger feud than the girls themselves were; from what I could gather, they were both truly excited to have made it and I didn’t feel an iota of competitiveness come from either of them. No ill will. They let it all ride on Latin America, and Panama ran with it as far as humanly possible.

On a cab ride a few days prior to that fateful Wednesday night, I was listening to a talk show on the radio where the subject of Margarita Henriquez was a hot topic for discussion. People unanimously decided to support the girl’s efforts by chatting their hearts off, but it was when someone who phoned in to say this experience had marked his life in such a profound way that he was going to tattoo “43567” (the chat number to send in your vote) on his arm to commemorate the occasion, I knew things were getting a wee bit out of hand. It seems that the fact that Margarita was participating way over in Argentina was a good thing, because Panamanian glory hopefuls have a history of breaking under pressure (I’m looking at you, Panama Soccer Team) and, I don’t know about you, but if somebody told me about all the stuff going on in Panama for me to win, I’d be a nervous wreck.

This particular instance is not entirely common, though: sure, Margarita blew the top off with her performances every single time and I knew 4 shows before the finale that this girl was going to make the final and quite possibly win it. She seemed that confident and her talent is that obvious to anyone who sees her perform. The social phenomena breaks loose when the procedure to determine the elements in the final contest is turned upside down: the judges who evaluate these kids are, in this instance, merely tools to guide the real decider into making an informed decision… and the decider is the audience. The audience molds the show into what it wants to see, and it’s a truly magnificent thing to see in action. The gamble for the producers is huge, but in the end, it’s perfect: as a producer, you’re both building your audience and letting them decide who they want to see in the end, and when that last person is crowned the victor, the rest of the elements that make up a successful performer (well-produced record with catchy tunes and the ability to sell out venues) is already there and ready for its brand new star, hand-picked by regular people such as you and me. The quintessential communal experience of the digital age: everyone all across the continent united via the TV set, bound by the same criteria: “must help Margarita win.”

As D-Day loomed closer, Margarita-Mania was becoming harder to escape; suddenly nothing else mattered, with rivaling TV channels, presidential candidates, telecommunications companies, and the private sector setting their differences aside and organizing a nation-wide campaign to take Margarita to the win. In the end, as the Latin American Idol presenter put so well, “your moment has arrived!” The poor girl did everything she possibly could but the road was over for her at that last gala a day before the final show. As the credits rolled, Panamanian media both radio and on TV went on a crusade to coerce people to send in as many chats as humanly possible, asking private companies to donate prepaid cards and money to buy them, as well as setting up “chat stadiums” or chatodromos where people could congregate and text the living shit out of their phones ‘til the wee hours of the night. The two reigning cellular phone companies in Panama (Cable & Wireless and Movistar) even came out on several occasions to give out tips on how to send your text message, when was the best time to do it, what the optimal conditions to do so were, and so forth. For example, I had no idea more than 20 people congregated in the same area texting at once saturated the signals. I also didn’t know that sending 200 messages per phone in under 20 minutes was actually possible. There are other things, but in the end this whole phenomena took an unprecedented level of seriousness with everyone, from the most humble of street vendors to the President himself came together to help this girl win a record contract. Even three of the most relevant presidential hopefuls, Ricardo Martinelli, Balbina Herrera and Juan Carlos Varela made public donations in the thousands of dollars for this, most noble of endeavors.

There were rumors running rampant all throughout the hours leading up to the live, final show: “leaked” information on the tallies saying that Margarita was under, people off the street selling prepaid cell phone calling cards at double the price, scams all around and all sorts of other “juega vivo”-related shenanigans ensued yet did not taint the holiness of the proceedings. In the end, when Margarita inevitably won the contest, the entire country went absolutely bonkers; all the main traffic arteries in Panama City were clogged up with people engaging in drunken debauchery, Margarita’s hometown of Los Santos, in the Azuero Peninsula, looked like it was the last Carnival celebration in the history of the world, and Panama at large was simply ecstatic by Margarita’s win. It was all over the news the following morning, as every media outlet chose to bypass the murders, robberies, turf wars and the overall shitty outlook normally present in the news every other day and stuck to Margarita winning LAI and what it meant in the big picture.

Getting Margarita’s “big picture” out of the way is imperative. Her cards are dealt; she’s set and there’s no need to worry about her. What I believe should be done now is that the average Panamanian has to look at him/herself in the mirror and then look at their own big picture, the part they took in this phenomena. Irving Saladino made history by winning Panama’s first Olympic Gold Medal, tearing ass up and down the tracks in Beijing this past August, and Panama’s celebration was nowhere near as immediate or astounding as this. And Saladino was received like the champion that he truly is; a good point of comparison for what occurred on the streets of Panama last night is what would happen whenever Roberto Duran would punch the turd out of whoever was dumb enough to fight him back in his prime. The commanding difference between the two instances though, is that Duran didn’t win as many times and as definitively as he did due to the amount of chat messages his country sent in his favor; he did it out of sheer will. Of course, Margarita sang her pretty little heart out and held her end of the bargain 100%, but the nature of the circumstances she was in shifted the paradigms of the triumph. This is as much Panama’s win as it is Margarita’s, but having said that we should be ashamed that we can’t come together to solve our country’s ills but we sure can come together and throw our money away for the same of a big budget karaoke show.

Friends wonder what real good Margarita’s win will bring to the country. I’d like to think that maybe, just like Saladino did for sports when he brought back the Olympic gold, support for our artists will be more heartfelt and perhaps they will be taken with the seriousness they deserve. now that it’s clearly apparent what the continent thinks about our national talent. Panamanian artists are going abroad and gaining fans across the world as of late, and I find it inconceivable that some of them are making it big abroad but when they come here they’re just poor schmucks trying to make a living signing about trite. Panamanians need to support their homebrew artists much more than they are now, which is leaps and bounds more than the support found a decade ago, but what I would really like to happen in terms of social progress is that the country as a whole realizes the unprecedented effort on display thanks to a girl and the TV show that garnered a continent’s attention and maybe, just maybe, we could show the same amount of interest in fixing what’s wrong with our country. In the end, it might even come out cheaper both economically and in terms of effort to win our social battles than it was to win Latin American Idol.

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