OTI Festival

Although the OTI contest was inspired in the Eurovision Song Contest, the festival was preceded by the Festival Mundial de la Canción Latina (English: Worldwide Latin Song Contest) which was held in Mexico DF in 1969 and 1970.

The countries that were eligible to participate in the OTI festival needed to be active members of the Iberoamerican Television Organisation. The active members were those ones which belonged to the Organisation of Iberoamerican States. All songs are accompanied on stage by a symphony orchestra.

In order to take part in the event, the participating countries were required to be Spanish or Portuguese speaking countries, to have large communities of Spanish or Portuguese speakers within their territory such as the United States, or to have lingual or cultural ties with Latin American countries (As happened with the Dutch Antilles). Apart from that, the entrant song needed to be performed in Spanish or Portuguese languages.

Map of the OTI Festival participating countries by debut year

Both state financed and private broadcasters were able to join OTI as full members and in some cases different broadcasters collaborated during the airing of the event as did the Venezuelan broadcasters Venevision and RCTV.

Years	Country making its debut entry
1972	Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Panamá, Portugal, Bolivia, Chile, Perú, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Uruguay.
1973	Mexico
1974	Dutch Antilles, Ecuador, El Salvador, United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua.
1976	Costa Rica
1978	Paraguay
1986	Canada
1989	Aruba
1991	Cuba
1992	Equatorial Guinea

The OTI Song Contest was held for first time on November 25, 1972 in the Congress Palace of Madrid. 13 countries took part in the first edition of the event. Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Panamá, Portugal, Bolivia, Chile, Perú, Uruguay, Argentina, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico were the debuting countries.[2]

After the first show, the rest of the Latin American countries progressively started taking part in the event. The festival expanded even further away from the traditional Latin American sphere, to the point that even the United States of America and the Dutch Antilles took part in the event. In 1992 the festival reached its record of 25 participating countries.

Mexico and Spain were the most successful countries in the history of the competition with 6 victories each while Argentina won the contest 4 times. Brazil was the third most successful country with three victories.

The Congress Palace of Madrid was the first venue of the OTI Song Contest.

The location of the festival was decided following various criteria. At first it was decided that the winning country would organise and celebrate the contest the next year, but after the victory of Nicaragua in 1977, the country could not host the contest due to the bloody civil war that broke out the next year. In those years, many Latin American countries suffered from political and economical instability. For that reason, from that year on, the host city was decided by an annual draw organised by the Iberoamerican Television Organisation.

The National Auditorium of Mexico was the host place of the OTI festival in 1984

Spain and Mexico were the countries that hosted the contest more times with 6 editions each one. In total, 13 countries of the 25 that participated in the song contest hosted the festival.

Venues and presenters

Year	City	Venue	Mistress and Masters of Ceremonies	Host broadcaster
1972	Madrid	Palacio de Congresos y Exposiciones	Rosa María Mateo and Raúl Matas	RTVE
1973	Belo Horizonte	Palácio das Artes	Walter Forster and Iris Lettieri	Rede Tupi
1974	Acapulco	Teatro Juan Ruiz de Alarcón	Lolita Ayala and Raúl Velasco	Televisa
1975	San Juan	Telemundo Studio 2	Marisol Malaret and Beba Franco	Telemundo
1976	Acapulco	Teatro Juan Ruiz de Alarcón	Susana Dosamantes and Raúl Velasco	Televisa
1977	Madrid	Centro Cultural de Villa Madrid	Mari Cruz Soriano and Miguel de los Santos	RTVE
1978	Santiago de Chile	Teatro Municipal	Raquel Argandoña and Raúl Matas	Canal 13, Canal 9 and TVN
1979	Caracas	Teatro del Círculo Militar	Eduardo Serrano and Carmen Victoria Pérez	Venevisión and RCTV
1980	Buenos Aires	Teatro General San Martín	Liliana López Foresi and Antonio Carrizo	Canal 7 ATC
1981	Mexico City	Auditorio Nacional	Raúl Velasco	Televisa
1982	Lima	Coliseo Amauta	Humberto Martínez Morosini, Zenaida Solís, Pepe Ludmir and Silvia Maccera	Panamericana Televisión
1983	Washington, D.C.	DAR Constitution Hall	Ana Carlota and Rafael Pineda	SIN
1984	México City	Auditorio Nacional	Raúl Velasco	Televisa
1985	Sevilla	Teatro Lope de Vega	Paloma San Basilio and Emilio Aragón	RTVE
1986	Santiago de Chile	Teatro Municipal	Pamela Hodar and César Antonio Santis	Canal 13 and TVN
1987	Lisbon	Teatro São Luís	Ana Maria Zanatti and Eládio Clímaco	RTP
1988	Buenos Aires	Cervantes Theatre	Pinky and Juan Alberto Badía	Canal 7 ATC and Canal 13 Artear
1989	Miami	Knight International Center	Don Francisco, Lucy Pereda and Antonio Vodanovic	Univisión
1990	Las Vegas	Caesars Palace	Emmanuel and María Conchita Alonso
1991	Acapulco	Centro de Convenciones	Raúl Velasco	Televisa
1992	Valencia	Teatro Principal	Paloma San Basilio and Joaquín Prat	RTVE
1993			Paloma San Basilio and Francisco
1994			Ana Obregón and Francisco
1995	San Bernardino	Teatro José Asunción Flores	Menchi Barriocanal and Rubén Rodríguez	Canal 13
1996	Quito	Teatro Nacional de la Casa de la Cultura	Christian Jhonson and Ximena Aulestia	Ecuavisa, Teleamazonas and Gamavisión
1997	Lima	Plaza Mayor	Jorge Belevan and Claudia Doig	América Televisión
1998	San José	Teatro Nacional	Maribel Guardia and Rafael Rojas	Repretel and Teletica
1999	Veracruz	The festival was cancelled due to floods in the host city.
2000	Acapulco	Centro de Convenciones	Emmanuel, Andrea Legarreta, Gabriela Spanic and Otto Sirgo	Televisa

The voting system to decide the winner of the contest changed over the years. At first, the winner was decided telephonically by five national juries from every participating country. Each jury member voted only for their favourite song and the winner was the song which had more points at the end of the process. In 1977 the number of national jurors per country was changed to three due to the increase of the number of participating countries and to the resultingly much longer show.

From 1982 on, the winner was decided by a professional room jury composed by famous music personalities. One year later, the voting system was changed again in a way that the voting process was secret. Since that year, only the three most voted countries were revealed at the end of the show which often generated scandals and controversies.

Although the OTI Song Contest has not been celebrated since 2000, the festival is still widely remembered in many countries, specially in Mexico, where the festival was always well received by the audience, even when the popularity of the festival was declining.[3]

The contest was enormously popular in Mexico thanks to the "National OTI contest", which was the national final to select the Mexican entrant for the international, and main OTI Contest. Many famous singers such as Juan Gabriel, Luis Miguel, Lucero, or the girl band Pandora, tried to represent their country in the OTI festival, but they didn't win the national contest.

In Spain, many popular names took part in the OTI Contest including the band Trigo Limpio, that represented the country in 1977 with the Song "Rómpeme, mátame" (English: Break Me, Kill Me) before representing Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1980. Many Years later in 1995 Marcos Llunas won the contest two years before representing Spain in Eurovision in 1997. Other popular Spanish OTI contestants are Marisol, and Camilo Sesto.

At least one Eurovision winner has participated in the OTI: Dave Benton, who sang for Netherlands Antilles in 1981, later won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2001 for Estonia, performing the song "Everybody" with Tanel Padar and 2XL.

As the mark of the OTI Festival in Latin America is still big, some organisations of diverse nature have tried to revive the festival. Some Mexican artists also made public their support to a return to the screens of the OTI Festival.

In March 2011, it was announced by some online newspapers that Televisa, the national Mexican TV channel was preparing for the relaunch of the event in two stages, the first one, was to revive the "National OTI Contest", the Mexican national final, while the second one would be to revive the international and main OTI Festival. The aim of this attempt to bring to life the festival was to give the opportunity to young performers to show their talent. The festival at the end never took place, but it was neither cancelled.[4]

In June 2016, it was announced the relaunch of OTI as a media organisation. The broadcasting union was renamed as "Organización de Telecomunicaciones de Iberoamerica" (Iberoamerican Telecommunications Organisation) the organisation evolved from being a television contents exchange platform to include members of a broader nature such as newspapers and telephone-internet companies apart from TV and radio channels. This relaunch instantaneously sparked rumors about a possible relaunch of the festival that were later denied.[5]

In 2017 it was announced the start of an organisation called "Organización de Talento Independiente" (Independent Talent Organisation) which in Spanish casually coincides with the acronym "OTI". The main goal of the organisation was to try to recreate the festival between Mexican singers and artists from the Latin community of USA. Although the festival was not a competition between broadcasters of different participating countries, the competition was held in the Mexican city of Puerto Peñasco in the Sonora State.[6]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to OTI Festival.

• Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana Website