Meet Marcela Paguaga-Fuentes, the Creator Behind Miami’s Cuban Mary

Draped in a red headscarf with backdrops depicting the nativity scene, you’ve likely seen the Virgin Mary announce the coming of Baby Jesus in Spanglish on your social media feeds this month.

“We’re on our way to Belen. Baby alert! We’re on baby alert! The baby’s coming.”

Clips of the Cuban-American Mary from Miami, performed by actor Marcela Paguaga-Fuentes, have racked up well over a million views on Instagram and TikTok since she launched the seasonal series on December 1, with videos detailing her character’s baby name ideas (Jesus, because “I wanted a name that sounded good in English and in Spanish”), birth plan (she wanted Mount Sinai, but had to settle for a “súper luxurious, private” manger), and how Joseph reacted to her pregnancy (“Caballero, anyone can be a father, but it takes a real man to be a papi.”)

Paguaga-Fuentes, a New World School of the Arts grad best known locally for her role as Margarita Maria Mendoza in the popular Amparo Experience, which told the origin story of Havana Club rum amid the Cuban Revolution, has been acting since she was eight years old. But she’s seen her follower count more than double since she debuted her Mary character, with creators like Tefi Pessoa and artists such as Fifth Harmony singer Lauren Jauregui reposting or interacting with her posts. Further down in the comments, local fans tag Saturday Night Live and cast member Marcello Hernández, who’s been making Miami proud on the sketch comedy show since 2022.

The newfound attention comes at a surreal time for Paguaga-Fuentes. When I call her for our scheduled interview, I hear the buzz of a crowd of people in the background. She apologizes for the noise and tells me her grandmother just went into hospice care, and the whole family is at her house.

It’s an immediate, hard turn from the light conversation I’m expecting about a comedic social media video series, but one that makes sense coming from the creator of From Someone Who Gets It, a podcast she hosts about her mental health struggles. As it turns out, I learn that the character she’s created to make a million (and counting) people laugh was born out of heartbreak.

“I’ll get a little personal,” she tells me, just shy of three minutes into our call. “I’ve been struggling to get pregnant, and I’ve been in this very weird season of feeling angry, feeling very lonely. I woke up to my period, and I really thought I was pregnant. I just felt alone, and I was just like, I don’t know what else to do.”

To paraphrase the Beatles classic, when she found herself in times of trouble, Mother Mary came to her.

She’d had a fleeting idea for a character that would go “live” on her social channels a few weeks prior, but the moment passed. “I just dropped it. I didn’t pay attention. And then I got my period. I was not feeling well about myself, and I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s start creating art. What can we do?”

What she did was go on a coffee run, park her car, reach into her backseat, grab a spare piece of cloth (“a movie theater blanket that I had in the back of my car”), drape it over her head, and start filming. She initially posted the video on TikTok, where it quickly gained traction, but it really took off on Instagram.

Every bit the stage actor, Paguaga-Fuentes is certifiably academic when she speaks about her characters and process. “I went to Catholic school. I know the material,” she says. “I don’t write this beforehand. I improvise the whole thing. I get ready, I set up the camera, and I just do it. I give myself like four takes, because I don’t want it to sound scripted.”

Another reason she feels comfortable going off-book: Like her Cuban-American character, she’s a Miami girl through and through. She and her husband, Eddie Fuentes, co-owner of Calle Ocho’s Dead Flamingo bar, are Hialeah kids who got married on 305 Day.

“It’s like a love letter to my city,” she says of the series now, though the character she created, an expectant mother, began as an exercise in catharsis during a difficult time. “I really did it for myself, because I wanted to show myself we can create even in the saddest times.”

Following the success of the series, she’s introduced another character, a Cuban-American Mrs. Claus, who’s freezing in the North Pole and hiding cookies from her husband, Santi (you know, Claus). For fans of her endlessly quotable Cuban-American Mary, she’s also dropping merch based on the character.

She says the burst of creativity, bolstered by a supportive audience, has helped her get through a difficult holiday season. “The anger has kind of gone away, and I just feel that my time will come. And until then, let’s create another kind of life, and that life, right now, is art.”