Behind the joyful conga lines and shimmering pop of the Queen of Latin Pop lies a staggering story of geopolitical upheaval, Cold War drama, childhood trauma, and near-unimaginable resilience. Gloria Estefan fled Cuba as an infant after the revolution, and her family’s history reads like a Cold War thriller, from the Bay of Pigs to a Cuban prison to Vietnam.

We look past the glitz to explore how a Cuban refugee who once turned down the CIA built a 120-million-record empire and forced open a segregated music industry. Using a Trojan horse strategy with Conga, the Miami Sound Machine broke into mainstream radio, and Estefan came back from a shattered spine to one of music’s greatest comebacks.

• Her father’s capture at the Bay of Pigs by his own cousin and her mother’s rebuilt career
• Turning down CIA recruitment and meeting Emilio Estefan at a church rehearsal
• The Conga Trojan horse that broke the too Latin for pop, too pop for Latin barrier
• The 1990 tour bus crash, titanium spinal rods, and her comeback 10 months later
• Confronting childhood abuse, her activism, and the business empire she built with Emilio