Twenty one countries sent a their delegations, performers and bands to Caracas. As usual, both state financed and private broadcasting networks that were active members of the Iberoamerican Television Organisation participated in this edition of the festival, amongst them, the host broadcaster Venevision. As usual some of the participating countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, and also Venezuela, the host country, selected their participating entrants through live-broadcast national finals in order to select their participants. Other broadcasters with a higher or lower level of technical or economical resources, decided to select their entrant and song internally. Unlike the previous two years, there were no withdraws in this edition of the festival and two traditional participating countries decided to return to the event such as Guatemala, which had withdrawed in the previous edition after the disappointing place the Guatemalan delegation got in Madrid two years before. Portugal also made the decision to return to the event after a one-year withdrawal because of the also unexpected low result of their performer two years before in the Spanish capital city. It must be taken the participation of the Portuguese entrant José Cid, who one year later, in 1980, would represent his country in the Eurovision Song Contest in The Hague getting for his country their best position till 1996. He would return the OTI Festival one year later in 1971. In México, Televisa decided to select their entrant through their traditional and enormously popular "National OTI Contest", which was their national final. In this edition as happened last year, there was a huge scandal when Estela Nuñez, who was an unknown singer back then, won with the support of the jurors against the prefereces of the audience. In that country the favourites to represent México in the international and main OTI Festival were the widely poupuar performers Yuri and Emmanuel. Although the selection of Estela Nuñez with her song "Vivir sin ti" (To live without you) initially angered the audience, she was applauded after her reprise performance. The Chilean performer Patricia Maldonado was also selected by the traditional Chilean national final. Although Maldonado was already very popular and recognised in Chile when she was selected, her selection is mainly attributed to her support for the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship. Ednita Nazario, who was selected internally by Telemundo to represent Puerto Rico in Caracas, is nowadays a very recognised personality in her home country, in Latin-America and in the Spanish Language communities of the United States of America.