María Elvira Salazar is a journalist and host of Cuban descent, born on November 1, 1961, in Miami, Florida.
Daughter of Cuban emigrants. She lived in Puerto Rico until the age of 16 when she moved to the United States. Once there, she studied at Miami Dade College and at the School of Journalism in Miami (1983). Additionally, she earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration in 1995 at Harvard University.
She began her professional career as a reporter for Channel 23. A year later, she made the leap to the main news program of Estación Sin, and the following year, she debuted on Univision.
In 1988, she joined as a correspondent for the first version of CNN en Español through Telemundo. As a result of this and due to work demands, in 1991 she moved to El Salvador, where she remained for two years as the head of the Central America news bureau for CNN, conducting several reports on the Salvadoran civil war.
In 1993, she joined the staff at Telemundo. In 1995, she interviewed Fidel Castro. Nine years later, in 2002, she left the network. That same year, she began her show María Elvira confronts for channel 41 América TV, where she obtained the last interview granted by Augusto Pinochet. A year later, her show moved to Channel 22. In July 2006, when the network was acquired by businessman Raúl Alarcón and rebranded as Mega TV, María Elvira embarked on a new challenge with her program Maria Elvira Live.
In 2012, after a period away from television, she embarked on a new project with the Caracol network of the Gente TV channel. Her show Maria Elvira was only on air for a few months due to the buyout of the channel, but it was enough time to conduct several interviews with the characters from the telenovela Pablo Escobar: el patrón del mal and with Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (Popeye), the right-hand man of the notorious drug trafficker.
In March 2013, blogger Yoani Sánchez gives an interview to Maria Elvira, which is published on her personal page; this is the only interview she granted to a Latina journalist during her visit to the United States. In August of the same year, she returns to television with her namesake program for the CNN Latino channel.
Among the numerous interviews he has conducted are those with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Raúl Castro, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, among others.
He has received 5 Emmy Awards for some of his reports.
In March 2018, Salazar announced her candidacy to represent the 27th congressional district, following the retirement of Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but she was defeated by Democrat Donna Shalala.
In August 2020, the journalist and the mayor of Miami-Dade, Carlos Giménez, became Republican candidates for the United States Congress after both won the primary elections in their respective districts. María Elvira dominated the contest in District 27, securing 79.04% of the votes (39,330), compared to nearly 11% for Raymond Molina and 9.99% for Juan Fiol.
In November 2020, he will have a second opportunity to fight for his position in the federal Congress when he once again faces the Democrat Donna Shalala.
