María Elvira Salazar is a journalist and host of Cuban descent, born on November 1, 1961, in Miami, Florida.
Daughter of Cuban immigrants. She lived in Puerto Rico until she was 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). She also completed 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 newscast of Estación Sin, and the following year, she debuted on Univision.
In 1988, she joined the first version of CNN in Spanish as a correspondent through Telemundo. As a result of this and work demands, in 1991 she moved to El Salvador, where she stayed for two years as the head of the Central America news bureau for CNN and conducted several reports on the Salvadoran civil war.
In 1993, she joined the staff of Telemundo. In 1995, she interviewed Fidel Castro. Nine years later, in 2002, she left the network. That same year, she began her program María Elvira confronta for channel 41 América TV, where she obtained the last interview granted by Augusto Pinochet. A year later, her program moved to Channel 22. In July 2006, when the network was acquired by businessman Raúl Alarcón and renamed Mega TV, María Elvira took 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 at Gente TV. Her show Maria Elvira aired for only a few months due to the channel's sale, 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's inner circle.
In March 2013, blogger Yoani Sánchez gave an interview to Maria Elvira, which she published on her personal page, the only one granted to a Latina journalist during Yoani's visit to the United States. In August of that same year, she returned to television with her eponymous show for CNN Latino.
Among the numerous interviews he has conducted are those with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Raúl Castro, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and others, in addition to the previously mentioned ones.
He has received 5 Emmy Awards for some of his reports.
In March 2018, Salazar announced his candidacy to represent the 27th congressional district, following the retirement of Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but was defeated by Democrat Donna Shalala.
In August 2020, journalist María Elvira and Miami-Dade Mayor 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, she will have a second chance to fight for her congressional seat when she faces off once again against Democrat Donna Shalala.
