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 the School of Journalism in Miami (1983). Additionally, she earned a Master's in Public Administration in 1995 at Harvard University.
She starts her professional career as a reporter for Channel 23. A year later, she makes the leap to the main newscast of Estación Sin, and the following year she debuts on Univision.
In 1988, she joined as a correspondent for the first version of CNN in Spanish through Telemundo. As a result of this and due to job requirements, in 1991 she moved to El Salvador, where she remained 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 Canal 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 on the Gente TV channel. Her program Maria Elvira was on the air for just 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.
In March 2013, the blogger Yoani Sánchez gave an interview that Maria Elvira 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 program for the CNN Latino channel.
Among the numerous interviews he has conducted, in addition to those mentioned, 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 was succeeded by Democrat Donna Shalala.
In August 2020, the journalist and 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 in the contest for District 27, receiving 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 chance to fight for his position in the federal Congress when he faces the Democrat Donna Shalala once again.
