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 completed a Master's in Public Administration in 1995 at Harvard University.
She begins her professional career as a reporter for Channel 23. A year later, she makes the leap to the main news program of Estación Sin, and the following year, she debuts on Univision.
In 1988, she joined the first Spanish version of CNN as a correspondent through Telemundo. As a result of this and due to work demands, she moved to El Salvador in 1991, where she spent two years as the head of the Central America news bureau for CNN and carried out 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 started her show María Elvira confronta for channel 41 América TV, where she obtained the last interview granted by Augusto Pinochet. A year later, her show 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, specifically on the Gente TV channel. Her program Maria Elvira was only on the air for a few months due to the buying and selling of the channel, but it was enough time to conduct several interviews with figures from the telenovela Pablo Escobar: el patrón del mal, as well as with Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (Popeye), the right-hand man in the close circle of the infamous drug trafficker.
In March 2013, the blogger Yoani Sánchez gives an interview that Maria Elvira publishes on her personal page, the only one granted to a Latina journalist during Yoani's visit to the United States. In August of the same year, she returns to television with her eponymous show for the CNN Latino channel.
Among the numerous interviews 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 she lost to 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 almost 11% for Raymond Molina and 9.99% for Juan Fiol.
In November 2020, he will have a second chance to fight for his district's seat in the federal Congress when he faces the Democrat Donna Shalala once again.
