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 the School of Journalism at Miami (1983). Additionally, she obtained 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 made her debut at Univision.
In 1988, she joined the first version of CNN en español as a correspondent through Telemundo. As a result of this and due to 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, conducting 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 rebranded as Mega TV, María Elvira embarked on a new challenge with her show Maria Elvira Live.
In 2012, after a break from television, she embarked on a new project with Caracol for the channel Gente TV. Her show Maria Elvira was on the air for only a few months due to the buy-sell of the channel, but that was enough time to conduct several interviews with characters from the telenovela Pablo Escobar: el patrón del mal, as well as with Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (Popeye), the right-hand man of the infamous drug trafficker.
In March 2013, the blogger Yoani Sánchez gave an interview to Maria Elvira, which was published on her personal page. It was the only interview she granted to a Latina journalist during her visit to the United States. In August of that same year, she returned to television with her eponymous show on CNN Latino.
Among the numerous interviews he has conducted are, in addition to those mentioned, 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 district in Congress, following the retirement of Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but 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 for 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 the seat in his district in the federal Congress when he faces off again against the Democrat Donna Shalala.
