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 at the University of Miami (1983). Additionally, she obtained a Master's in Public Administration in 1995 from Harvard University.
She began her professional career as a reporter for Channel 23. A year later, she made the jump to the main newscast at Estación Sin, and the following year, she debuted on 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 American 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 started 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 of the Gente TV channel. Her program Maria Elvira was on air for only a few months due to the buying and selling of the channel, but it was enough time to conduct several interviews with the characters from the soap opera Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal, as well as with Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (Popeye), the right hand of the notorious drug trafficker's inner circle.
In March 2013, blogger Yoani Sánchez granted an interview that Maria Elvira published on her personal page, the only one given to a Latina journalist during Yoani's visit to the United States. In August of that same year, she returned to television with her namesake program for CNN Latino.
Among the numerous interviews he has conducted are those with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Raúl Castro, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, among others, in addition to the ones mentioned.
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 departure of Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but he 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, 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 opportunity to fight for his district's seat in the federal Congress when he faces the Democrat Donna Shalala again.
