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 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 earned a Master's degree in Public Administration in 1995 from 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 at Univision.
In 1988, he joined as a correspondent for the first Spanish version of CNN through Telemundo. As a result of this and job requirements, he moved to El Salvador in 1991, where he spent 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 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 channel Gente TV. Her program Maria Elvira was only on the air for a few months due to the buyout of the channel, but that was enough time to conduct several interviews with characters from the telenovela Pablo Escobar: el patrón del mal and with Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez (Popeye), the right-hand man of the well-known drug trafficker.
In March 2013, blogger Yoani Sánchez grants an interview to Maria Elvira, which is published on her personal page. This is the only interview given to a Latina journalist during Yoani's visit to the United States. In August of that same year, she returns to television with her eponymous program for the CNN Latino channel.
Among the numerous interviews she 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 her candidacy to represent congressional district number 27, following the retirement of Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, but she 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 triumphed in the contest for District 27 after 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.
