Cristina Maria Saralegui is a Cuban-born American journalist, television personality, actress and talk show host of the Spanish-language eponymous show, Cristina.
Background
Cristina Saralegui was born in Havana, Cuba, on January 29,1948, to Francisco and Cristina Saralegui. One of five children, she was raised among the wealthy Saralegui publishing family in the Miramar suburb of Havana. In most of her biographical interviews and profiles, she credits her paternal grandfather, Francisco "Pancho" Saralegui, for instilling in her an early love for journalism. He was one of Cuba's most influential figures in print journalism and owned the publications Carteles, Vanidades, and Bohemia, three of the most important Latin American magazines of the time. He was also known as "The King of Paper in his native Cuba because he owned the largest paper-distribution conglomerate on the island.
Education
In 1960, when Cristina was 12, the family fled Cuba to escape the new regime of Fidel Castro. Castro was in the process of nationalizing all the private busi-nesses in Cuba and the family eventually lost all of its properties on the island. The Saraleguis settled in Miami, where her grandfather was able to continue printing some of his publications but eventually had to sell them to a Venezuelan media conglomerate. Through bad business decisions, Saralegui's father lost the family fortune and they became poor and resourceless.
The process of adapting to immigrant life in Miami was not easy for Saralegui, who had been bom to great wealth and privilege. She has commented that shortly after her arrival she experienced racism from her classmates and had to learn to cope with American children calling her hateful names such as "spic" and telling her that she should go back to Cuba.
Saralagui knew that she wanted to pursue a career in journalism, so she enrolled at the University of Miami and majored in communication and creative writing. As part of the undergraduate curriculum, she was required to complete a media internship. Using her family's connections, she interned at Vanidades, the magazine formerly owned by her family. After graduating from college, Saralegui was offered a job at the magazine and worked as a features editor from 1970 to 1973. This job allowed her to develop the basic journalistic skills that she would use throughout the rest of her professional life. She became a staff writer for Cosmopolitan en Espahol in 1973 and three years later, in 1976, she moved to the Miami Herald, where she became the entertainment editor.
Career
After a brief interlude when she married, had a child, and stopped working, Cristina returned to Cosmopolitan, once again as a staff writer. At the same time, to make ends meet, she also took on the responsibility of coediting a small publication called Intimidades. This was one of the first magazines that offered mainstream sexual information, education, and counseling to Latin American women. Even though Saralegui tends to discount the importance of that job, there is no doubt that her experience editing a magazine that broke new ground with sexually explicit articles served her well in her eventual television career.
In 1979, Saralegui became the editor of Cosmopolitan en Espahol, which, like its English counterpart, caters to the image of the Cosmo girl. As editor of this popular magazine, Cristina was able to effectively adapt and translate this image for Latina women. She also was seen as responsible for increasing the sales and visibility of the magazine among the Latino market and audience. Around the same time, Saralegui, who was in the process of divorcing her husband, met Marcos Avila, the bassist of the pop music Miami Sound Machine. They fell in love and married in 1984. Happy with her marriage and family, Saralegui continued with her job at Cosmopolitan until 1989, when her husband quit the Miami Sound Machine and persuaded his wife to leave Cosmopolitan and enter the television business.
In 1989 Saralegui became the hostess of the Cristina Show, broadcast through the Latino network Univision at a time when the talk show genre had become very popular in the United States. Saralegui became the first person to capitalize on the huge vacuum that existed in the Latino market for such programs. In the beginning of her show's run she followed a format similar to the ones successfully established by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jessy Raphael. Acting as a hostess but more importantly, as an agent provocateur Saralegui brought scores of controversial, spicy, daring, and provocative stories to the television sets of million of Latino households in Latin America and the United States.
During the first seasons, Saralegui, like Puerto Rican American journalist Geraldo Rivera, came across as a very blunt, coarse, and direct moderator who would exploit any issue, no matter how delicate or painful, to keep her audiences tuned in. Some audiences and media critics complained about the risqué nature of her program's content. Despite these protests, it was that same controversial nature of the shows that generated high ratings and huge viewing audiences. It quickly became one of the top programs on Latino television and today is watched by more than 100 million viewers daily. Saralegui herself takes credit for the fact that she was able to popularize such a controversial genre in Latin American and, above all, to challenge the common misconception that Latino guests will never talk about sensitive topics or their personal and family affairs.
With the passing of time, Saralegui has somewhat mellowed in her ways and has created a more mainstream television persona. While still direct and assertive, she has modified her themes and topics to better appeal to a more general audi-ence. Her show is now perceived as being in the mainstream and her audiences continue to grow. The show won an Emmy in 1991 and has consistently been the number-one favorite of Latin American audiences. In 1992 she attempted to cross over to North American audiences and to present an English version of her show. While the program scored fairly well in the ratings, Saralegui didn t agree to CBS proposed salary and eventually the show was cancelled.
Saralegui often comments that her early years as an immigrant in Miami when she struggled to make ends meet, left deep scars. She is in constant motion creating new business ventures and new work. It has been noted that an old sense of having everything as a child, losing it, and then having to rebuild your life in a new country is what pushes Cuban Americans like Cristina to work so much and so hard. She calls herself "Miss 10 Jobs" because she hates the idea of earning all her income from one source. Too limiting, too dependent. She is always looking to expand, hence the professional juggling.
In addition to her programs, since 1991 Saralegui has published Cristina: La Revista, a human interest and entertainment magazine with a circulation of 150,000 issues monthly (mostly in the Latino market). She also has a daily radio program with commentaries on the ABC International and Radio Unica radio networks. She is now a millionaire, and The New York Times has called her business a multi media empire".
A woman of direct demeanor but with a soft humane side, Cristina had the highest viewing audiences in the Latino world when she had her daily show. The show airs only weekly now. She has become involved in many charitable causes such as HTV /AIDS and has become a spokesperson for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, which has honored her for her work. In fact, she has become the leading HIV/AIDS activist within the Latino entertainment industry.
Personality
A woman of direct demeanor but with a soft humane side, Cristina had the highest viewing audiences in the Latino world when she had her daily show.
She has said: "I define myself as an adult woman who has struggled very hard to be able to determine the destiny of her own life. «I think that one can achieve everything she sets out to, although not always at once. That is the secret».
Connections
She is divorced from her first husband, Tony, with whom she has a daughter Cristina Amelia. She has been married to Marcos Avila since 1982, a former member of the Miami Sound Machine, and from this marriage she has a stepdaughter, Stephanie. Together they have one child, son Jon Marcos.