For over twenty-five years Cristina Saralegui has been one of the most influential and valued voices in the Hispanic community. In addition to being an icon of Spanish-language programs in America, she reaches a worldwide audience of more than one hundred million with her television and radio programs, magazine, and website. Early in her career, with Helen Gurley Brown as a mentor, Saralegui brought a feminist edge to Cosmopolitan en Español as its editor in chief. With the opportunity of television, she brought this same sensibility to her daytime talk show El Show de Cristina. The Hispanic culture is generally conservative, but Saralegui, born in Havana, Cuba, knew that her community needed vital information on social issues such as AIDS, gay marriage, incest, and women’s rights. She unapologetically discussed these subjects, making many of her viewers uncomfortable. But ultimately, the show was welcomed for its openness, and, according to a People en Español poll, Hispanic Americans proclaimed Cristina as their most trusted TV personality. Cristina is clear about her goal in media to “rais[e] my people’s self-esteem and knowledge quotient so they can succeed in this very competitive country, and mak[e] them feel that they are supported in their efforts.”
Saralegui was born into a wealthy family that made its money in publishing. Her grandfather, Francisco Saralegui y Arrizubieta, was known as the Paper Czar because he owned the most important magazines on the island and sold paper to many of the other publications in Cuba. Her family fled Cuba for Florida in 1960 during the Communist Revolution led by Fidel Castro. In Miami her father, who had known Castro, again published magazines. Saralegui acknowledged in her autobiography that “life in the United States meant more sacrifice and much less money, but it was more or less the same life we lived in Cuba.”
While she was enrolled at the University of Miami, she chose to do an internship at Vanidades magazine—the number one women’s magazine in Latin America, which was once owned by her family. There she learned how to write in Spanish, supplementing her schooling that had been in English. In 1970, after her internship, she was offered a job there, first as an assistant and then as a writer. In 1973, she was hired as a staff writer and eventually editor in chief at Cosmopolitan en Español. In addition to promoting sexual freedom, Saralegui used the magazine as a platform to increase Latin women’s economic and political power.
She stayed at Cosmopolitan en Español for ten years, until 1988 when Joaquín Blaya, president of Univisión, offered her a job as a television talk show host because of her popularity in both Latin America and the United States. Saralegui was the only person he knew who could “talk a person’s ear off on any subject.” She negotiated the terms of her contract with the help of her second husband, Marcos Avila—one of the founding members of the band Miami Sound Machine—who then became her business manager. Saralegui hosted the daily El Show de Cristina, for thirteen years from early 1989 through December 2001. She was inspired by Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey (with whom she shares a birthday, January 29) and used their programs as models.
In the thirteen years she was on the air, she tackled many hot-button issues. Saralegui prides herself on being innovative and on being the first to explore many of these subjects in daytime talk. Producing and hosting her talk show was a second education for Saralegui. She has always stressed how it is Hispanic tradition not to discuss any issues that exist within families, including child abuse, spousal abuse, and above all, sex. In 1992 on a show about sex education, she had a doctor on who showed the audience the correct way to put on a condom using a cucumber—the first time anything like this was shown on Hispanic television. In January 1996 she produced a controversial show on gay weddings during which two gay couples were married, sparking a huge controversy among religious viewers, thousands of whom came to protest the show. Six months later, Oprah Winfrey and 20/20 also featured stories about gay weddings.
Saralegui has a particularly strong interest in educating Hispanics about AIDS. She is very proud of the speech she gave at the United Nations in 1995, in which she described herself as “the lady who fights AIDS in Spanish.” She and Avila started the Arriba la Vida/Up with Life Foundation in 1996 that educates Hispanics everywhere about AIDS. Saralegui has appeared in numerous public service announcements supporting AIDS awareness in association with the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR).
Currently, Saralegui is the host of a weekly talk show on Univisión, as well as a radio program called Cristina Opina, in which she shares inspirational and motivational messages with her listeners. She is executive editor of Cristina La Revista, a magazine she started in 1992 because she missed writing so much, and she wrote her autobiography, Cristina! My Life as a Blonde, which novelist Isabel Allende said has the “same humor, honesty, and intelligence” as her television show. In October 1998 she started a bilingual web site, www.cristinaonline.com, which has received over ninety million hits, providing access to all of the subsidiaries of her corporate umbrella, Cristina Saralegui Enterprises, Inc. In 2001 she became the fourth woman in the history of American entertainment to own her own studio, joining Mary Pickford, Lucille Ball, and Oprah Winfrey. Her Blue Dolphin Studios is a state-of-the-art television facility in Miami. In August 2005 she was selected by Time magazine as one of “The 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America.” As Gloria Estefan has said, Saralegui is “a testament to what one can achieve through talent, perseverance, and determination.”