To her devoted Hispanic fans, she is simply ”Cristina.” Her admirers don`t need to look in the tabloids for the lowdown on this Cuban-born TV talk- show star. Ask Cristina anything, and she`ll tell you something.
On the television program ”Show de Cristina,” the hostess has talked about her marriage to a man 11 years her junior and has revealed that she was seeing a therapist. In a recent issue of her new magazine, Cristina la Revista, published by Editorial America, she described in detail her own plastic surgery. And Cristina is not afraid of expressing her point of view. In fact, her daily radio show on the Cadena Radio Centro network is called
”Cristina Opina”-translation: ”Cristina`s Opinion.”
But Cristina Saralegui`s success is not built on being the Latin queen of self-revelation and self-promotion. For 10 years she was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan En Espanol, the Spanish-language version of Cosmopolitan magazine, which circulates throughout Latin America and the United States. And she sees her openness about her life as an integral part of her goal to educate as well as to entertain.
Interviewed in Chicago, Saralegui, 44, emphasizes what she shares with her audience.
”People look at you and see that you`ve made it, but sometimes they forget that it took you years of being a human being,” she says. Saralegui insists that people take her for what she is.
What she is right now is a media explosion. The ”Show de Cristina,” a Miami-based hourlong talk show that had its premiere three years ago on the Spanish-language network Univision, now is broadcast throughout the U.S. and in 15 Latin American countries. Strategy Research Corp., the Spanish-language equivalent of the Nielsen and Arbitron ratings, reports that the ”Show de Cristina” is top-rated on daytime Spanish language television. In Chicago, where her show appears at 9 p.m. on WCIU-Ch. 26, 34 percent of the Hispanic households tune in to Saralegui.
And an English-language version of Saralegui`s program will begin in June on CBS-owned TV stations in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
”For the new show, I`ll need to change the perspective, stress the way that the issues affect everybody, not just Hispanics,” she says. But she insists that she`s not going to abandon her Hispanic audience. And unlike other English-language talk shows, hers will continue to allow children in the audience.
Cristina Saralegui was 12 years old when she arrived in the U.S. in 1960. Her grandfather and father, both named Francisco, were in the publishing business in Cuba, an enterprise the family transferred to the States after emigrating. Cristina, named for her mother, earned a degree in mass communications from the University of Miami, then went to work as an intern for Vanidades, a Latin American women`s magazine formerly owned by her family. Her education until then had been in English and she had to teach herself to write in Spanish.
In 1979 she became editor of Cosmopolitan en Espanol. ”My message was,
`Liberation is from the neck up,` ” she says. ”I tried to give my readers the answers to the questions that would arise after they joined the work force.”
Of those questions, one that comes up often among Hispanic women in the U.S. and Latin America regards machismo.
”Here, if an Anglo woman makes more money than her husband, it`s a problem,” she says. ”But for a Hispanic woman, it destroys her whole house.”
Saralegui`s household, however, hasn`t been diminished, let alone demolished, by her success. Her career is managed by her second husband, Marcos Avila, 33, who was the bass player with the group Miami Sound Machine for 12 years.
”I got married the first time because I wanted to have a family,”
Saralegui says. ”I thought romance was for foolish ladies. I met Marcos when I was 35, and I thought, God sent me this to show me how wrong I was before.” She laughs, remembering their courtship: ”I was 11 years older than him, I wore a suit, I was the editor-in-chief of a ladies` magazine and I had a big staff. He was a little musician with a blond ponytail and an earring. Imagine him at an editorial cocktail party! Everybody`s family had a fit! But here we are, eight years later and very happy.”
Saralegui and Avila refer to their three children as their muestrario, or showcase. The two girls, Cristina Amalia, 14, and Stephanie Ann, 9, are from their respective first marriages. Jon Marcos, their son, turned 6 while his parents were taking the show around the country.
”We have a real family,” Saralegui says. ”When we do a mailing we are all in the garage. The kids help out, and they like to feel part of it.”
While touring is inevitable, Saralegui regrets being separated from her children. ”Maybe I`m selfish,” she says. ”People say, `What about your kids?` What about me? I miss them so much.”
She smiles when asked about having her husband as her manager. ”We fight all the time,” she says. ”The family`s not a problem, but with my husband it`s a problem because he`s my boss. I`m his on-air person. I`ve heard people say they get home and they don`t talk about it, but I can`t do that. It would be awkward. When things come up, they need to come out.”
Although Saralegui`s show features many of the the usual talk show topics-abortion, homosexuality, adultery and the occult-Saralegui does not approve of on-air hysterics. She believes that it gets in the way of what she sees as her mission. ”When a fight breaks out, I stop the taping,” she says. ”It might not be good television, but once (the fighting has) cooled down I can communicate, educate, and inform.
”Whenever I have a sexual topic, I try not to get graphic,” she says.
”I don`t get down and dirty. I establish the problem, and then I go straight into the consequences. There`s a lot of pain involved. And I don`t want to hear people complain that children are watching. I know that.”
Nevertheless, Saralegui does not shy away from difficult subjects. ”The world is not ideal, and the only weapon we can give our children is information. Information which is not pretty, but honest,” she says.
She speaks with passion of the problems she sees facing young Hispanics in the U.S., and education is a theme she sounds constantly. ”We have a 48 percent dropout rate. I don`t see anything happening for us as a minority unless we all get together (on the importance of education).”
But her biggest challenge early on was fighting what she believed to be a lack of unity in the Hispanic community.
”People would write me hate letters,” she says. ”How dare I try to represent Hispanics when I was so white? I tried to make them see it was racism.”
Saralegui laughs and shifts in her chair. ”I`m very, very Spanish,” she says. ”I have fat cheeks on both ends. I`m sitting on my Spanish part. And it`s my heart, the way I am, the way I speak. It has nothing to do with the way I look.
”The Cubans are just my tribe. Hispanics are my people,” she says.
”Cuba is my roots, but this is my country.” Once immigrants cross the border, she says, ”They have the same problems as others in this country. Crack, drugs, AIDS. We have problems according to where we have chosen to bring up our children.
”Our minority is not racial, it`s cultural,” Saralegui says. ”What we Hispanics have in common is our religion, our language, our background.”
About tensions between the African-American and Hispanic-American communities, she says, ”Black Americans are an incredible example, and they have been politically organized. They have presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson and role models like Oprah, Bill Cosby, even Arsenio Hall. They have the United Negro College Fund. I tell my people, `Don`t fight with the black people.` If we all pulled in the same direction, America would be great again.”
When asked if it bothers her being called the Spanish Oprah, she shakes her head. ”I`m a feminist, and I admire Oprah,” she says. ”I have no words to express the admiration I have for someone who has gotten as far as she has in this business, especially considering that she`s from a minority and very young.”
When ”Show de Cristina” premiered, its host worried she`d have a hard time finding Hispanic guests willing to talk about personal or controversial issues. But that was not the case.
”Everybody thought the Hispanics wouldn`t talk about their problems, but they just needed a forum to discuss these things,” Saralegui says. After the first show, she says, ”letters started coming in, and they told me stuff that I would not tell my pastor, my gynecologist or my husband.”
That would be hard to believe. At the Chicago Theatre later that night, a staff member brought a woman backstage who would be breastfeeding during the show. Saralegui was momentarily concerned that the woman would have to pull up her entire shirt in order to feed the baby, and discussed the camera angle with an assistant. She suggested the strategic placement of a cloth diaper. Then Saralegui disappeared into the restroom. Minutes later, she emerged, having changed from her sweat pants into a blue dress. With her characteristic bravado, she joked, ”You know you`ve been on the road too long when you get your period twice in one trip.” Cristina Saralegui, clearly, doesn`t worry about revealing too much.
