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Introducing her book
"I am my father's daughter"
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| Life Without Secrets: Maria Elena Salinas writes story about TV success |
| Written by Ana Veciana-Suarez (The Miami Herald) |
| Monday, April 10 2006 |
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It began with a box, a box of secrets and mystery. Inside it were letters, documents, certificates, even rent receipts and paycheck stubs. But it was a small church pamphlet, found among these papers, that launched Univision network anchor Maria Elena Salinas on the most life-altering story of her career: the search for her father's past.
More than 20 years after opening this box, Salinas has written a book about ''my most difficult assignment,'' with the help of former Herald columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Liz Balmaseda. But I am My Father's Daughter: Living a Life Without Secrets ($19.95, Rayo) is more than a trip down memory lane, more than the painstaking path back to long-lost roots and newfound relatives.
It is also the revelatory story of a highly successful woman's trajectory from her childhood in a poor Los Angeles neighborhood to the most recognizable female face in Spanish-language news media.
By turns informative and poignant, personal and public, Salinas weaves an entertaining tale of the ins and outs of interviewing dictators and presidents as well as what it takes to stay on top -- both in the newsroom and at home.
''Millions of people watch me every day and they see me ready to go in front of the camera,'' says Salinas. ``But they don't realize the struggle behind it. They don't see what came before and what it takes to maintain yourself in a competitive environment.''
The book's release this month coincides with the 25th anniversary of Salinas' entry into TV news, back in 1981 with Los Angeles' KMEX. But that's all it is -- coincidence.
''The book,'' she says, with a rueful laugh, ``was supposed to be out last year. And before that, I originally wanted it for my 20th anniversary.''
Regardless of release date, My Father's Daughter means that Salinas, 51, mother of two daughters and two stepdaughters, will add one more responsibility -- author on tour -- to her growing list of jobs.
In addition to her network anchor role, she also co-hosts the prime-time television news magazine Aqui y Ahora, delivers commentary on the radio, and writes a weekly column in both Spanish and English.
''I'm still struggling to balance everything,'' she says. 'It never ends. It never stops. When I say, OK, I'm not going to do any more, someone asks, `Can you emcee this?' or 'Can you moderate that?' And I take the challenge. It's hard to say no, but I'm slowly learning.''
Those who know her, however, doubt that Salinas can slow down.
Her co-anchor, Jorge Ramos, says: ''If I could give Maria Elena something, it would be a 36-hour day.'' He should know. They've been working together for 18 years.
Guillermo Martinez, the TV executive who first paired Ramos with Salinas, calls her ''a perfectionist and one of the best human beings I've ever met.'' He tells of a young and eager anchor who would spend hours in a booth examining tapes of her news show to see how she could improve her delivery.
''I've had some of the biggest fights of my career with her because she is so hard on herself,'' Martinez says. ``On a professional basis, she's the hardest worker I've ever met. On a personal level, she's good people. She has had friends for decades and she doesn't forget them.''
Salinas concedes perfectionism is a familial trait.
Her father, Jose Luis Cordero Salinas, was a former priest who earned several college degrees and spoke six languages. He posted typewritten rules -- and a daily schedule -- on the kitchen wall and gave her this advice when she first started her TV career: Never stop learning and do it right.
Doing it right has meant three Emmy awards and an Edward R. Murrow award as well as long hours and endless trips to dangerous places far from her family. She has reported from the White House and from the Kremlin and, more recently, from Baghdad.
''Eliott to this day still won't look at the photos from Iraq,'' she says of husband WFOR-CBS 4 news anchor Eliott Rodriguez. ``He doesn't even want to talk about it.''
In the book, she writes about her various encounters with some of the biggest names in Latin American politics: Manuel Antonio Noriega, Alberto Fujimori, Augusto Pinochet and Fidel Castro.
The latter comandante had been particularly elusive, though Salinas had been writing letters to him for more than a decade requesting a sit-down interview. Finally in February 2002, she came face to face with Castro during a trip to Havana. During that exchange, Salinas volunteered that she knew Castro's exiled sister Juanita and asked if he had a message for her.
Castro turned nostalgic for a moment before replying, ``She made her choice in life, but I'm not resentful of it.''
Salinas said she included that anecdote and others in a book that is highly autobiographical -- she also talks about her mother's own secret past -- because ``few people know what it takes to get an interview or what goes on behind the scenes. They think it just happens.''
Co-anchor Ramos says Salinas's success in landing the big story -- whether it's an interview with a dictator or being the first U.S. network anchor to report on Princess Diana's death from London -- has as much to do with reputation as with perseverance. ''Take the assignment in Iraq. Her objective was to reach Baghdad and she mobilized even the U.S. Army to make sure she would get there,'' Ramos says.
Yet, for all her professional successes, it is her role as mother that Salinas insists is her true calling. ''Ever since I was 14 years old and my older sisters had their children, I wanted to have my own,'' she says. ``Since then, I've wanted nothing more than to be a mom. To me working was what I did until they arrived.''
And so one of the most touching parts of the book recounts miscarriages in her late 30s and the much-awaited births of Julia in November 1994 and Gabriela in May 1997. ''Motherhood,'' she writes, ``became the lens through which I would come to contemplate the world.''
It has remained so. In a letter addressed to them that she includes in the book, she talks about coming into their rooms while they slept to marvel at the miracle of their existence and to express her one wish: to share a life without secrets.
In the last chapter, she ends with a letter to her late father.
''My father was not successful financially and he did not leave us a monetary inheritance, but with this book, I'm saying that he left us something else -- an inheritance of moral values,'' Salinas says.
``That's a message I want to give my daughters, too. It's important to leave a mark on their souls as well as their bank account.'' |
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