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President Bill Clinton and Massachusetts Senatorial Candidate Elizabeth Warren may have made the most buzzed-about speeches at the Democratic National Convention last night. But Cuban talk show host Cristina Saralegui laid out her views earlier in the night in a way only a Miami Cuban can — with sass, Spanish language, and references to cafe con leche.
At first look, Saralegui — a woman who built her career on glossy magazines and television interviews with celebrities like Shakira and Pitbull — doesn’t seem like a natural choice for a speaker at the DNC. But though she herself admitted that she’d never been involved in politics before last night’s speech, Saralegui’s recognizable to Cubans as one of the bigger names in Spanish-language TV stations like Univision and Telemundo in the last two decades. Being Latino compares her to a “Latina Oprah.”
Plus, in this political context, Saralegui’s catchphrase — “pa’lante, pa’lante, pa’tras ni pa’ coger impulso,” meaning, “forward, forward, don’t step back, not even to pick up the pace” — sounds like an extended Spanish version of President Obama’s 2012 campaign slogan, “Forward.”
See what Saralegui had to say about immigration, Obama, and the many varieties of Cuban coffee in the video below.
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