He-e-e-ere’s ‘Oprah con Salsa’

Christina Saralegui, impeccably dressed and primed for confrontation, steps on stage before her Spanish-speaking studio audience, ready to discuss a topic that might be difficult for some to handle.

“Just a few years ago, a woman was valued only for the presence or absence of her virginity,” Saralegui begins. “Virginity was the tool she used to capture a man. But according to recent statistics, more than three-quarters of North American women have had sex before marriage. What is the reason for such radical changes and how have they affected the Hispanic woman?”

Audience members do not shy from the subject. Indeed, they seem eager to join in the discourse.

“Nature has given women only two things: femininity and virginity,” says an elderly man.

Saralegui rolls her eyes and squeals: “Ayyyy!”

The audience laughs. Saralegui--the Oprah Winfrey of Spanish-language television--is rolling now.

Cuban-born Saralegui, 41, is the newest Spanish-language talk-show host to hit the circuit. Her hourlong “Christina” airs daily at 5 p.m. on KMEX-TV Channel 34. Produced by the Univision network, one of the two largest providers of Spanish-language programming, the show made its debut last Monday.

Topics include impotence, near-death experiences, Latino gays coming out of the closet and the macho Latin male. Sound like Geraldo? Oprah? Phil? Saralegui says she wouldn’t mind crossing over to mainstream media and joining her microphone-wielding brethren.

She would love to do a show in English, she says--despite her heavy accent.

“I don’t see people complaining about Dr. Ruth or Henry Kissinger or Arnold Schwarzenegger,” she said during a break while taping two weeks’ worth of shows at a comfortable theater in East Los Angeles’ Plaza de la Raza.

Days before, Saralegui had completed the taping of 15 shows in Miami, where she makes her home with her husband, musician Marcos Avila, a former member of the Miami Sound Machine, and their three children. She plans to take her show on the road to cities with large Latino populations--such as New York, San Antonio and Chicago--in an effort to boost her ratings.

As the former editor of “Cosmo en Espanol,” the Spanish-language version of Cosmopolitan, Saralegui is no stranger to controversy.

“Ours was the first magazine that talked about sex to Hispanic America,” she said. “I’ve had 17 years practice of talking about delicate stuff.”

So the discussion of virginity, which airs today, is right up her alley.

Guests on the program included a Spanish singer-songwriter who has written a popular Latin-American song about the subject. In the song, a man tells his fiancee that he does not care whether she is a virgin. Not shocking by mainstream TV standards, but pretty racy for Spanish-TV.

“This is a very, very modern man in his point of view who thinks differently from the majority of Latin men,” Saralegui announces. “As a woman, I want to thank you for being so brave and saying those things.”

Other guests included a 27-year-old virgin, a teen counselor and a Latin-American plastic surgeon who performs “virginity-restoring” surgery.

During her years in publishing, Saralegui learned that few taboos exist.

“There is something I’ve discovered: Sex is OK. So is religion, so is politics--anything that is life you can talk about,” Saralegui said.

But she has also found that a little levity goes a long way.

“I always try to make the show funny, even if the show is very serious. You just have to, to make it palatable. I’m trying to cover what is our life--the problems--but I’m not trying to make it into the tragedy of the week.”

But just what is this woman--who has had no on-camera experience--doing with her own talk show and being hyped as “Oprah con salsa”? (In her previous job, she was called “the Latin Helen Gurley Brown.”)

Says Saralegui: “I like communicating. I’m a good communicator.”

Saralegui is intent on reaching as wide an audience as possible among the 20 million Spanish-speaking people living in the United States. That means trying to do a show that avoids splintering the Latino audience on the basis of what Latin-American country they come from.

“I want to make a show for everybody,” she said. “I want to stress what we have in common, instead of stressing regional differences.”