Ninoska Pérez Castellón was born in 1950 in Havana, but at the age of nine her life changed radically: with the Revolution, her family fled to the United States.

Her father had fought as a colonel in the Republic’s army against Castro’s rebels, and years later, some of her relatives participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion. From Miami, she organized campaigns to support political prisoners; and in 1987, she married one of them: Roberto Martín Pérez, who spent more than 25 years in Castro’s prisons. Perhaps unknowingly, all that life experience and her passion were laying the foundation for the renowned radio journalist she would become.

In 1985, the Cuban American National Foundation gave her the opportunity to found a shortwave radio station. La Voz de la Fundación obtained firsthand information by calling the island, navigating the labyrinth of telephone lines tapped by the regime.

Ninoska’s firm and transparent voice reached its greatest influence at Radio Mambí, one of the key political radio stations in South Florida. Day after day, Ninoska analyzed the news from the United States and Cuba on Mambí, and influenced local and federal elections, such as the one that gave George W. Bush his first victory. On that occasion, the Cuban community demonstrated its decisive influence as a voting bloc in national politics.

In 2004, the National Association of Hispanic Broadcasters awarded Ninoska the Golden Microphone.

But 20 years later, the landscape changed 180 degrees. Although still influential, in January 2023 she resigned from Radio Mambí, after 26 uninterrupted years in its studios. The decision came after the company Latino Media Network, led by Democrats such as Jess Morales Rocketto and Stephanie Valencia, purchased Radio Mambí, owned by Univision, for approximately $60 million.

In her farewell, Ninoska said she worked “with passion, defending values and denouncing what the liberal press, which accuses us of spreading disinformation, has decided to silence.” She believes that the sale in question is part of an attack against conservative Hispanic voices that helped turn the crucial state of Florida from a swing state to a Republican one. What some consider an act of revenge occurred at the end of 2025, when Radio Mambí closed.

Here is my interview with Ninoska.

Do you believe there is or was an operation to silence conservative Hispanic media in the United States?

Yes, definitely — an operation carried out by agents of the Democratic Party. How? By fabricating stories to be reproduced by other media outlets. Stories whose purpose was to exclusively target conservative Hispanic media.

The Federal Communications Commission, under the Biden administration, authorized the purchase of 18 Spanish-language radio stations in the United States in 2022. The media outlet La Política Online stated that the move was part of a political and economic battle between Republicans and Democrats to capture the attention of Hispanics. But did the influence of magnate George Soros have anything to do with it?

One of his companies financed the purchase of Radio Mambí by Latino Media Network, and other stations, with $80 million. The conservative company Salem News had offered $44 million; but Latino Media Network was able to pay $16 million more and $20 million for operations.

All this only to fail in a short time.

In 2022, the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and researchers from Florida International University (FIU), funded by the Knight Foundation, published several articles attacking the credibility of conservative Spanish-language media outlets, with the goal of “documenting influence operations targeting Latino voters” in the 2022 midterm elections.

For the first time in history, a newspaper hired a journalist to cover “disinformation” in conservative Hispanic media. It was a purely racist and shameful act, because they didn’t do it with any other ethnic group or with any group holding different political views.

In the end, it turned out that the real purveyors of disinformation were in the liberal press. The same press that lied about Russian collusion with Donald Trump, about Hunter Biden’s laptop, about Joe Biden’s supposed mental decline, and even intimidated people into not questioning the results of the 2020 election. The absurdity reached such an extreme that a Miami Herald reporter asked readers to contact her if their grandmothers had been radicalized by conservative Hispanic radio in Miami.

It was a shameful chapter for all involved.

In 2022, while Radio Mambí was in the process of being sold to Latino Media Network, some of the station’s presenters left. Why the interest in buying Radio Mambí? What was your experience?

Because they needed to silence our voices, to make an iconic station with extraordinary success disappear.

I left because I wasn’t going to be a part of that. It was a political move to silence, censor, and neutralize any criticism against the Democrats. That’s why, at the same time, they were making a great effort to try to discredit us.

Just three years later, the new owners shut down Radio Mambí. The Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSII) said about that: “In times when critical thinking is attacked and dissent is stigmatized, Radio Mambí stood firm as one of the last bastions of freedom of expression, without compromise. That’s why it was attacked. That’s why it was silenced.” Do you agree?

Absolutely.

In that same statement, the MSII called Radio Mambí “a thread of hope for the exiled.” What was its importance in Florida and U.S. politics?

Radio Mambí was a station that united Cubans in exile, especially in the state of Florida, and gave them a voice and political power.

Presidents, governors, senators, and congressmen appeared on that station, as well as political candidates and very important figures in the national and international arena. In addition, there was the economic success it enjoyed.

Sometimes it was enough for us to call on people to go out and vote for there to be a massive and immediate reaction. That’s what happened, just to give you one example, in the election where Ileana Ros-Lehtinen won and became the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban-American elected to the U.S. Congress.

There have been other recent “misfortunes” for conservative Hispanic voices in traditional media. Two very visible examples were the dismissal of journalist Isabel Cuervo and others in 2019, after a report for Martí Noticias about Soros; and the legal problems of América TV, a Cuban news outlet in Miami.

Regarding the first case you mentioned, I don’t know the specific details, but I never understood why they fired Isabel and even those who simply announced the program. On the other hand, in the case of América TV, they are apparently embroiled in disputes between the channel’s partners.

Voices like yours in Hispanic media have moved their careers to larger companies, as you did by signing with Salem News; however, other journalists have successfully reinvented themselves on YouTube. What advantages do the new platforms offer, and what advantages does radio still have in a city like Miami?

The new platforms offer wonderful opportunities, but radio remains a magnificent means of communication. Hispanics come from a culture where radio becomes an integral part of their routine.

It’s an extraordinary and unique connection. It’s one that I am blessed to enjoy every day when I enter the studio and say good afternoon to the audience to embark on a new adventure.