Alina María Hernández (born Alberto, November 12, 1970 – October 8, 2016), better known in the entertainment world as Cachita, was a Cuban

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...

television actress.

Life and work

Cachita debuted on television as a participant in a singing contest at Don Francisco's ''

Sábado Gigante Saturday is the day of the week between Friday and Sunday. No later than the 2nd century, the Romans named Saturday ("Saturn's Day") for the planet Saturn, which controlled the first hour of that day, according to Vettius Valens. The day's ...

'' ("Gigantic Saturday") show, on

Univision Univision () is an American Spanish-language free-to-air television network owned by TelevisaUnivision. It is the United States' largest provider of Spanish-language content. The network's programming is aimed at the Latino public and includes ...

. After winning the contest, she used the 500 US dollars she earned to buy a car. She was still a struggling actor when she found work at Univision's '' El Gordo y la Flaca'' show, in 1998. There, she became friends with co-hosts

Raúl De Molina Raúl "El Gordo" De Molina (born March 29, 1959, in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban-American television presenter, best known as the co-host of the Univision Network entertainment news show '' El Gordo y la Flaca'', for which he won multiple Emmy Awards. ...

Lili Estefan Liliana Del Carmen Estefan (born March 20, 1967) is a Cuban American model and television presenter, known as the co-host of '' El Gordo y la Flaca'' on Univision. Biography Lili Estefan was born on March 20, 1967, in Santiago de Cuba. Lili' ...

and Marta Martin Carrera-Ruiz. Guest entertainers often told her that she looked much like Estefan. Cachita admitted, in an Internet interview, that she had

sex change Sex change is a natural or artificial process in which an individual's sex is changed. Sex change may also refer to: Biology and medicine *Sex reassignment therapy *Sex reassignment surgery *Sequential hermaphroditism, a phenomenon whereby some ...

surgery, becoming female. She told her fans that she had always felt she had a female mind and was trapped in a male body. She also admitted wearing a blond wig; her normal hair color was dark. The last medical step towards her becoming a female came in late November 2005, when '' TVNotas'', a magazine she worked for, paid for her sex-change surgery. Before her sex-change operation, Cachita was a restaurant worker. Her boss told her that she would be allowed to come to work dressed as a woman, and her co-workers were advised to refer to her as "Alina". Cachita returned to Cuba for a family visit soon after the first of her series of sex-change surgeries. She had a difficult time there with her family, as her aunt and grandmother in particular did not accept her change. Her aunt in particular insisted on calling her "Alberto", and her mother, who supported her decision, reacted angrily at Cachita's aunt, telling her that Alberto had become a woman and her name was "Alina".

Later work

Cachita was famous among

TV viewers for her entrances to the '' El Gordo y la Flaca'' show: She always fell to the floor when she entered the studio. Since the show consists mainly of gossiping, Cachita was often brought in to talk about scandals; such was the case when she intervened on the show the Monday after Janet Jackson's "

wardrobe malfunction A wardrobe malfunction is a clothing failure that accidentally or intentionally exposes a person's intimate parts. It is different from deliberate incidents of indecent exposure or public flashing. Justin Timberlake first used the term when apol ...

" at the 2004 Super Bowl. Being a regular on ''El Gordo y La Flaca'' allowed Cachita to expand her career: she also worked as a reporter at some award shows, like ''

Premios Lo Nuestro The Lo Nuestro Awards or Premios Lo Nuestro ( Spanish for "Our Thing") is a Spanish-language awards show honoring the best of Latin music, presented by Univision, a Spanish-language television network based in the United States. The awards began i ...

'' and others. Besides that, she was also a writer, with a column in '' TVnotas''. Alina Hernandez died on October 8, 2016.

References

External links

Cachita and Marta interview
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hernandez, Alina 2016 deaths Cuban television actresses Transgender women writers Transgender women musicians Transgender actresses People from Asheville, North Carolina 21st-century Cuban LGBT people Cuban transgender people 1970 births