Photo courtesy of the artist
U.S. celebrities may seek refuge abroad, but Mexican-born singer Cristina Eustace’s East Dallas home with her husband, Scott, is a sort of escape. Perhaps it was fate. The couple met nine years ago on Lower Greenville before Eustace’s career took off. At the time, Eustace was earning a bachelor’s degree in marketing at the University of Texas at El Paso, a degree she began without knowing any English. Under the urging of a friend, she auditioned for and ultimately won Objetivo Fama 5, the 2008 season of a Puerto Rican TV singing competition. After that, she signed a deal with a record label, and her first single stayed on the billboard charts in Puerto Rico for weeks. “My life changed from there,” Eustace says. To glimpse what Eustace’s name means in parts of the Spanish-speaking world, consider that Eustace was chosen to host the 2010 New Year’s Eve show for Univision, the largest Spanish-language network and fifth largest primetime network in the United States. “I’m extremely happy I can go home and have a normal life,” she says. “It’s very nice to be home in Dallas and go for a run with the dogs or walk with my husband. Everybody’s always very friendly.” Her life was shaken up in May, her birthday month, when a doctor found a tumor in Eustace’s vocal cords. Four months later, her 2011 album “Golpes de Pecho” was nominated under regional Mexican music for Best Banda Album of the year at the Latin Grammys. “My dad always says gifts come wrapped in problems, so the bigger your problems, the bigger your gifts,” she says. After not talking for a month and not singing for longer, Eustace recorded her third album, which is expected to release soon. Eustace emphasizes how warmly the Puerto Rican audience accepted her, but now she is focusing her work on her home country. Her third album will be the first to be promoted and distributed in Mexico. “I had to become famous in my own country,” she says.
