María Cristina was born in Bogotá to Carlos Arango Vélez, a Liberal party politician and presidential candidate,[3] and his wife María Vega Jaramillo.[2]
In 1946, while her father was serving as Ambassador of Colombia to the Holy See, she met Misael Pastrana Borrero, who was working as a diplomat in the embassy.[4] They got engaged that year and married on 24 February 1951 at the Saint Bartholomew School's Madonna Della Strada Chapel in Bogotá.[5] Together they had four children, Juan Carlos, Andrés, Jaime, and María Cristina. She died in Bogota on 15 September 2017 at the age of 88.[6]