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On November 18, 2023, the current Miss Nicaragua, Sheynnis Palacios, was crowned as Miss Universe at the international pageant in El Salvador. This is the first time in the 72-year history of the pageant that the winner was a contestant from Nicaragua.

The pageant is only a pageant, and yet there’s been a large political outcome from Miss Nicaragua’s victory.

Nicaragua today is ruled as a dictatorship. Four years ago, the government banned flying or displaying the blue and white flag of Nicaragua in homes or on vehicles. (The exception would be if the official flag was paired with the red and black flag of the Sandinista Front, the flag of the ruling party.) The prohibition was part of an effort to remove the opposition party, along with mass arrests, a shoot-to-kill strategy on protestors (over 350 killed and 2,000 injured) and having over 200 political opponents expelled from the country. 

The blue and white colors are used in demonstrations and protests against the government.

• Since Sheynnis Palacios was crowned Miss Universe, she has been widely portrayed as a symbol of opposition to Ortega.
• Photos showing her waving the Nicaraguan flag at anti-government protests in 2018 have gone viral.
• Sheynnis Palacios studied at the Central American University, a Jesuit school closed last August by the government as a “center of terrorism.”
• Her victory has let to the biggest public displays since demonstrations were banned five years ago.

The decision to use the colors of the flag of Nicaragua — light blue and white — for Miss Nicaragua’s dress at the pageant appears to have been deliberate, and came with the intended consequences.

Dozens of priests who have been jailed or forced into exile by the government. Former Nicaraguan Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop Silvio Báez, who went into exile in 2019 after receiving death threats, congratulated Palacios in his social media accounts.

“Thank you for bringing joy to our long-suffering country!” Báez wrote. “Thank you for giving us hope for a better future for our beautiful country!”

At the Miss Universe contest, one question was “If you could live one year in another woman’s shoes, who would you choose and why?” Ms. Palacios brought up Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights.

“I would choose Mary Wollstonecraft, because she opened the gap to give an opportunity to many women. What I would do is to have that income gap open up, so women could work in any area that they choose to work in because there are no limitations for women. That was 1750. Now in 2023 we are making history,” she said.

From France 24. November 25, 2023

Nicaragua bars pageant head after Ortega critic wins Miss Universe

San José (AFP) – Nicaraguan authorities have barred the director of the national beauty pageant from re-entering the country after a Nicaraguan woman seen as a symbol of opposition to the Ortega government was crowned Miss Universe, media reports and exiled opposition members said.

Karen Celebertti and her daughter were detained upon their arrival at the Managua airport — days after seeing 23-year-old Sheynnis Palacios crowned as the first Miss Universe from Nicaragua — and placed on a flight to Mexico, the opposition-linked La Prensa newspaper reported.

The government “blocked Karen Celebertti, owner of the Miss Nicaragua franchise, and her daughter from entering the country,” the Costa Rica-based Nicaraguan daily said on its web site.

It was unclear on what grounds Celebertti, a Nicaraguan national, was excluded. The Ortega government has made no comment on the matter.

The writer Gioconda Belli, who lives in Spain after being stripped of her Nicaraguan nationality by the government, contended that Celebertti was blocked at the orders of Daniel Ortega’s wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, despite her success in helping a Nicaraguan win the prestigious contest.

Opposition media also reported that Celebertti’s Managua home had been searched Friday and her husband, Martin Arguello, briefly detained.

Since Palacios was crowned Miss Universe on November 18 in San Salvador, she has been widely portrayed as a symbol of opposition to Ortega.

Photos showing her waving the Nicaraguan flag at anti-government protests in 2018 have gone viral, and her victory brought joyful crowds into Nicaragua’s streets in the biggest public displays since such gatherings were banned five years ago.

Murillo on Wednesday blasted the publication of such photos as “malicious (and) terrorist communications that aim to transform a beautiful moment of pride and well-deserved celebration into a destructive coup.”

The Nicaraguan opposition has portrayed Palacios’ victory as a sign of hope. Some in the celebratory crowds waved the blue and white flags of the opposition.

“I’m so happy to see the joy of Nicaraguans and to see them bring out the clandestine blue and white… Thanks to Sheynnis,” the writer Belli said on X, the former Twitter.

‘National symbol’

Opposition sources said that on Tuesday, government officials barred two artists from completing a mural of the new Miss Universe in the northern city of Esteli. Photos of the unfinished fresco have circulated on social media.

“It is impossible to view this inoffensive contest without considering the political and social reality. She has become a national and emotional symbol who has restored hope. And the government understands this,” prize-winning Nicaraguan journalist Wilfredo Miranda, who lives in exile in Costa Rica, told AFP.

Many exiles even viewed the outfit in which Palacios was crowned — a flowing white dress with a blue cape resembling images of Nicaragua’s patron saint, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception — as symbolic amid a government crackdown on the Catholic Church.

“Thank you for bringing joy to our suffering people, thank you for giving us hope,” Monsignor Silvio Baez, the auxiliary bishop of Managua, wrote on X. He lives in exile in the United States.

A government clampdown on the 2018 protests left more than 350 dead and more than 100,000 in exile. The government has since jailed hundreds of critics.

‘Miss Fritters’

Palacios comes from a modest background in the city of Diriamba, in Carazo department. She, her mother and grandmother started a business selling Nicaraguan beignets.

Before her victory, a pro-government television presenter had disdainfully nicknamed her “Miss Fritters.” Exiled Nicaraguan media have not forgotten.

Nor have they forgotten that she studied at the Central American University, a Jesuit school closed last August by the government as a “center of terrorism.”

The new Miss Universe, who left El Salvador on a multi-nation tour, has dedicated her victory only to the six million Nicaraguans — whether in the country or in exile.

from Voice of America News. November 26, 2023.

Nicaragua’s Miss Universe Title Win Exposes Deep Political Divide

Nicaragua’s increasingly isolated and repressive government thought it had scored a rare public relations victory last week when Miss Nicaragua Sheynnis Palacios won the Miss Universe competition.

But the “legitimate joy and pride” President Daniel Ortega’s government expressed in a statement Sunday after the win quickly turned to angry condemnation, after it emerged that Palacios graduated from a college that was the center of 2018 protests against the regime — and apparently participated in the marches.

Ordinary Nicaraguans — who are largely forbidden to protest or carry the national flag in marches — took advantage of the Saturday night Miss Universe win as a rare opportunity to celebrate in the streets.

Their use of the blue-and-white national flag, as opposed to Ortega’s red-and-black Sandinista banner, didn’t sit well with the government.

Palacios’ victory — along with photos she posted on Facebook in 2018 of herself participating in the protests — overjoyed Nicaragua’s opposition.

Roman Catholic Rev. Silvio Báez, one of dozens of priests who have been jailed or forced into exile by the government, congratulated Palacios in his social media accounts.

“Thank you for bringing joy to our long-suffering country!,” Báez wrote. “Thank you for giving us hope for a better future for our beautiful country!”

With clunky rhetoric reminiscent of North Korea, Vice President and First Lady Rosario Murillo lashed out Wednesday at opposition social media sites (many run from exile) that celebrated Palacios’ win as a victory for the opposition.

“In these days of a new victory, we are seeing the evil, terrorist commentators making a clumsy and insulting attempt to turn what should be a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride into destructive coup-mongering,” Murillo said.

Thousands have fled into exile since Nicaraguan security forces violently put down mass anti-government protests in 2018. Ortega says the protests were an attempted coup with foreign backing, aiming for his overthrow.

Ortega’s government seized and closed the Jesuit University of Central America in Nicaragua, which was a hub for 2018 protests against the Ortega regime, along with at least 26 other Nicaraguan universities.

The government has also outlawed or closed more than 3,000 civic groups and non-governmental organizations, arrested and expelled opponents, stripped them of their citizenship and confiscated their assets.

Palacios, who became the first Nicaraguan to win Miss Universe, has not commented on the situation.

During the contest, Palacios, 23, said she wants to work to promote mental health after suffering debilitating bouts of anxiety herself. She also said she wants to work to close the salary gap between the genders so that women can work in any area.

But on a since-deleted Facebook account under her name, Palacios posted photos of herself at a protest, writing she had initially been afraid of participating. “I didn’t know whether to go, I was afraid of what might happen.”

Some who attended the march that day recall seeing the tall, striking Palacios there.

The protests were quickly put down and in the end, human rights officials say 355 people were killed by government forces.

This article appeared in the December 10, 2023, issue of The Economist.

Nicaragua’s dictator goes after Miss Universe

Pageant participants are the latest victims of Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian regime

Few people would perceive a 23-year-old bikini and ball-gown model as a political menace.

Yet the crowning of Sheynnis Palacios, a Nicaraguan beauty queen, as Miss Universe in November ruffled the feathers of the country’s dictatorial duumvirate. On December 1st Nicaraguan police accused Karen Celebertti, the organiser of the local franchise of Miss Universe, of having incited and financed terrorist actions and of having conspired in a foreign-backed plot to overthrow the government (she, of course, denies such absurd allegations). Ms. Celebertti was barred from returning to Nicaragua after the competition, which was held in El Salvador. Her husband and son have since been arrested.

Ms. Palacios’s victory sparked a rare wave of euphoria in her home country. Nicaraguans poured into the streets, honking car-horns and waving the national flag. The spontaneous joy unnerved president Daniel Ortega and his vice-president and wife, Rosario Murillo. Both are former Marxist-Leninist guerrillas who helped overthrow a family-run dictatorship in 1979. Mr. Ortega was in power for a decade before losing an election in 1990. He was re-elected in 2006 and has since installed his own family dictatorship. All bar one of the ruling couple’s nine children are presidential advisers or control state-owned petrol-distribution companies and media channels. (The exception accused Mr. Ortega of sexual abuse and lives in exile. Mr. Ortega denies all charges.)

The celebrations of Ms. Palacios’s triumph provoked a queasy déjà vu for the ruling family. The last time so many Nicaraguans took to the streets was for pro-democracy marches in 2018. After those protests police killed at least 350 people and imprisoned many more. All leading opposition candidates in a presidential election in 2021 were jailed, and have since been exiled and stripped of their citizenship. Charities were barred as foreign agents. The independent press and many universities were shut down. Not even the Roman Catholic church has been spared. In February a popular bishop was sentenced to over 26 years in jail.

Those who wave the blue and white national flag instead of the ruling party’s red and black banner risk being arrested. Some 600,000 Nicaraguans—about a tenth of the population—have emigrated since 2018, and over a fifth of respondents in a recent poll by Gallup said it was “very likely” that they would emigrate to the United States or Costa Rica within the next year.

Against this backdrop, many Nicaraguans interpreted Ms Palacios’s sartorial choice for the pageant’s finale as a message of support for the pro-democracy cause. She wore a silvery-white gown and a sky-blue cape, a reference both to the national flag and the persecuted church, in its likeness to the Virgin Mary. The regime reacted coldly. An official communiqué, without the signatures of the ruling couple, praised her coronation as a moment of “legitimate joy and pride”.

But behind the scenes local media reported that the Ortegas initially tried to prevent Ms Palacios from returning to Nicaragua after the competition, seemingly in order to prevent her from becoming a national hero. (She now lives in New York, as part of her agreement with Miss Universe.)

Indeed, even before her triumph an anchor on state-run television dismissed her as “Miss Buñuelos”, a reference to the fried manioc and syrup doughballs that Ms Palacios grew up selling on the street. Police forced artists who were making a mural in her honour to paint it over.

The regime was particularly angered by photos circulating in Nicaragua that showed Ms. Palacios at the protests in 2018. When opposition media in exile praised Ms. Palacios, Ms. Murillo, who is also the government spokesperson, warned of “crude and evil terrorist communications” that were promoting “a return — of course impossible — to the nefarious, selfish and criminal practices” of 2018. The police charged Ms. Celebertti, who also participated in the demonstrations in 2018, of “turning the contests into political traps, financed by foreign agents”.

The Nicaraguan regime’s reaction stands in contrast to that of Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, which hosted the competition. The budding dictator embraced the spectacle to distract critics from his questionable run for a second term and the widespread violations of human rights associated with his crackdown on gangs, which has involved locking up 70,000 alleged gang members in the past year. He highlighted posts on X, formerly Twitter, by contestants from the beaches lauding the country’s security. “As the president Nayib Bukele said, El Salvador is changing,” wrote last year’s Miss Universe.

Beauty and the beast

Rumors of a personal vendetta abound. On December 11th Ms. Celebertti, who is thought to be in Mexico, announced she had retired as the head of the local Miss Universe franchise after 23 years at the helm. The following day Univisión, an American Spanish-language TV channel, reported that the regime had pressured Ms. Celebertti to resign in exchange for the release of her husband and son. The channel went on to say that the local franchise could now be run by a daughter-in-law of the Ortegas. (The daughter-in-law would probably be Xiomara Blandino, herself a former Miss Nicaragua.) However, neither of these statements has been verified and none of the parties has commented.

Controlling the franchise would allow the government to ensure that Nicaragua’s next Miss Universe participant wears symbols of the ruling Sandinista party instead of national ones. Nicaraguan boxing champions have worn outfits decorated with the Sandinista flag at international tournaments. In 2021 the regime decreed it illegal for any Nicaraguan to accept national or international awards unless the recipient is approved by the government.

Perhaps nobody is more enraged than Ms. Murillo. Unlike the first lady’s children, Ms. Palacios is self-made. Born in a poor neighborhood, she helped her grandmother sell buñuelos before getting into one of Nicaragua’s top universities. That university was seized by the state in August and closed down. Her humble origins have endeared her to the people. “[Vice-president] Murillo feels threatened because she thinks she is the queen of Nicaragua,” says Silvio Prado, an exiled academic. “And the only queen recognized by the people today is this young woman.” 

Transcript from Eyder Peralta, NPR News. December 18, 2023.

The government of Nicaragua has become increasingly authoritarian. Over the past year, they have exiled political foes, poets, journalists who are considered threats. Now they have a new target – the winner of this year’s Miss Universe pageant. NPR’s Eyder Peralta reports.

This was the moment that made Nicaragua erupt into revelry. On stage, 23-year-old Sheynnis Palacios got her crown. She cried. She waved. She disappeared into the arms of her fellow beauty queens. And in Nicaragua, something happened that had not happened in a long time.

Luis (interpreted from Spanish): On the streets, there was only happiness. People took to the streets.

Roberto (interpreted from Spanish): We hadn’t seen anything like that since the big protests in 2018. We saw police trucks, but they didn’t do anything to us. Everyone danced. Everyone drank beer.

Rosa (interpreted from Spanish): (Through interpreter) You could say viva Sheynnis. You could chant another name that wasn’t Daniel or Rosario.

That’s Luis, Roberto and Rosa, three young Nicaraguans who took to the streets that day. They asked we only use their first names because since 2018, the government has punished any critical speech. It’s been that way in Nicaragua since the government cracked down on huge anti-government demonstrations. Police killed hundreds of protesters. And the government of President Daniel Ortega, who has been in power off and on for nearly 30 years, jailed or exiled nearly all his critics, everyone from singers to poets to a prominent Catholic bishop. But that day, when Sheynnis Palacios became the first Central American to win Miss Universe, Nicaragua felt different, says Rosa.

Rosa (interpreted from Spanish): We felt freedom. You could carry your flag. You could scream for joy.

Even the government issued a statement congratulating Palacios, but that didn’t last. Quickly, the government learned that Palacios had joined the protests as a college student in 2018, and Vice President Rosario Murillo switched tacks.

Rosario Murillo, the wife of president Daniel Ortega, had this to say:

“We see this as a brute attempt,” she said, “an evil terrorist plot to turn something beautiful into a destructive coup attempt.” The director of Miss Universe Nicaragua was denied entry into her own country and then charged with sedition for, quote, “trying to turn beauty pageants into political ambushes” and using them to, quote, “incite hate, violence and organized crime.” This week, the director resigned.

Elvira Cuadra has studied the Nicaraguan security apparatus for decades. “There’s a rationale behind this,” she said, “because President Daniel Ortega, who is 78, is planning for succession. His wife, Rosario Murillo, who is now his vice president, and his children have taken over important matters of state. None of them have the revolutionary creds he does. And Ortega knows there is vast discontent and little respect for his wife and kids, so any little public demonstration can easily bloom into something else.”

As for the celebrations, they ended as quickly as they started. Rosa says, at the time it felt like something was about to change in Nicaragua. In the least, she says, she thought Sheynnis Palacios would come back home victorious to adoring masses.

Rosa (interpreted from Spanish): We now know it’ll be the first and last time we’ll celebrate as long as this government is in power.

Now, she says, it’s not even clear that Miss Universe will even be allowed to enter her own country.