It all started with a beauty contest. There were multiple outfit changes, from evening dresses to swimsuits to national costumes. There were behind-the-scenes looks into the contestants’ lives. There were question and answer periods. And at the end of the Miss Universe 2023 pageant last month, Nicaragua’s Sheynnis Palacios emerged the winner.
People celebrated in the streets of Nicaragua, singing the national anthem and waving the country’s blue and white flag. It was the first time a contestant from the Central American nation of nearly seven million people had claimed the Miss Universe crown.
“It was as if someone had won the World Cup,” said Gioconda Belli, a well-known Nicaraguan poet and writer.
Then came the government repression.
In what sounded like the script of a television drama, the authoritarian government claimed that the director of the Miss Nicaragua pageant, who had chosen Ms. Palacios to represent the country in the global competition, was part of an “anti-patriotic conspiracy.” overthrow President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Both the director, Karen Celebertti, and Ms. Palacios, 23, had taken part in large anti-government protests in 2018 that the Ortega government saw as a challenge to its rule and which led to a brutal crackdown. Celebertti’s husband, Martín Argüello, was also involved in the 2018 protests.
President Ortega’s daughter-in-law, Xiomara Blandino, former Miss Nicaragua and former Miss Universe finalist, had criticized Celebertti’s organization last month, before Palacios’ triumph.
After the Miss Universe pageant in El Salvador, Ms. Celebertti’s husband and son were arrested, said a person close to the family who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being arrested too. Ms. Celebertti, who had been in El Salvador, was not allowed to return to Nicaragua with her daughter and, while she was stranded in Mexico, she resigned from her position last Monday, after 23 years on the job .
Those linked to Ms. Palacios and the Miss Nicaragua organization are the latest, if perhaps the most unusual, targets of the Nicaraguan government’s campaign against its opponents. She has arrested or expelled political rivals and charity groups, Roman Catholic bishops and nuns, writers and poets, musicians and journalists.
Ms. Celebertti and Ms. Palacios did not respond to requests for comment. But in a post on Instagram Announcing her resignation, Celebertti said the Miss Nicaragua organization had “no political roots.”
The Miss Universe organization, in a statement, praised Celebertti’s work.
“We stand with our partners in affirming the transparency and integrity of their contest,” the group said. “Moving forward, we are seeking a peaceful resolution of the issues raised by the country of Nicaragua, as well as the safety of all those associated with the organization.”
Ms. Palacios thanked Ms. Celebertti a post on Instagram, calling her a friend and mentor. “The love of our country shines in everything you do,” Ms. Palacios said.
This was said by Mrs. Palacios, who moved to New York for obligations related to the title of Miss Universe an interview with Univision who was working on planning a trip to Nicaragua. “I know that in my country everyone is happy with the triumph, so no, I’m not afraid to return,” she said.
President Ortega, 78, came to power as leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front that ousted a right-wing dictator in 1979. He was president from 1985 to 1990, when he lost re-election, but was elected back to office in 2006. and by then he systematically targeted his critics.
In 2018, hundreds of thousands of protesters blocked streets and paralyzed the country to protest anti-democratic government and cuts to social security. The Ortega government unleashed a violent response, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people.
A United Nations investigation published this year compared Nicaragua’s track record on human rights to that of the Nazis. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights estimates this in a September report that more than 2,000 people have been arbitrarily detained in Nicaragua since the 2018 protests. Authorities have also stripped citizenship, including that of writer Belli, and seized the homes of her critics.
The government has pointedly denied killing protesters, pointing out that at least two dozen police officers also died.
Vice President Murillo, who serves as country coordinator, did not respond to a request for comment.
The government’s harsh response against a beauty pageant underlines its tactics against opponents.
“Ortega has a problem,” said Arturo McFields Yescas, Nicaragua’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States who resigned and reported the Ortegas last year.
“What he can’t control, he robs or destroys,” he said. “Baseball or boxing champions, for example, must pay homage to the regime. If they don’t, they become targets. Sheynnis has something – she comes from the bottom, she owes nothing to the dictatorship – and that makes her a dangerous person.”
Ms. Palacios, who grew up about an hour south of Managua, the capital, was raised by a single mother. While at college – which was closed this year by the Ortega government – she helped her mother prepare buñuelos, fried dough treats, to sell to help pay for school.
The next day Palacios won Miss Universe, the government of Nicaragua She said the country celebrated “its queen” with “legitimate pride and joy”.
But authorities changed their tune soon after large numbers of people took to the streets waving the Nicaraguan flag. Public demonstrations are effectively prohibited and the government promotes the red and black Sandinista flag over the national white and blue one.
“People have lost their fear,” McFields said, “and that’s the part that scared the dictatorship the most.”
Days after his victory, the Nicaraguan police prevented two artists from painting a mural of Ms. Palacios in the city of Estelí, according to local reports. A social media influencer, Geovany López Acevedo, was arrested for defending Ms. Palacios from criticism she received on a government-controlled television channel, local relationships She said.
Then, on November 22, the vice president issued a vague denunciation of “gross exploitation and crude, evil terrorist communication that seeks to convert a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride and celebration into a destructive coup.”
When Mr. Argüello and his teenage son, Bernardo Argüello Celebertti, returned to Nicaragua, authorities showed up at the family’s home and later arrested them both, the person close to the family said.
On December 1st the national police released a statement accusing Celebertti, her husband and her son of having participated “online and on the street” in the “failed coup” of 2018.
Police also alleged that the family had turned the Miss Nicaragua franchise “allegedly dedicated to promoting ‘innocent’ beauty pageants” into “political traps and ambushes, financed by foreign agents.”
Mr McFields said the language used in the authorities’ complaint was part of the same plan used against priests, journalists and other critics.
It remains to be seen how long Ms. Celebertti’s family members will be detained or whether Ms. Palacios will return to Nicaragua.
“It’s as if beauty meets Godzilla,” Ms. Belli said in a telephone interview from Madrid, adding: “It’s the threat of beauty against a regime that has shown a monstrous face.”
Yubelka Mendoza and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
