Last month 23-year-old Sheynnis Palacios won the Miss Universe competition becoming the first ever Nicaraguan contestant to win the crown.

One week ago👑🇳🇮@MissUniverse #72MISSUNIVERSE pic.twitter.com/LjQJ5GCrRS

— Sheynnis Palacios Cornejo (@sheynnis) November 26, 2023

Nicaraguans were really excited about this. A sociologist described the moment and how it became a spontaneous outburst of freedom for many people.

“It came as a surprise, and triggered spontaneous expressions of delight in the country,” said Elvira Cuadra, a Nicaraguan sociologist who lives in exile in Costa Rica.

“Since 2018, Nicaragua has lived in a police state,” said Cuadra. “Lately they haven’t even allowed religious gatherings. But when Sheynnis won, people took to the streets with their national flags, singing the national anthem.”

The tweet below reads: “After many years, Nicaraguans challenge the dictatorship by singing the Nicaraguan National Anthem in the streets. In Nicaragua, all types of public demonstrations are prohibited, but the euphoria of the triumph of Sheynnis Palacios, the new Miss Universe, managed to overcome fear.”

Después de muchos años nicaragüenses desafían a la dictadura entonando el himno Nacional de Nicaragua en las calles.
En Nicaragua está prohibido todo tipo de manifestación publica pero la euforia del triunfo de Sheynnis Palacios, la nueva Miss Universo, logró vencer el miedo. pic.twitter.com/Rrx9ESMyxR

— SoyNicaragua (@SoynicaraguaZ) November 19, 2023

At first the government saw it as a PR win for the country too. But things quickly took a turn when people dug up old photos of Palacios participating in protests against the Ortega government back in 2018.

…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.

The more people celebrated (with the wrong flag) the more the regime reacted to her as a threat. Nicaragua’s First Lady/Vice President, Rosario Murillo, attacked the opposition sites that were celebrating Palacios’ win.

“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.

And things only escalated from there. Earlier this month, Ortega lashed out at the person who runs the Miss Nicaragua pageant, accusing her of being part of a plot.

On Friday night, Nicaraguan police accused the family that operates the country’s Miss Universe franchise of “conspiring against the nation.” A police statement said Karen Celebertti, a former beauty queen who has run the Miss Nicaragua contest since 2001, had used “spaces supposedly dedicated to promoting ‘innocent’ beauty pageants,” in a foreign-backed plot to boost the opposition. Her husband and son were also named in the complaint…

When Celebertti flew home after the pageant on Nov. 23, she was barred from entering Nicaragua, according to media reports. She’s reported to be in Mexico. On Tuesday, police detained her husband and son at their home in Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, according to media reports. The government has not provided information about their whereabouts.

The police document said that Celebertti, her husband and son had participated in the 2018 anti-government protests. After the uprising was extinguished — in a crackdown that claimed more than 300 lives — the family maintained contact with “supporters of treason,” according to the complaint. They allegedly turned the Miss Nicaragua pageants into “political ambushes” aimed at undermining the government with support from “foreign agents,” the police said.

This sounds like the plot for a Hunger Games movie. Clearly Ortega is a paranoid lunatic. As for Palacios, she had already moved to New York to carry out her year as Miss Universe.

Ms. Palacios, who moved to New York for obligations related to being Miss Universe, said in an interview with Univision that she 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 scared to return,” she said…

“Ortega has a problem,” said Arturo McFields Yescas, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States who resigned and denounced the Ortegas last year.

“What he can’t control, he robs or destroys,’’ he said. “The baseball or boxing champions, for example, have to pay tribute to the regime. If they don’t, they become targets. Sheynnis has something — she came from the bottom, she doesn’t owe anything to the dictatorship — and that makes her someone dangerous.”…

“People lost the fear,” Mr. McFields said, “and that’s the part that scared the dictatorship the most.”

Honestly, I think Ortega has reason to be afraid. He’s a shriveled up socialist dictator and Palacios is none of those things. If this becomes the societal equivalent of a beauty contest, Ortega doesn’t have a chance in hell.

 

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