All of it started with a magnificence pageant. There have been a number of outfit modifications, from night robes to bathing fits to nationwide costumes. There have been behind-the-scenes appears on the contestants’ lives. There have been question-and-answer intervals. And by the tip of the 2023 Miss Universe competitors final month, Sheynnis Palacios of Nicaragua emerged victorious.
Folks celebrated in Nicaragua’s streets, singing the nationwide anthem and waving the nation’s blue and white flag. It was the primary time a contestant from the Central American nation of almost seven million folks had claimed the Miss Universe crown.
“It was as if someone had won the World Cup,” mentioned Gioconda Belli, a well known Nicaraguan poet and novelist.
Then got here the federal government crackdown.
In what has felt like a script from a tv drama, the authoritarian authorities claimed that the director of the Miss Nicaragua contest, which had chosen Ms. Palacios to symbolize the nation on the international competitors, was a part of an “anti-patriotic conspiracy” to overthrow President Daniel Ortega and his spouse, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Each the director, Karen Celebertti, and Ms. Palacios, 23, had taken half in giant anti-government protests in 2018 that the Ortega authorities seen as a problem to its rule and which led to a brutal crackdown. Ms. Celebertti’s husband, Martín Argüello, was additionally concerned within the 2018 protests.
President Ortega’s daughter-in-law, Xiomara Blandino, a former Miss Nicaragua and a former Miss Universe finalist, had criticized Ms. Celebertti’s group final month, earlier than Ms. Palacios’s triumph.
Because the Miss Universe competitors in El Salvador, Ms. Celebertti’s husband and son have been arrested, mentioned an individual near the household who requested to stay nameless for concern of additionally being detained. Ms. Celebertti, who had been in El Salvador, was not allowed again into Nicaragua along with her daughter and, whereas stranded in Mexico, she resigned from her submit this previous Monday, after 23 years within the job.
These linked to Ms. Palacios and the Miss Nicaragua group are the newest, if maybe probably the most uncommon, targets of the Nicaraguan authorities’s marketing campaign towards its opponents. It has arrested or expelled political rivals and charity teams, Roman Catholic bishops and nuns, writers and poets, musicians and journalists.
Ms. Celebertti and Ms. Palacios didn’t reply to requests for feedback. However in an Instagram post saying her resignation, Ms. Celebertti mentioned that the Miss Nicaragua group was “free of political roots.”
The Miss Universe group, in a press release, lauded Ms. Celebertti’s work.
“We stand by our partners in asserting the transparency and integrity of their pageant,” the group mentioned. “Going forward, we are seeking a peaceful resolution of the issues raised by the country of Nicaragua, as well as the safety of everyone associated with the organization.”
Ms. Palacios thanked Ms. Celebertti in an Instagram post, calling her a buddy and mentor. “The love for our country shines in everything you do,’’ Ms. Palacios said.
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 mentioned.
President Ortega, 78, got here to energy as a pacesetter of the Sandinista Nationwide Liberation Entrance that ousted a right-wing dictator in 1979. He was president from 1985 to 1990, when he misplaced re-election, however was voted into workplace once more in 2006 and since then has systematically taken goal at his critics.
In 2018, tons of of 1000’s of demonstrators blocked streets and paralyzed the nation to protest the federal government’s anti-democratic rule and cuts in social safety. The Ortega authorities unleashed a violent response, resulting in the deaths of tons of of individuals.
A United Nations investigation launched this yr likened Nicaragua’s monitor report on human rights to that of the Nazis. The Inter-American Fee on Human Rights estimated in a September report that greater than 2,000 folks have been arbitrarily detained in Nicaragua for the reason that 2018 protests. The authorities have additionally stripped citizenships, together with that of the author Ms. Belli, and seized the homes of its detractors.
The federal government has denied intentionally killing protesters, noting that at the very least two dozen law enforcement officials additionally died.
Vice President Murillo, who serves because the nation’s spokeswoman, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The federal government’s harsh response towards a magnificence competitors underscores its techniques towards opponents.
“Ortega has a problem,” mentioned Arturo McFields Yescas, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Group of American States who resigned and denounced the Ortegas final yr.
“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.”
Ms. Palacios, who grew up roughly an hour south of Managua, the capital, was raised by a single mom. Whereas at school — which was closed by the Ortega authorities this yr — she helped her mom make buñuelos, fried dough treats, to promote to help pay for school.
The day after Ms. Palacios received Miss Universe, the Nicaraguan authorities said the nation was celebrating “its queen” with “legitimate pride and joy.”
However the authorities shifted their tone quickly after giant numbers of individuals took to the streets, waving the Nicaraguan flag. Public demonstrations are successfully prohibited and the federal government promotes the purple and black Sandinista flag over the blue and white nationwide one.
“People lost the fear,” Mr. McFields mentioned, “and that’s the part that scared the dictatorship the most.”
Days after she received, Nicaraguan police prevented two artists from portray a mural of Ms. Palacios within the city of Estelí, in accordance with native reviews. A social media influencer, Geovany López Acevedo, was detained for defending Ms. Palacios from the criticism she acquired on a government-controlled tv channel, local reports mentioned.
Then, on Nov. 22, the vp issued a obscure denouncement of the “gross exploitation and the rough and evil terrorist communication that seeks to convert a beautiful and deserved moment of pride and celebration into a destructive coup.”
When Mr. Argüello and his teenage son, Bernardo Argüello Celebertti, returned to Nicaragua, the authorities confirmed up at a household home and later detained each of them, the particular person near the household mentioned.
On Dec. 1, the nationwide police issued a statement accusing Ms. Celebertti, her husband and her son of taking part “online and in the streets” in “the failed coup” of 2018.
The police additionally mentioned that the household had turned the Miss Nicaragua franchise “supposedly dedicated to promote ‘innocent’ beauty contests” into “traps and political ambushes, financed by foreign agents.”
Mr. McFields mentioned the language within the authorities’ criticism was a part of the identical playbook used towards monks, journalists and different critics.
How lengthy Ms. Celebertti’s members of the family might be detained or whether or not Ms. Palacios returns to Nicaragua stays to be seen.
“It’s like beauty meets Godzilla,” Ms. Belli mentioned in a phone interview from Madrid, including, “It’s the threat of beauty against a regime that has shown a monstrous face.”
Yubelka Mendoza and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
