Claudia Moncada adjusted her yellow dress one last time to show off her curves. In a few minutes she was to take part in a beauty contest with a difference: the contenders for the crown have been convicted of murder, robbery and drug trafficking.
For the past 15 years every September, Colombian prison authorities let their hair down, and let female inmates let theirs down, too. To mark the celebration of the Holy Virgin in this heavily Roman Catholic country, inmates hold concerts and — in a beauty obsessed country — pageants.
“In Colombia there are beauty contests everywhere, it’s part of our culture,” said Teresa Moya, the director of Colombia’s prisons, explaining the decision to hold the pageant.
PHOTO: AFP
For inmates it is certainly a welcome respite from the difficulties of day-to-day life behind bars.
“It is an opportunity to forget all the pain and sadness of the prison. Today the food is better, the guards are nice and all the girls are happy,” said 30-year-old Moncada, who has spent two years in prison but refuses to reveal what her crime was.
“Sorry darling, I haven’t got any foundation for your legs!” shouted someone in one of the two bustling salons in the Buen Pastor prison, Bogota, where Moncada has two more years to serve.
The outburst came from Alfonso Llano, a professional hairdresser better known as “Pocho,” who said he helped out because the contestants are “decent and generous girls, who once made a mistake.
“They show me lots of affection and I treat them as I would any model,” he said with emotion.
Claudia Moncada was nervous. She was representing Section Four of the prison, one of only 16 prisoners out of 1,493 chosen to compete by their peers.
The other inmates were dressed in elegant white gowns lent to them by designers and they formed a cortege as the contestants were escorted to a podium in the prison yard.
When Claudia climbed the stairs, her comrades drowned her in confetti made from old magazines, shouting words of encouragement.
She kicked off proceedings, opening four hours of concerts, parades and even a moonwalk by foreign prisoners in homage to Michael Jackson.
Finally the jurors began their deliberations and the director of the prison stepped forward to announce the winner.
Claudia, like last year, was runner-up.
“It’s like that,” she said laconically, trying to contain her disappointment.
This year’s winner of the Buen Pastor — or Good Shepherd — crown is Sonia Vergara.
She is serving a five-year sentence for a high-profile kidnapping plot, in which she aided Carlos Ayala Saavedra, a European Commission official responsible for development projects in Colombia who had orchestrated his own disappearance for ransom money.
Gradually, the sense of joy evaporated into the prison’s flaking concrete walls and the girls returned to their cells.
“Thank you, Pocho,” whispered Ninfa, one of the participants, as she embraced the hairdresser.
With tears in his eyes Pocho held her in his arms and asked, “how long are you staying?”
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS