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 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.
Photo: AFP
It was unclear on what grounds Celebertti, a Nicaraguan national, was barred entry. The 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 Nicaraguan President 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 on Friday and her husband, Martin Arguello, briefly detained.
In a statement to Agence France-Presse, the Miss Universe Organization called on the Nicaraguan government to “guarantee” the safety of those associated with the local affiliates of the pageant.
“We are working to guarantee the safety of all members of the organization, and we call on the government of Nicaragua to guarantee their safety,” it said.
Since Palacios was crowned Miss Universe on Nov. 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 last week 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 national flag, seen as a symbol of opposition, unlike the partisan red-and-black flag of the ruling Sandinista Front.
“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 wrote on X.
Opposition sources said that on Tuesday last week, 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,” said prize-winning Nicaraguan journalist Wilfredo Miranda, who lives in exile in Costa Rica.
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 US.
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.
Palacios rose from a modest upbringing in the city of Diriamba, in Carazo department. She, her mother and grandmother started a business selling Nicaraguan sweet fried dough. 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 multination tour, has dedicated her victory to the 6 million Nicaraguans — whether in the country or in exile.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
RSS