She was crowned Miss Universe. Then her reign exploded.
It all started with a beauty pageant. There were several outfit changes, from evening dresses to swimsuits and national costumes. A look behind the scenes was taken into the lives of the participants. There were question and answer periods. And towards the end of the 2023 Miss Universe competition last month, Sheynnis Palacios of Nicaragua emerged victorious.
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 country 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 renowned Nicaraguan poet and novelist.
Then came the government’s crackdown.
In what felt like a script from a television drama, the authoritarian government alleged that the director of the Miss Nicaragua pageant, who selected Ms. Palacios to represent the country at the global competition, was part of an “unpatriotic conspiracy” to overthrow the country to throw. President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Both the director, Karen Celebertti, and Ms Palacios, 23, had taken part in major anti-government protests in 2018 that the Ortega government saw as a challenge to its rule and led to brutal crackdowns. Ms Celebertti’s husband, Martín Argüello, also took part in the 2018 protests.
President Ortega’s daughter-in-law, Xiomara Blandino, former Miss Nicaragua and former Miss Universe finalist, had criticized Ms Celebertti’s organization last month, before Ms Palacios’ triumph.
Since the Miss Universe competition in El Salvador, Ms. Celebertti’s husband and son have been arrested, said a member of the family who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of also being detained. Ms. Celebertti, who had been in El Salvador, was not allowed to return to Nicaragua with her daughter and, while stranded in Mexico, resigned last Monday after 23 years in the job.
Those associated with Ms. Palacios and the Miss Nicaragua organization are the latest, if perhaps most unusual, targets of the Nicaraguan government’s campaign against its opponents. It 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 an Instagram post In announcing her resignation, Ms. Celebertti said the Miss Nicaragua organization was “free of political roots.”
The Miss Universe organization praised Ms. Celebertti’s work in a statement.
“We stand with our partners in maintaining the transparency and integrity of their election,” the group said. “Going forward, we strive for a peaceful resolution to the issues raised by the country of Nicaragua, as well as the safety of everyone involved in the organization.”
Ms Palacios thanked Ms Celebertti an Instagram post, calling her a friend and mentor. “The love for our country shines through everything you do,” Ms. Palacios said.
Ms. Palacios, who moved to New York due to commitments related to being Miss Universe, said in an interview with Univision that she was planning a trip to Nicaragua. “I know that in my country everyone is happy with the triumph, so no, I am not afraid to return,” she said.
President Ortega, 78, came to power as leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front that deposed a right-wing dictator in 1979. He served as president from 1985 to 1990, when he lost re-election, but was re-elected in 2006. and has systematically targeted his critics ever since.
In 2018, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators blocked the streets and paralyzed the country in protest against the government’s anti-democratic rule and cuts to social security. The Ortega government unleashed a violent response, which led to the deaths of hundreds of people.
A United Nations study published this year compared Nicaragua’s human rights record to that of the Nazis. This is estimated by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a September report that more than 2,000 people have been arbitrarily detained in Nicaragua since the 2018 protests. Authorities have also revoked citizenship, including that of writer Ms. Belli, and seized opponents’ homes.
The government denies there was any intentional killing of protesters, noting that at least 20 police officers have also been killed.
Vice President Murillo, who serves as the country’s spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment.
The government’s harsh response to a beauty pageant underlines its tactics against opponents.
“Ortega has a problem,” said Arturo McFields Yescas, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States who resigned and indicted last year’s Ortegas.
“What he cannot control, he robs or destroys,” he said. “For example, the baseball or boxing champions must pay tribute to the regime. If they don’t, they become targets. There is something about Sheynnis – she came from the bottom, she owes nothing to the dictatorship – and that makes her someone who is dangerous.”
Ms. Palacios, who grew up about an hour south of the capital Managua, was raised by a single mother. During her studies – which were closed this year by the Ortega government – she helped her mother make buñuelos, fried dough treats, to sell to help pay for school.
The day after Ms. Palacios won Miss Universe, the Nicaraguan government said the country celebrated ‘its queen’ with ‘legitimate pride and joy’.
But authorities changed their tune the next day after large numbers of people took to the streets waving the Nicaraguan flag. Public demonstrations are effectively banned and the government promotes the red-black Sandinista flag over the blue-white national flag.
“People lost fear,” Mr. McFields said, “and that’s the part that scared the dictatorship the most.”
Two days after she won, the Nicaraguan police prevented two artists of painting a mural of Ms. Palacios in the town of Estelí, according to local reports. A social media influencer, Geovany López Acevedo, was arrested for defending Ms. Palacios against criticism she received on a government-controlled television channel. local reports said.
A few days later, on November 22, the vice president issued a vague indictment of “gross exploitation and crude and malicious terrorist communications that seek to turn 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, authorities came to a family home and later detained them both, a person close to the family said.
The national police will visit on December 1 issued a statement She accuses Ms. Celebertti, her husband and her son of participating “online and in the streets” in “the failed coup” of 2018.
Police also said the family had turned the Miss Nicaragua franchise “supposedly dedicated to promoting ‘harmless’ beauty pageants” into “traps and political ambushes financed by foreign agents.”
Mr. McFields said the language in the authorities’ complaint was part of the same playbook used against priests, journalists and other critics.
How long Ms. Celebertti’s relatives will be held and whether Ms. Palacios will return to Nicaragua remains to be seen.
“It’s like beauty meets Godzilla,” Ms. Belli said in a telephone interview from Madrid, adding: “It is the threat of beauty against a regime that has shown a monstrous face.”
Yubelka Mendoza and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.