Miss Nicaragua director banned from entering the country after Miss Universe Sheynnis Palacios' win
Authorities have banned Karen Celebretti, the director of Miss Nicaragua, and her daughter from entering their home country.
This comes after its delegate Sheynnis Palacios was crowned Miss Universe 2023 last week in El Salvador.
A source told EFE that Celebretti, a finalist of Miss Nicaragua in 1991 and representative of the Miss Universe franchise in the country since 2001, and her daughter were detained at the Augusto C. Andino International Airport and later deported to Mexico.
Aeromexico, the airline they were on, reportedly did not inform them of the government's decision to deny them entry to Nicaragua until they were already in the country.
While people in Nicaragua celebrated the win, its vice president, Rosario Murillo, condemned people who are objectifying women because she thinks “they intend to turn a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride and celebration into a destructive coup-mongering.”
"In these hours and days of new victories, we see the gross exploitation, and the crude and evil terrorist communication, that seeks to turn a beautiful and well-deserved moment of pride and celebration into destructive coup-mongering," Murillo said.
Not the first time
Many Nicaraguans have criticized and held public protests against President Daniel Ortega's government. In 2019, Celebretti was briefly detained together with dozens of protesters after she demanded the release of political prisoners in Managua.
According to AP News, newly-crowned Palacios also came from a college that held protests against the regime in 2018, and the beauty queen "apparently participated in the marches."
Palacios also reportedly shared photos of herself at a protest on a since-deleted Facebook account. “I didn’t know whether to go, I was afraid of what might happen,” she wrote, according to AP News.
355 people were killed by government forces during the protest.
Palacios is a social relations graduate from the closed Jesuit Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in Managua. She made history last Nov. 19 (PHT) when she won the coveted Miss Universe title, making her the first Nicaraguan and Central American to win the title.
In her winning answer, she said she wants to open the income gap "so women could work in any area they choose to work in because there are no limitations for women."
Palacios will be residing in New York City during her reign.
Miss Universe Nicaragua, Palacios, and the Nicaraguan government have yet to address the issue.