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 News from Around the Americas | July 2006 
All Tradition, no Bikinis for Mayan Beauty Queens
 Mica Rosenberg - Reuters
| | A contestant takes part in Guatemala's Maya Indian beauty queen competition in Coban, Guatemala, July 22, 2006. (Reuters/Sandra Sebastian) |
Coban, Guatemala - Pretty young women sashay across stage, thoughtfully answer questions and perform dances - but the Rabin Ajaw pageant, which picks Guatemala's Maya Indian beauty queen, is no typical beauty contest.
Instead of bikinis and high heels, the 78 female contestants dress in traditional Mayan knee or calf-length skirts, headdresses and shawls embroidered with flowers and animals.
Parading on a stage that was covered in pine needles, some contestants carried woven baskets or ceremonial candles from their home regions. Others bore corn stalks, carved gourds, fresh fish or a copy of the Popol Vuh, the Mayan holy book.
During a four-day festival in the city of Coban that ended Sunday with a traditional feast of turkey leg soup and spicy chili, the girls gave speeches in their native languages for judges to select one Rabin Ajaw, or "daughter of the king."
The judging is based on contestants' knowledge of Mayan culture and the beauty of their costumes. Some used the stage at the often solemn six-hour pageant to highlight racism against indigenous groups, which account for more than half of Guatemala's population but suffer the highest levels of poverty and have little access to political power.
This year's winner, Mariana Sales Jacinto, 21, spoke in her native Mam language about environmental damage caused by international companies that exploit resources on lands traditionally used for agriculture.
Jacinto won $1,000 and a trip to south Florida to visit a community of Guatemalans in exile who left during country's civil war.
PAGEANT CONTROVERSY
Critics say the pageant, sponsored this year by Coca-Cola, a film company and Domino's Pizza, offends Mayan culture by turning it into a tourist attraction.
"This folklore festival is a violation of young rural indigenous women because all that is important is their outfits, their dances and the color of their skin," said anthropologist Irma Alicia Velasquez.
Maya Indians bore the brunt of Guatemala's 36-year civil war between leftist guerrillas and government forces. About 200,000 people were killed or disappeared, most of them from poor indigenous villages.
A series of dictatorships and military-backed governments supported the pageant in the 1980s even as they used brutal anti-insurgency tactics. Villages in the lush green mountains near Coban suffered some of the worst massacres of the war.
"The festival was founded and financed by the military that used the event as a strategy to display Indians as submissive," Velasquez said.
Although the war ended in 1996 and Guatemala now holds democratic elections, most indigenous areas still are locked in poverty with poor education and health services.
But for those hoping to win the heavy silver crown festooned with the long green feathers of the national Quetzal bird, the Rabin Ajaw is a way to revive interest in cultures that were nearly wiped off the map.
"This is an important event to show indigenous women can succeed and go far in this world," said Delfina Cuc Bac, an 18-year-old contestant from the Alta Verapaz region. "We want to show our traditional dresses but also everything they represent." |
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