The Eye of the Beholder: Ladino and Indigenous

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER:
LADINO AND INDIGENOUS PAGEANTRY IN NEOCOLONIAL GUATEMALA
by
Jillian L. Kite
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL
August 2014
Copyright by Jillian L. Kite 2014
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ABSTRACT
Author:
Jillian L. Kite
Title:
The Eye of the Beholder: Ladino and Indigenous Pageantry in
Neocolonial Guatemala
Institution:
Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Co-Advisors: Dr. Josephine Beoku-Betts and Dr. Mark Harvey
Degree:
Master of Arts
Year:
2014
In this thesis I utilize a feminist case study method to explore gender, race,
authenticity, and nationalism in the context of globalization. Each year, Guatemala
conducts two ethno-racially distinct pageants – one indigenous, the other ladina. The
indigenous pageant prides itself on the authentic display of indigenous culture and
physiognomies. On the contrary, during the westernized ladina pageant, contestants
strive to adhere to western beauty ideals beauty and cultural norms engendered by
discourses of whiteness. However, when the winner advances to the Miss World Pageant,
they misappropriate elements of Mayan culture to express an authentic national identity
in a way that is digestible to an international audience. In the study that follows, I
examine the ways in which national and international pageants are reflective of their
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respective levels of social and political conflict and how they serve as mechanisms of
manipulation by the elite at the national and global levels.
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THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: LADINO AND INDIGENOUS PAGEANTRY IN
NEOCOLONIAL GUATEMALA
I. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 1
II.
LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................ 9
Placing Pageants in Global Context: Race, Gender, Nations, and the White World
System ........................................................................................................................... 10
Beauty Pageants ............................................................................................................ 12
Authenticity and Exploitation ....................................................................................... 14
Pageants in the Post-Colonial Global South ................................................................. 18
The Miss World Pageant ............................................................................................... 21
Beauty, Race, and Nation in Guatemala ....................................................................... 22
The Ladina Pageants .................................................................................................. 24
“Mayan” Identity and the Rabín Ahau Pageant......................................................... 25
III.
METHODS AND DATA ...................................................................................... 31
Feminist Methods .......................................................................................................... 31
Data Collection .............................................................................................................. 37
Content Analysis ........................................................................................................... 40
IV.
GUATEMALA: FROM COLONIALISM TO NEOCOLONIALISM ................. 42
Spanish Rule.................................................................................................................. 42
The United States and the United Fruit Company ........................................................ 45
Government Brutality and The Panzós Massacre ......................................................... 47
Multicultural Politics ..................................................................................................... 50
Insertion into a Transnational Economy ....................................................................... 51
V. THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: VISUAL NARRATIVES OF GUATEMALAN
PAGEANTRY IN A TRANSNATIONAL ECONOMY ................................................. 54
Indigenous Identity and Authenticity ............................................................................ 54
Audience .................................................................................................................... 55
Appearance ................................................................................................................ 61
Nationalism and Sisterhood .......................................................................................... 68
The Construction of National Culture ....................................................................... 68
Contestant Interaction ................................................................................................ 70
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Transnational Influence and the International Gaze ..................................................... 77
Corporate Sponsorship .............................................................................................. 78
Western Female Beauty ............................................................................................. 81
VI.
CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 87
WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 100
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I.
INTRODUCTION
Scholarship on beauty demonstrates that rather than something timeless and
objective, images of beauty are historically and culturally specific (Cohen, Wilk, and
Stoeltje). In the modern world, feminine beauty is socially constructed through the
intersection of gender, race, and nation, and as such, beauty is implicated with power
(Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 6). These factors are ritually put on display in beauty pageants
which, scholars argue, represent the institutionalized engagement of concepts of beauty
with politics, morality, and group values (Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 2). As venues in
which images of beauty, morality, and national identity are both reflected and produced,
national and international pageants present a site for analyzing the intersecting power
systems in the era of globalization.
The modern beauty pageant was born in 1920 in the United States with the Miss
America competition. Following WWII, national and regional pageants began to appear
across the globe. In 1952, the Miss America Corporation created the Miss World pageant
(Hoad 59). According to Wilk, Miss World features a “collision between local standards
of beauty, deeply embedded in cultural constructs of gender and sexuality, and
international standards which are widely believed to be those of the dominant white
nations of the north” (127). Analysis of this collision has shed light on the role of
pageants at two spatial-political scales, 1) in the construction of post-colonial
nationalisms and 2) in the broader regime of post-war-U.S. political, economic, and
cultural hegemony (Balogun). Banet-Weiser argues that analysis of pageants must be
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conducted with attention to cultural imperialism, namely that of western culture (190).
Both Banet-Weiser and Hoad believe that this imperialism has resulted in conformity to
one western formula of femininity and feminine beauty. On the other hand, Wilk posits
that there is not one unified version of femininity that nations display in international
pageants, but rather that all nations display their differences in one unified way.
Analyses of beauty pageants at these different spatial-political levels and their
interactions have yielded important findings regarding the role of pageants in the
construction of post-colonial gendered and racialized identities and their links to
political-economic regimes. Regarding the former, scholars have examined the role of
beauty pageants in constructing coherent national identities out of fragmented ethnic and
racial groups. In constructing what Benedict Anderson argues are “imagined
communities,” post-colonial leaders must strive to create an authentic national identity,
proving that they have indeed left their colonial legacy behind. In the context of
analyzing issues of authenticity in Guatemalan pageantry and nationalist efforts, it is
important to survey the various scholarly positions that have been taken in regards to
authenticity itself, along with issues of exploitation that may undercut displays of
“authentic” culture.
The exploitation of neocolonial folk culture belonging to the previously sovereign
indigenous population in Guatemala to construct an “authentic” national culture for both
internal and external audiences lacks adequate attention. Similar issues of the
presentation of an authentic, cohesive national identity have been examined in former
British colonies, but former Spanish colonies such as Guatemala have escaped significant
scholarly research. Guatemala’s involvement with the neocolonial intervention of the
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United States make it an even more compellingly unique case study, reflective of the
complex nature of the transnational economy and a globalized world.
In this thesis, I examine how beauty pageants represent institutionalized
engagements with social politics, morality, and group values in neocolonial Guatemala
and what the case of Guatemala tell us about these processes. Guatemala presents an
excellent case for extending our understanding of how feminine beauty and its
institutionalization in pageants is determined by the intersection of national concepts of
gender, race, culture, and nation with hegemonic western norms. Within Guatemala, the
population is roughly half ladino, or those with Spanish blood, and half indigenous. The
Maya display different physical characteristics than ladinos in Guatemala, but are not
divided simply because of race. Rather, the Mayas were a cultural and political group
that grew fragmented and was subsumed by the Guatemalan nation state (Calvert). In
Guatemala, race and class cannot be compartmentalized; the concepts are highly
intertwined. The indigenous Mayan population is relegated to fragmented, rural
communities and suffer extreme levels of poverty and illiteracy, which many ladinos find
as justification to their assumption of indigenous inferiority. Although generally
considered inferior, the Mayan culture is utilized by ladinos when it proves useful to
them, such as in nation-building efforts and the presentation of an authentic culture for
the purposes of the tourism industry.
Guatemala hosts segregated ladino and indigenous beauty pageants, each with a
different purpose. The complex relationship between the dominant urban ladino
population and the rural indigenous Mayan peoples differs from simple racial differences
seen in pageants like Miss America and Miss Jamaica. Contra most pageants today, the
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indigenous pageant is explicitly organized around honoring the racial and cultural
“authenticity” of the Maya and is part of the National Folklore Festival. Used in this way,
authenticity defines the Maya as a pure, timeless, unchanging, and indeed noble people,
loyal to traditions and thus unaffected or corrupted by the complexity, speed, and
contradictions of modern life (McAllister, Schackt). This mythical image is shattered,
however, by the fact that the traditional dress used to identify Mayan culture, or the traje
típico, is in fact a hybrid of indigenous and ladino cultures. McAllister explains, “The
authentic traje típico is an arcane object, invented by ladino folklorists: it is supposed to
be a ceremonial traje…and must conform to specimens collected thirty to fifty years ago,
despite the shifts in fashion which indigenous weaving has undergone” (116-17).
On the contrary, the ladina pageant is constructed according to the norms of most
western beauty pageants, with evening gown and bathing suit portions leading to the
selection of the best, most beautiful representative of the nation. The contestants in the
ladina pageant tend to have generally white, western appearances, which makes sense
considering that the winner must then go on to compete as the Guatemalan representative
at the Miss World pageant. Interestingly enough, Mayan culture is appropriated by the
ladina candidates at Miss World as something that represents the unique culture of
Guatemala. Often times, the ladina Miss World contestant will even don traditional
Mayan dress to represent the rich culture of Guatemala, a culture at which most ladinos
traditionally scoff.
To provide context for my investigation of the three pageants, I first place nations
and their pageant representatives within a global context in which whiteness reigns
supreme, especially in the construction of feminine beauty norms. Literature on
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whiteness, as opposed to simply race, reveals that whiteness acts as a discourse that
dictates social freedom and privilege, prescribing what certain bodies can do (Leonardo,
Ahmed). Likewise, race and whiteness are themselves institutions because they create
the rights, unofficial privileges, and governmental policies that establish the freedom or
lack of freedom that certain bodies enjoy (Banet-Weiser). Beauty pageants are
institutions that reflect these theories of whiteness; they are spaces in which white bodies
can act and feel at home.
Methodologically, I argue that pageants and the constructs of beauty they
disseminate must be analyzed in their global context. Understanding how racialized and
gendered constructions of feminine beauty affect and are affected by the formation of
nation states and the international system of states requires an analysis that is both
historical and spatial (Balogun). In terms of space, the analysis, like the pageants
themselves, must consider the dynamics at play within and across a number of spatial
scales, i.e., the local, national (i.e., the Miss Guatemala pageant) and the international
(i.e., the Miss World pageant). Spatial analysis can identify important variations in the
social relations and processes involved in beauty pageants at various levels. A historical
approach is required because images of feminine beauty and the social relations they
reflect have been constructed through historical events including everything from
European colonization to Post-War national liberation struggles to inter-ethnic civil wars
to international political, economic and cultural agreements (e.g., the Miss World pageant
and the Olympics). Such an approach may shed light not only on the roles of patriarchy
and white supremacy--both in their official forms (pre-1965) and unofficial forms (post-
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1965)--in the construction and dissemination of Western feminine beauty norms but on
how these forces intersect and reinforce one another (Nakano-Glenn).
Throughout this thesis I review the significant literature that is relevant to beauty
pageants as powerful social institutions on local, national, and international levels. In
order to understand the findings of past authors regarding the case of Guatemala, I
investigate issues of race, national identity, and beauty in general and finally within the
context of Guatemala. In order to understand beauty pageants and the ways that they
communicate politics and power in Guatemala, I assess Guatemala’s current
sociopolitical landscape, the segregated beauty pageants that accompany it, and the
history of Spanish colonialism and American neocolonialism that led to the present day
status of the nation and its people. Without the invasion of Spain in the sixteenth century,
there would be no ladino population. Understanding Guatemala’s colonial past is
essential to grasping the nature of its current ladino/indigenous division.
Moreover, in the Method and Data chapter, I justify the use of a feminist case
study of Guatemala after first discerning what makes a methodology feminist. I survey
literature that debates the nature of feminist research and conclude that all feminist
methodologies tend to share three characteristics: understanding that the gender hierarchy
leads to conflict and inequity, agreeing that gender is socially constructed and
maintained, and a commitment to feminist practice and change (Chafetz). To conduct a
feminist case study of Guatemala and its engagement with local, national, and
international pageantry, I scrutinize the visual narratives provided by a collection of 18
YouTube videos covering the socially segregated pageants in Guatemala and
Guatemala’s participation in the international Miss World pageant.
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I analyzed six videos from the ladina pageant, six from the indigenous pageant,
and six from the Miss World pageant in order to understand the variety of content posted
that pertained to each pageant and the nature of the visual narratives illustrating the three
events. Utilization of YouTube as a resource for my research was useful because it
allowed scrutiny of not only the video clips that were posted, but also the profiles of the
users that posted the videos, comments on the videos, and how many views each type of
video received. Consideration of these other factors allowed a much more holistic
exploration of the content. Within this scrutiny, I identify and delve into three concepts
that recur throughout the videos: indigenous identity and authenticity, nationalism and
sisterhood, and transnational influence and the international gaze. Finally, I conclude
that while I both condemn Guatemala’s misappropriation of folk culture in nationbuilding efforts and cannot determine the value of an indigenous pageant with
questionable authenticity, I do prescribe the involvement of Guatemala’s indigenous
communities, particularly the women that represent them, in the development of the
nation’s tourist industry.
By providing an overview of the research conducted in this thesis and some of the
dominant literature that precedes it, this introduction provides a contextual lens through
which more in-depth exploration can occur. Understanding how beauty and beauty
pageants across different spatial and historical scales reflect politics, social organization,
and nationalism in a broad sense is key to understanding how these specific factors are
reflected in the pageants of and participation in international pageants by neocolonial
Guatemala. A comprehensive understanding of how race and nationality play into
pageantry institutions, particularly under the influence of globalization and past
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colonialism, will aid in the understanding of a more exhaustive explanation of
Guatemala’s sociopolitical landscape. A firmer grasp on Guatemala’s sociopolitical
landscape and the divided pageants that result from it will set the stage for detailed
examination of the YouTube data I have analyzed and the conclusions that follow.
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II.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In the sections that follow, I review the existent literature relevant to investigating the
nature of local, national, and international beauty pageants in a world characterized by
the forces of globalization. In order to do so, I investigate how race and the white world
order have shaped pageants at each spatial level and how gender and questions of
national identity are complicated with pageantry. Furthermore, I probe into the literature
regarding pageantry in the Global South, particularly within the context of globalization
and nations with legacies of European colonization. With aims to analyze literature
pertinent to each spatial level of beauty pageants, I then review the literature regarding
the international Miss World pageant and finally examine the topics of beauty, ethnoracial identity, and national identity in Guatemala alongside their two segregated national
beauty pageants. Review of all of this literature will enable me to better analyze data
surrounding the two pageants in Guatemala and Guatemala’s participation in the Miss
World pageant to understand broader issues of how postcolonial nations utilize feminine
representations of the nation to construct identities in a global setting.
Neville Hoad maintains that all beauty pageants are spectacles in which specific
cultural expressions of beauty are fundamentally shaped in response to hegemonic
western norms. Far from mere entertainment, he maintains that pageants occupy “a
powerful position to mobilize and impose norms of feminine beauty, guide consuming
habits, invoke national fury and pride, and allow many little girls and not a few boys the
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fantasy of princessness in a mostly postmonarchal world” (58). What is more, pageantry
exhibits a structure such that each level of pageant is nested within broader levels, i.e.,
the local is nested in the regional which is nested in the international. Each level
represents a different “group” with somewhat different “values of morality, gender, and
place” (Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 2) within the “domestic international family.” Each
group exhibits a different hierarchy. Given the hegemony of western norms, nonwhite
postcolonial contestants face varying degrees of space in which to express their specific
characteristics. Moreover, there is not necessarily more room for nonwhite postcolonial
contestants to express their diverse characteristics at the local or national level. Viewed
in this light, Banet-Weiser argues that the Miss World pageant’s claim to represent a
“global sisterhood” is ironic insofar as it serves the hegemonic function of glossing over
the gross power differentials that obtain between participating nations by drawing on the
“romance of the international family” (185). Within this family, “…difference is
domesticated through the constructed diversity of nations, correlates with the romance of
the pageant, where feminine symbols of the nation perform as well as domesticate their
different femininities into one harmonious, unitary ‘feminine’” (Banet-Weiser 185). In
order to best analyze the intersection of female, national, and racial identities within these
beauty pageants, it is essential to examine the current global context and its power
imbalances.
Placing Pageants in Global Context: Race, Gender, Nations, and the White World
System
International beauty pageants reflect the racialized and gendered dynamics of
modern regimes of power (Banet-Weiser, Hoad). The scholarship on beauty pageants
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clearly establishes the central role of racism, specifically white supremacy, in the
construction of feminine beauty norms. Leonardo, among others, conceptualizes race,
more specifically whiteness, as a discourse in which white skin functions as a global
indicator of beauty and privilege (Leonardo 30). Similarly, Ahmed notes that
conceptualizing race as a discourse, as opposed to a mere categorical variable, allows us
to analyze it as a social institution that shapes human experience. He calls for a
“phenomenological” approach because he seeks to explain not only what whiteness is but
what it does (Ahmed 150, ital. orig.).
In addition to conceptualizing whiteness as discourse, Banet-Weiser points out
that it is also an institution in that it “…exists as an institutionalized structure of
government regulations and policies, cultural privilege, and political entitlement” (68).
Noting that these institutions inhabit spaces, Ahmed draws a link between the
corporeality of the body and institutional space, explaining, “When we describe
institutions as ‘being’ white (institutional whiteness), we are pointing to how institutional
spaces are shaped by the proximity of some bodies and not others” (157). Pageants, in
essence, are white spaces in which white bodies are at home. From Banet-Weiser and
Ahmed, we can conceptualize beauty pageants as racialized institutional spaces, white
spaces, through which Eurocentric beauty norms are projected as universal. Balogun
notes the dual role of femininity in the modern nation-building project:
The woman-as-nation thesis examines how women serve as cultural bearers of
tradition through tropes of domesticity, motherhood, and modesty (Chatterjee
1990; Gaitskell and Unterhalter 1989; Hansen 1992; McClintock 1995) and as
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symbols of modernization through discourses of work, politics, and sexuality
(Foucault 1988; Gal and Kligman 2000; Shilling 2003) (358).
In the Global South, the imposition of this western thesis is complicated by the
racialized nature of the colonial context. While the colonized nonwhite femininity may
have served as a bearer of tradition it could never be a symbol of modernization. This
was reserved for white colonial femininity. Thus, the feminine within the colonial and
post-colonial contexts is bifurcated by race. As Kinloch explains, the beauty and virtue of
the white body is a “negative identity,” built on its alleged distinction from black female
bodies which are “denigrated, eroticized, and objectified by white culture, viewed as a
site of pleasurable danger, indiscriminate promiscuity, poverty, and abuse” (97). In
efforts to further understand this intersection of gendered, racial, and national identities in
pageantry, beauty pageants themselves must be assessed in greater detail.
Beauty Pageants
Banet-Weiser states that beauty pageants must be understood in the context of
Western cultural imperialism (190). In her view, securing Western hegemony is not
limited to control over the political and economic resources of developing nations, but
includes the dissemination and adoption of normative images (Banet-Weiser 190). Today,
nations are represented in the global arena in many ways, one of which is by female
bodies in global beauty pageants.
There are a number of debates over the legacy of colonialism and the effect of
U.S. cultural hegemony on how post-colonial nations are represented/represent
themselves in international beauty pageants. The first debate concerns the relationship
between post-colonial nations and the global hegemon. Scholars agree that colonialism
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continues to exert strong effects on post-colonial constructs of beauty and representations
of the nation. The issue is the extent to which post-colonial representations are effectively
“colonized” and thus present inauthentic representations of themselves or retain some
ability to exercise autonomy and thus some authenticity within limits. Banet-Weiser and
Hoad represent the colonization view in which nations present one “harmonious, unitary
‘feminine’” (Banet-Weiser 185). In contrast, Wilk argues that rather than imposing
homogeneity, such competitions create a focus on particular kinds of difference (129). In
his view, particular nations strive to emphasize their difference and the issue of a
homogenizing western norm comes into play to the extent that all nations must do so in
the same way (Wilk 118). Thus, pageants do not promote the homogenization of local
cultures to a Western norm as much as they limit the expression of cultural specificity
under what Wilk calls a “structure of common difference” (118). In his words,
[W]e are not all becoming the same, but we are portraying, dramatizing and
communicating our differences to each other in ways that are more widely
intelligible. The globalizing hegemony is to be found in structures of common
difference, which celebrate particular kinds of diversity while submerging,
deflating or suppressing others (Wilk 118).
The degree to which western cultural hegemony has influenced the suppression or display
of racial and cultural identities throughout the world remains to be determined, and
further investigation into pageants particularly within the global south can only help
clarify these issues.
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Authenticity and Exploitation
In light of institutionalized racism and sexism, the concept of authenticity is
highly problematic. Questions of authenticity evoke essentialist linkage of practices,
habits, and beliefs to particular bodies, on a number of levels. Under colonialism, white
appropriation of “native” Jamaican looks, dress, and practices in beauty pageants was
part of an attempt by colonial elite to distinguish their nation from the home and could
also be seen as part of tourism development by providing a white face with some
indigenous flavor or spice that plays on the dichotomy between “respectable” white
womanhood versus the sexualized native (Barnes 474). The case of Jamaica
demonstrates the exploitation of native culture for internal nation building purposes and
external economic purposes.
Authenticity is variously defined, but Handler argues that the concept itself is a
cultural artifact of Western society, “part of a Western ontology [that] does not really
exist outside of this ontology” (cited in Shackt, 283). The idea of authenticity being a
western thing is arguably just further evidence of neocolonial western hegemony. In his
article “Laying claim to authenticity: five anthropological dilemmas,” Theodossopoulos
discusses the multiple interpretations of the concept of authenticity, which he argues,
…encompasses diverse sets of meaning that range from genuineness and
originality to accuracy and truthfulness (Trilling 1972; Handler 1986, 2001;
Lindholm 2008). In many respects, authenticity encodes the expectation of
truthful representation. It is concerned with the identity of persons and groups, the
authorship of products, producers, and cultural practices, the categorical
boundaries of society: ‘who’ or ‘what’ is ‘who’ or ‘what’ claims to be.
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Of course, identity and culture may be deemed social constructions, but the matter of
authentic representation becomes complicated when aspects of culture are borrowed and
presented by groups and individuals as if they are authors of those borrowed cultural
elements, as in ladino use of Mayan culture to represent Guatemala.
Van de Port calls the constructivist view of culture and authentic cultural
productions into question (8). He asserts that he is “…increasingly unsatisfied with what
I perceive as a constant incentive to argue the made-up-ness of life worlds, i.e., to focus
on the make-believe rather than the act of believing itself” (van de Port 8). More
specifically, van de Port finds problem with academics’ tendency to fervently argue
against the “truth” of social constructs and the dismissal of social constructs as
inconsequential (8). His contestation is specifically supported by the fact that most
people possess the ability to transcend the constructedness of their lives and “…seem to
be quite capable to convince themselves that they are in possession of authentic Selves
and living authentic lives” (van de Port 10). Considering this supposed fact, van de Port
suggests, “What needs to be described and analyzed are the techniques and the resources
that people have at their disposal to believe, in the sense of taking things to be true” (10).
Indeed, post-colonial nations such as Jamaica and Nigeria reserve beauty pageant
crowns for women who are not only black but also exhibit authentic cultural
performances of Nigerianness or Jamaicaness, i.e., the ability to cook a traditional dish
(Balogun, Barnes). We see authenticity used against blacks under colonialism but also by
blacks in the struggle against colonialism, which of course was only a partial victory.
Beauty pageants present racial differences as extraneous, minor variances that add spice
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to life and serve as a celebration of diversity (Banet-Weiser 67). At the same time, racial
differences continue to operate as social institution, exerting real effects (Ahmed 150).
In the post-colonial context, international beauty pageants are arenas in which the
symbolic identity of formally colonized nations collide with those of their former
colonizers. This collision can likely teach us much about the racial, gender, and political
dynamics of the contemporary neocolonial era. By neocolonialism, I mean that while the
formal political structures of colonialism are largely dead, crucial aspects of
colonialism’s economic and cultural systems remain visibly entrenched. Moreover, the
demise of legal, explicitly racist colonial structures have rendered the neocolonial system
more difficult to oppose. More than colonialism, neocolonialism relies upon garnering
the consent of the subordinated through moral discourse and persuasion rather than force
(Winant). Studies of beauty pageants in the post-colonial context show that the images of
feminine beauty they construct are complicated by the racialized political and social
relations of colonialism and its legacies. Banet-Weiser explains,
The presence of nonwhite contestants obscures and thus works to erase the racist
histories and foundations upon which beauty pageants rest. Black contestants are
evidence for what Herman Gray calls a ‘cultural sign for race and difference,’ a
sign that mobilizes white fear and resentment at the same time as it contains this
resentment through representations of blackness that are ‘both familiar and
acceptable to whites’ (125).
Some significant lines of variation noted in the literature include the purposes of
the pageants and, not unrelated, the audiences to which they are addressed. On one hand,
sub-national and national beauty pageants play a role in unifying diverse peoples into a
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nation through the creation of a national identity. This process involves highlighting or
indeed constructing particular aspects of the culture that are both shared by members of
the nation and serve to differentiate them from other nations. On the other hand, pageants
are directed toward staking out the place of the nation within the global system of nations
and markets, including capital, commodities, and consumer services such as tourism
(Balogun).
Most scholars agree that post-colonial pageants are deeply influenced by the
hegemony of western beauty norms (Hoad) and that this has rendered “authentic”
representations of the nation problematic. There is debate, however, as to how Western
hegemony affects these pageants as well as what authenticity truly means. One view
maintains that all nationally specific feminine beauty norms have been “homogenized”
into a unitary western mode. Another view holds that while western norms certainly exert
effects, nations still can and do deploy their cultural authenticity, however, they are
forced to do so in ways that are limited by the need to be “intelligible” and acceptable to
the western eye (Balogun, Schackt).
The not-too-distant historical experience of nonwhite post-colonial peoples as
colonized and racialized others has complicated the construction of post-colonial national
identities and their representations of feminine beauty. Despite the desire of many,
including many scholars, to “get past race,” the Western white beauty norms globalized
under colonialism remain largely intact both within nations of the global south—
especially among elites--as well as across the international system. In her study of Miss
America, Banet-Weiser notes how race continues to structure the modern pageant despite
the “colorblind” rhetoric espoused by organizers. She explains the function of the
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pageant’s post-racial discourse in what remains a fundamentally racialized world as
follows:
The space of the Miss America Pageant thus becomes one in which we are all,
simply, “persons,” flattening out the spectrum of varying political characteristics.
Within this space, traditional markers of identity–race, class, and ethnicity–are
reshaped so that they better accommodate the politics of whiteness that structure
the entire event (70).
As institutionalized forms of symbolic power, beauty pageants are prime subjects
for scholars interested in power and patterns of social stratification and domination. The
age of “globalization” has brought about novel forms of power and inequity (NakanoGlenn 32) that are expressed through a proliferation of new media in which visual
imagery plays an unprecedented role (Watson and Martin 7). Along with capital
investment and consumption practices, Western representations of beauty span the globe
through myriad media outlets.
Pageants in the Post-Colonial Global South
In the post-colonial global south, the issue of feminine representation of the
nation in international pageants is ethno-racially and politically charged (Barnes).
Scholars have observed that pageants serve a variety of purposes and target a variety of
audiences, resulting in tensions (Balogun). One purpose involves promoting an internal
national unity among a multiplicity of local groups. The other involves the need to
present the nation as “modern” and attractive to the global community. This process
requires choosing winners who can be comfortably inserted the vernacular of global
pageants such as Miss World. This variation in purpose and audience creates tensions
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between various internal groups around ethno-racial difference which is linked to
material and political inequalities. Further tension emerges from the fact that Miss
World’s desire to portray local flavor, domesticated difference, often results in symbolic
aspects of oppressed sub-group culture being appropriated by dominant local groups.
Two case studies in the literature are particularly illustrative. First, Barnes
discusses the case of Miss Jamaica and the controversy that resulted from the coronation
of a white “Miss Jamaica” in 1986. According to Barnes,
For these [black] Jamaicans, the coronation of a white "Miss Jamaica" is not a
trivial matter nor is it removed from the everyday manifestation of power and
privilege on the island. Rather it strikes a violent blow at the very heart of their
sense of personhood, viscerally reenacting the failure of the postcolonial promise
to give black people their symbolic and material due after centuries of colonial
domination (473).
Barnes notes that the outrage expressed by some Black Jamaicans was understandable
when viewed in historical context. As recently as the 1950s, Miss Jamaica competitors
were comprised solely of the daughters of the white cultural and economic elite. Under
this regime, “authentic” Jamaican femininity was reserved for whites who held a social
respectability that black women could never attain (Barnes 473). The authentic
presentation of colonial Jamaican femininity thus entailed garbing white winners “in the
picturesque costume of the creole black ‘folk’ embroidered white blouse, madras plaid
head kerchief and matching skirt, heavy earrings and bead necklaces to show off the
‘native’ charm of Jamaica's fairer sex” (Barnes 474).
19
In another study, Balogun highlights the multiple purposes and audiences
pageants serve. Through a case study of pageants in Nigeria, she dissects the gendered
and regional aspects of pageants as nation-building projects. She argues that the literature
in this area “does not fully explain why gendered nation-building projects may differ
within the context of the same country” and shows that “gendered national
representations—the shared and contested gendered scripts used to characterize a
nation—serve multiple purposes and simultaneously target internal and external
audiences (Cited in Spillman 1997)” (Balogun 358). Class dynamics are also of the
utmost importance. Nigeria’s middle class must “take up the helm of guiding the
unification of the nation,” an internal effort, while “members of Nigeria’s super-elite
must tap into international capital to help secure Nigeria’s place in the global economic
landscape,” an external effort (Balogun 361).
Through a comparative analysis of two Nigerian pageants, the “Queen Nigeria”
Pageant and “The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria” (MBGN) pageant, Balogun suggests
that pageants in developing nations serve nation-building purposes both within the nation
by creating a cohesive national femininity and beyond the nation by creating “a more
cosmopolitan vision of femininity that places Nigeria squarely in the international arena”
(358). The two pageants provide a useful comparison insofar as they serve different
purposes and address different audiences. The Queen Nigeria pageant is geared toward
the internal construction of nationhood and seeks to produce an authentic or “‘true’
Nigerian queen” (Balogun 365). It does so by recognizing the regional states of the
candidates and hosting a cooking competition in which they must prepare a “regional
dish that represents her state” (Balogun 365). Ability to cook a traditional Nigerian dish
20
is considered a skill that all African women must possess as “a symbol of ‘authentic’
Nigerian femininity” (Balogun 366). While some gendered nation-building efforts
embodied by beauty pageants assume a national audience, others assume an international
audience and must produce winners that portray a modern nation and can easily be
inserted into the international Miss World beauty pageant.
The Miss World Pageant
Relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to international beauty pageants.
That said, national beauty pageants began to spread out of the U.S. and across the globe
in the 1920s and 1930s in part as a result of the proliferation of Hollywood films (Cohen,
Wilk, and Stoeltje 5). After WWII, and in the context of rising anti-colonial nationalism,
pageants began to emerge in the global south. As Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje note, “The
many beauty pageants and contests that proliferated during the 1930s and 1940s as part of
decolonization and nationalism in the Third World gradually coalesced into regional
contests during the years following World War II” (5). As these regional contests gained
momentum, the Miss America corporation created the Miss World Pageant in 1951
(Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje 5).
Banet-Weiser and Hoad argue that the Miss World Pageant tries to present itself
as apolitical, providing a level playing field in which a poverty-stricken nations of the
Global South can win against world powers such as the United States (Hoad 62). One
way in which the pageant claims to achieve fair competition is through audience
participation in the judging process. Votes are counted percentage-wise in relation to the
country’s population so as not to debilitate smaller countries (Hoad 67). As a
postcolonial nation in the global south, Guatemala and its pageants must be investigated
21
in-depth alongside the claim that the international Miss World pageant presents an
apolitical, level playing field for all nations.
Beauty, Race, and Nation in Guatemala
The structure of beauty pageants in Guatemala illustrates the conflict over the
appropriation of indigenous symbols and in so doing highlights the role of race, gender
and politics. Guatemala is among the most economically stratified and ethno-racially
segregated nations in the world. In short, a Westernized urban ladino population exists
alongside a multitude of indigenous and isolated rural Maya communities. As Schackt
writes, “Although the term Ladino originated in colonial times, as a label for Indians who
had adopted the Spanish language and culture, it developed into a category in contrast to
that of the Indian, including all people sharing a Spanish heritage in the cultural sense”
(270-71, citing Adams, 1997: 166).
As an identity, ladino has become a source of social and cultural division, to
greater and lesser degrees, throughout Latin America. In Guatemala, indigenous Mayan
groups, who constitute 50 percent of the total population, are viewed by ladinos as
inferior due to their cultural beliefs and practices and what ladinos perceive as the linkage
of those practices to poverty. Ladino belief in their own superiority is underwritten by
the material reality that they do in fact enjoy higher standards of living in urban areas
while indigenous peoples typically live in impoverished, remote rural areas (Schackt
271). Hendrickson notes, however, that the stark economic inequality between ladinos
and Mayas is exacerbated by the state, specifically agricultural policies that deny loans to
indigenous landowners by maintaining a minimal requirement regarding land holdings
that is just above what many Mayas hold. The Mayas of Guatemala are generally very
22
poor, but the ladinos’ assertion that they are lower class is more complicated than simple
economic standing (Calvert 21). Moreover, Calvert notes that, “…as in other Latin
American countries it is hard to distinguish between race and class. To a considerable
extent the two concepts are interchangeable” (21). An individual that has the physical
attributes of a Maya is automatically identified as lower-class and “backwards” (Calvert
22).
Despite ladino exploitation and general denigration of Mayas, in the formation of
a Guatemalan national identity they identify with indigenous culture as something that
makes their nation unique (Henderson). This led Schackt to write that Mayan culture is
celebrated only when it proves useful to ladinos (279). Regarding feminine beauty
norms, ladina women tend to emulate European beauty norms and strive to be seen as
white. Ladina women in particular submit to the symbolic discourse of whiteness by
adhering to western beauty norms and, striving to pass as white, in a sense. Arguably, this
is necessary not only for them to be considered traditionally beautiful, but also to enjoy
more social opportunities – whether perceived or real. After all, ladina women, typically
of white complexion, go on to represent Guatemala in the Miss World pageant (Schackt
279).
The literature on beauty pageants in Guatemala indicates that pageants serve
multiple purposes. Hendrickson found that local pageants have been held as a means to
mend frayed relations between feuding Maya and ladino groups (i.e., internal function).
Her observations found that in such pageants, both ladino and Indian candidates don
traje, or Indian dress. She notes, “The appearance of all the girls in traje was seen to be a
unifying statement expressing (as the emcee proclaimed) ‘nuestra Guatemalidad’ – ‘our
23
Guatemalaness’ or common heritage - in an era of deep social division” (Hendrickson).
Insofar as such positive portrayals of indigenous culture are rarely seen, it is important to
understand why it appears in pageants.
As noted by Schackt, ladino appropriation of Mayan culture is generally done on
an “as needed” basis by ladinos seeking particular outcomes while at the same time
retaining distance from Mayans. According to Hendrickson, some see the appropriation
as merely another way that ladinos exploit Indians for financial gain: “they exploit
Indians as laborers and they use the Indian image for the purposes of tourism”
(Hendrickson). McAllister also asserts that the national indigenous pageant (see below) is
a “hook” to lure in tourist dollars by increasing attendance at the nation’s folk festival
(112). The social division between Mayas and ladinos that persists in Guatemala is
reflected in the existence of two segregated beauty pageants for each social group within
the nation.
Dual Pageants
The ethno-racial social divide in Guatemala is institutionalized in beauty pageants. Like
other countries, including the U.S., Guatemala holds more than one national beauty
pageant: ladina and Mayan.
The Ladina Pageants
The township of Cobán is host to what are in practice strictly segregated ladina
and Mayan beauty pageants. Cobán is located in the Guatemalan department of Alta
Verapaz and winners of its ladina “Señorita Cobán” pageant go on to compete to become
Alta Verapaz’s “Señorita Monja Blanca” or “Miss White Nun.” These competitions
mirror western forms of pageantry, with evening gown and bathing suit portions.
24
Contestants are also encouraged to talk about politics and finalists must answer a series of
questions which are directly political (Schackt 277). Schackt notes that “…all the
candidates for the 1999 regional Señorita Monja Blanca title evidenced a Caucasian
physiognomy and, indeed, they were mostly of a fairer complexion than the average
Ladina” (277). While people of indigenous blood are not explicitly excluded from the
pageant, Schackt finds it “…curious … that they never seem to include candidates with
an evident Indian identity” (277). Additionally, Schackt found that the audiences at both
the Señorita Cobán and the Señorita Monja Blanca contests appeared to be strictly ladino,
which stands in marked contrast to the mixed audiences seen at indigenous pageants
described below (277).
“Mayan” Identity and the Rabín Ahau Pageant
Isolated in small mountain communities, the peoples known to the West as
“Mayas” tended not to identify with the nation of Guatemala or even as Mayan more
generally but rather with their local communities. For the first time in history, the 1960s
presented a context in which “Mayan” identity could be expressed and developed as a
new “Mayan consciousness,” as opposed to Guatemalan, emerged in the Maya
Movement. (Schackt 270). The movement gained momentum in the late 1960s when
Marco Aurelio Alonzo, a half indigenous-half ladino school teacher, decided that the folk
culture of the Mayans had to be preserved, particularly because “little could be achieved
in the way of teaching the children or influencing the attitudes of parents unless one knew
their language and ways of thinking” (Schackt 272). This motivated him to found the
Rabín Ahau, an Indian/folkloristic beauty pageant that eventually would became the main
event of Guatemala’s National Folklore Festival (Schackt 272).
25
According to Schackt, the first Rabín Ahau was held in 1970 in Cobán where the
winner was crowned the “India Bonita Cobanera,” or “Cobán’s Beautiful Indian Queen.”
In the years following, indigenous young women from across the nation were invited to
compete, each representing the distinct culture of their region through particular dress,
speech, and dance (273). As the popularity of the event grew, other regional folk-beauty
pageants were established and where local pageants existed previously, they were tailored
to the purpose of choosing candidates for regional pageants for what had become a
national Rabín Ahau pageant (273).
In stark contrast to the ladina pageants, the Rabín Ahau explicitly emphasizes the
“racial purity” of the winner as Maya as a central factor. Inverting the western beauty
standard, lightness of skin and European features are devalued. Schackt writes, “As the
candidates are assessed less on the basis (of the jurors’ ideas) of female beauty than on
the overall impression of ‘authenticity’…girls of a relatively fair complexion…are less
privileged; rather, the girl should look ‘Indian’” (279). Schackt then notes that because
there is a dearth of “true Mayans” remaining in Guatemala, the distinguishing
characteristic of winners is their presentation of cultural authenticity via style of dress, or
the traje típico.
Used in this way, authenticity defines the Mayas as a pure, timeless, unchanging,
noble people, loyal to traditions and thus unaffected or corrupted by the complexity,
speed and contradictions of modern life (McAllister 116-17). This mythical image is
shattered, however, by the fact that the traje típico is in fact a hybrid of indigenous and
ladino cultures. McAllister explains, “The authentic traje típico is an arcane object,
invented by ladino folklorists: it is supposed to be a ceremonial traje…and must conform
26
to specimens collected thirty to fifty years ago, despite the shifts in fashion which
indigenous weaving has undergone” (116-17).
Arguably, the most important portion of the pageant is the contestants’ speeches, which,
blood quantum notwithstanding, must be delivered in both Spanish and their indigenous
language. The speech is held to reflect contestants’ indigenous pride and knowledge of
their culture--all aimed at preserving authentic Mayan culture (Schackt 279). While
seemingly innocent, this portion of the competition is actually quite problematic. In
reality, “…most candidates are rather untypical representatives of their culture, gender
and age group: few are ‘authentic’ in the sense of being peasant girls from the rural zones
of their townships. Village girls rarely complete primary school and will as a rule marry
at an early age” (Schackt 280). Education levels in particular expose how atypical
contestants are. While some contestants were university students, most indigenous girls
do not finish primary school and over ninety percent indigenous Guatemalan women are
not literate (McAllister 114).
Scholarship on the indigenous pageant has addressed the issue of authenticity in
some detail. McAllister asserts that its authenticity is undermined by corporate
sponsors. McAllister remembers, “Televisiete (a Guatemala City television station),
Pollo Camero (a Guatemalan fast-food chain), and Pepsi-Cola got the biggest applause
of the evening, far bigger than any of the queens” (115). Additionally, McAllister
reported the questionable nature of the crowning ceremony, “The outgoing Rabín Ahau
came out tearful, made-up, and teetering on four-inch heels (to universal disapproval)
and relinquished the silver-and-jade crown to Soloma [the new winner]. Soloma’s rather
27
pointed prize, a Spanish dictionary, was presented to her by the master of ceremonies”
(116).
Finally, Schackt notes variation in attendance at the pageants. While the ladina
pageants are attended by exclusively ladina audiences, the indigenous pageant is mixed
(Schackt 277). This fact suggests that while the indigenous gaze is circumscribed, limited
to the space of the indigenous pageant, the ladino gaze is universal, able to spectate at
whatever event they please. Do the indigenous members of the population feel
unwelcome or simply feel no interest in observing the ladina beauty pageants?
Considering the fact that many indigenous women in Cobán enjoy western dress,
including the western appearance of the outgoing Rabín Ahau that McAllister observed,
it seems reasonable to assert that indigenous women, at least to some extent, share an
interest in western forms of popular culture and would likely be in attendance at the
ladina beauty pageants.
Not surprisingly, the establishment and rise of Rabín Ahau brought conflict.
Despite the original emphasis on regional Mayan culture, the pageant has become a
national spectacle. And while some applaud its efforts to preserve and celebrate folk
culture(s), others condemned the event as a whole. Schackt notes that criticisms span the
spectrum from the reactionary right to the multicultural left and include, “dislike of the
attention it gives to Guatemala’s Indian heritage” and “a critique of the way it
communicates a distorted and commercialised view of Maya culture.” Many “write it off
as generally ‘non-authentic’ and mainly serving the interests of the tourist industry”
(273).
28
Thus, authenticity must be examined critically, but also examined considering van
de Port’s fears of over-stressing the made-up quality of authentic artifacts. In the case of
Guatemala, it is necessary to examine the way in which modern beauty pageants
negotiate what is “authentic” and what is “inauthentic.” Is the contemporary unspoken
banning of indigenous women from national beauty pageants, as in Guatemala, racist and
illegitimate or is it more complicated than that? Could the indigenous beauty pageant
actually be a legitimate honoring of Mayan culture and constructions of beauty in a world
in which the Euro white norm of beauty remains hegemonic, despite the manipulations of
“the authentic”?
There is a great deal of literature regarding the intersectionality of gender and race
in beauty pageants and the association of the white race with moral purity and “authentic
femininity.” Attention has also been paid to nation-building efforts in postcolonial states
and the intersection of gender, race, and class within them. Examples such as
postcolonial Jamaica and Nigeria shed a great deal of light on manifestations of
national/cultural authenticity and its connection to race and women as symbols of the
nation, but they do so within the context of English colonialism. Guatemala, on the other
hand, is a unique subject for study in this area because of its past of Spanish colonialism
in conjunction with the more contemporary U.S.-American neocolonialism. Literature
regarding Guatemala’s involvement with national and international pageantry is rather
dated, with some of the most current sources dating to the 1990s. Moreover, the
relationship between the ladino and indigenous peoples of Guatemala is highlighted by
racial, ethnic, and class differences that are highly influenced by Guatemala’s history of
Spanish colonialism and the United States’ neocolonialism. The exploitation of
29
neocolonial folk culture belonging to previously sovereign indigenous culture in efforts
to construct an “authentic” national culture for both internal and external audiences lacks
adequate attention. I hope to mitigate this deficit by investigating the social implications
within Guatemalan society of both the division of the two beauty pageants and ladinos’
international appropriation of the supposedly inferior “authentic” indigenous folk culture
through the following method.
30
III.
METHODS AND DATA
Determining the method by which to conduct one’s research is a significant task that
requires attention to the availability of certain types of data and discerning to what degree
the conclusions made from the analysis of that data can be generalized to reflect the
bigger picture. While my research focuses primarily on Guatemala and its social and
political affairs, I conduct this research with the hope of understanding more about the
relationship between beauty and female representations of the nation and the construction
of an “authentic” national identity as a postcolonial nation of the global south in a
competitive transnational economy. In this section, I discuss the nature of my chosen
methodology of a case study as well as the debate regarding the constitutive elements of
feminist research and the factors that I have concluded render my research a feminist
contribution.
Feminist Methods
To examine questions of political power and female representations of the nation
state, I have elected to do a feminist case study of Guatemala’s indigenous and ladino
pageants and their relation to the Miss World beauty pageant, examining pageants at the
local, national, and international level. There exists significant debate regarding the
constitutive elements of feminist methodologies. Caroline Ramazanoğlu and Janet
Holland argue that it is impossible to identify one feminist research technique (15).
31
Rather, they argue, “Feminist methodology is distinctive to the extent that it is shaped by
feminist theory, politics and ethics and grounded in women's experience” (Ramazanoğlu
and Holland 16). How exactly feminist methodologies are shaped by feminist theory,
politics, and ethics remains uncertain.
Prior to delving into the constitutive factors of feminist research methodology, it
is worth investigating the value of feminist methodology as it stands in contrast to
traditional, positivist methodologies. In her article “Feminist Science: Methodologies that
Challenge Inequality,” Cancian discusses the various positions feminists and nonfeminists alike take on the use of feminist methodologies in sociological research. Many
feminists fully support the use of a feminist methodology that avoids the hegemonic,
masculinist thinking implied in positivism. Positivism is the scientific arm of the white
supremacy that racializes the pageants. On the contrary, others oppose the adoption of
feminist methodology, either lauding the objectivity of positivist research or cautioning
that "…a narrow definition of 'real' feminist research could create an oppressive hierarchy
among feminists…" (Cancian 623). The majority of feminists, however, are positioned
somewhere in between these two opposing viewpoints (Cancian 623). Hesitance to fully
commit to feminist methodology may spring from a fear of ostracism within academia.
Rejecting traditional research strategies would likely be met with hostility, exclusion, or
the rejection of feminist research as valid within academia (Cancian 629).
Feminist methodologies differ from positivist research methodologies in distinct
ways. Cancian mentions the five elements of feminist methodology that Cook and
Fonow identified in 1986: 1. a focus on gender and its consequential inequality, 2. the use
of qualitative evidence gathered through experience, 3. the creation of either action or a
32
plan of action to correct social ills and further feminist goals, 4. a critical examination of
all past research, and 5. the implementation of research methods that incorporate
participation between the researcher and the researched (Cancian 624). While it may be
argued that the incorporation of the researcher(s) and the researched in feminist
methodology prohibits objective analysis, Cancian argues that feminist methods actually
bolster objectivity (635). She writes,
The quality of our evidence can be improved by using qualitative and
participatory methods, and by including social action in research. The level of
debate and criticism can be improved by articulating distinctive feminist
interpretations of society and by helping researchers from diverse backgrounds
gain the institutional support they need to articulate their viewpoints (Cancian
635).
Thus, the evidence collected to generate or support claims would gain strength and
minority researchers would have more access to the creation, dissemination, and criticism
of knowledge produced within academia.
However, not all feminists agree with Cancian’s assertions. Indeed, some have
questioned feminist researchers’ ability to attain objectivity, cautioning, “As a
consequence of studying the oppressed through the lens of the privileged, oppressed
people are objectified, represented not as people 'like us' but rather as the 'other'”
(Sprague and Kobrynowicz 32-3). In any case, avoiding the “othering” of people being
researched is of great feminist concern.
In a similar vein, Hill Collins supports the construction of a new kind of feminist
methodology that would allow marginalized peoples to participate in knowledge
33
production. She states, “Groups unequal in power are correspondingly unequal in their
access to the resources necessary to implement their perspectives outside their particular
group” (Collins 749). Thus, although marginalized peoples are capable of creating new
academic perspectives, their inadequate resources disallow the dissemination of their
perspectives to society at large. Moreover, Collins asserts that just because the black
female standpoint exists, it does not follow that it has been properly communicated (750).
Echoing Cancian’s concern regarding the need for validation from a largely white, male
academic community, Hill Collins identifies two political criteria that are involved in the
knowledge-validation process, stating, “First, knowledge claims must be evaluated by a
community of experts whose members represent the standpoints of the groups from
which they originate” (752). She continues, “Second, each community of experts must
maintain its credibility as defined by the larger group in which it is situated and from
which it draws its basic, taken-for-granted knowledge” (Collins 752). The need for
academic validation by a larger community with different lived realities and values can
render some black feminists unheard (Collins 752).
Collins criticizes positivism, identifying several aspects of which that silence
black feminist thought. One, positivist methodology tends to create a relationship
between the researcher(s) and those being researched that characterizes the researcher as
a subject and the researched as an object. This division is inherently hierarchical,
insinuates the academic incompetence of those being researched, and risks the
exploitation of the “objects” being studied (Sprague and Kobrynowicz 32). Two,
positivist research is devoid of human emotion, ethics, and values. Three, it also is
adversarial in nature, deeming academic argument the best strategy to uncover true
34
knowledge (Collins 754). One of the greatest risks resulting from these characteristics is
that, “…Black female scholars may know that something is true but may be unwilling or
unable to legitimate their claims using Eurocentric masculinist criteria for consistency
with substantiated knowledge and Eurocentric masculinist criteria for methodological
adequacy” (Collins 753). As noted by Cancian, the ultimate irony is that while this is
true, Collins’ advocacy of a specifically black feminist method holds the potential for
academic ghettoization. The hegemony of white male positivism is tough to fight.
Dorothy E. Smith, too, criticizes the male-dominated nature of social research and
knowledge-validation processes. She identifies the scarcity of feminist perspective in
social research methods and theory as a critical flaw (Smith 42). Smith identifies, “The
first difficulty is that how sociology is thought - its methods, conceptual schemes, and
theories - has been based on and built up within the male social universe (even when
women have participated in its doing)” (39). Mere female participation fails to detract
from the domination of male thought within the discipline. Moreover, “…the two worlds
and the two bases of knowledge and experiences don't stand in an equal relation. The
world as it is constituted by men stands in authority over that of women” (Smith 39-40).
Both the theoretical and methodological framework within which female sociologists
operate were generated by men (Smith 41). Hence, the knowledge produced by social
researchers cannot be truly objective because it is intimately associated with the position
of men in society. This flaw in sociological methodology calls for feminist intervention
(Smith 42). The same can be said about race, which indicates the importance of
considering intersectionality.
35
Following Smith’s and Collins’ critique of positivism’s narrow and sociallybiased concept of objectivity, the study of beauty in global context, specifically
Guatemalan beauty pageants and international contestants, requires a feminist case study
approach. One reason positivism reigns strong in academic research is its condemnation
of subjectivity, the incorporation of which would arguably generate biased data, findings,
and interpretations (Sprague and Kobrynowicz 26). Yet, feminists argue that knowledge
is never bereft of bias or subjectivity. It is not the bias of the individual scholar that is the
problem, but of the institution of science itself as a masculine institution. Instead,
“…scholarly paradigms, like other forms of human consciousness, are the expression of
specific world views” (Sprague and Kobrynowicz 26). In the case of positivism, the
world views expressed are those of men. Ramazanoğlu and Holland point out,
Positivism is a very general and disputed term, but the particular aspect targeted
by feminists has been the claim that rigorous rules of knowledge production can
prevent connections between knowledge and reality being contaminated by the
researcher's values. In this respect, feminists join other critics who have long
questioned the possibility that knowledge can be free of the researcher's values
(45).
Positivism posits the scientific process itself as socially neutral and biased as the result of
individual researchers or groups inserting their subjectivity/identity into the process.
Feminists recognize that the process itself is always already biased by the real and
objective social relation of patriarchy.
The way in which a case is presented and which aspects of it are highlighted is the
choice of the researcher, and while this selection is not likely made with the intention to
36
deceive, it prohibits the reader from witnessing “the whole story” (Stake 94). After all,
“…it is the researcher who decides what is the case's own story, or at least what of the
case's own story he or she will report” (Stake 93). Despite the apparent lack of
agreement in terms of definition, there seem to be three factors existent in all selfdeclared feminist methodologies: an agreement that the gender hierarchy creates inequity
and conflict, an agreement that gender is a concept that is socially constructed and
maintained, and an explicit devotion to feminist practice (Chafetz 4). In examining the
beauty pageants of Guatemala as a case study of the reproduction of gendered and
racialized power structures, I adhere to these three factors and strive to avoid portraying
any party as the “other.”
While my method is a feminist case study, I do not condemn positivist methods.
Rather, I recognize that pure objectivity is impossible to obtain, as no observer is
completely neutral and thus cannot create purely objective truths. Despite the
impossibility of pure objectivity within positivism, I advocate its evaluation, not its
discard. My study gains validity by recognizing that there is an unavoidable degree of
subjectivity involved in the process, but it is a subjectivity rooted in empathy and
committed to analyzing the patriarchal and racist assumptions that underlie “knowledge.”
Data Collection
In this study, I analyze Guatemalan video coverage of the indigenous, ladina, and
Miss World beauty pageants in Guatemala, gathering my content from YouTube. Due to
the focus on globalization and its influence on nations of the global south such as
Guatemala, I chose to survey videos from 2010 onward, scrutinizing six videos for each
of the three pageants. Through joint analysis of video documentation of the dual
37
Guatemalan pageants and the international Miss World pageant, as well as scholarly
publications regarding the Rabín Ahau, Señorita Monja Blanca, and Miss World contests,
I am able to critically examine the social implications of these segregated cultural and
nationalist endeavors. YouTube videos, as opposed to other potential sources, are useful
in conducting an academic analysis of both the national and the international pageants
because they allow for scrutiny of the narrative produced by the video clip. Information
about the YouTube user that posted the video, comments on the video, and the number of
views the clip has will allow for contextual scrutiny of the fragment of the narrative
presented, how many people viewed it, and what some of the reactions were.
My assessment of the three different pageants begins with the ladina pageant Señorita
Monja Blanca [Miss White Nun], often referred to as Nuestra Belleza Monja Blanca [Our
Beauty the White Nun] in YouTube clips providing its coverage. Considering the more
westernized nature of the Señorita Monja Blanca pageant, I anticipated a great deal of
YouTube coverage of the event, both from local news stations in Cobán and from
independent fans. Western beauty pageants such as Miss America are highly public
events broadcast on television and easily accessible on the internet and with the
literature’s indications of the western nature of the ladina pageant, I anticipated similar
availability from the ladina pageant in Guatemala. Surprisingly, my research found less
video material on the ladina pageant than either the indigenous pageant or the Miss
World international pageant. Consequently, the ladina pageant material availability
guided my selection of pageant years for all three categories; due to the availability of
video footage from the ladina pageants in 2010, 2012, and 2013, I subsequently examined
footage of those three years for the indigenous and Miss World pageants.
38
Just as I was surprised to find sparse coverage of the ladina beauty pageant in
Cobán, I was shocked to find fairly extensive coverage of the indigenous beauty pageant.
With the focus on indigenous authenticity, however problematic that focus, I did not
anticipate the great availability of video samples of the Rabín Ahau pageant on YouTube,
particularly that the availability of the indigenous pageant material on YouTube was
much greater than the availability of the ladina pageant material on YouTube. Searches
for “Rabín Ahau” often led to content with “Rab(i/í)n Ajaw” or “Rab(i/í)n Ajau” in the
title. Striving to keep in line with the 2010, 2012, and 2013 clips from the ladina
pageant, I also tried to utilize about two clips from each of the three search terms.
Considering the fact that the winner of the ladina beauty pageant advances to
represent Guatemala in the Miss World pageant, it is important to assess Miss Guatemala’s
depiction of the Guatemalan nation state on the international stage. I elected to analyze
YouTube clips pertaining to Guatemala’s participation in the Miss World pageant,
consistently pulling from the years 2010, 2012, and 2013 and selecting six videos for
analysis in order to be able to compare my findings with those regarding the ladino and
indigenous pageants. There was a great deal more coverage of the Guatemalan contestant
in the Miss World pageant in 2012 than in 2010, although the reason for that discrepancy
remains uncertain. While coverage of the Miss World pageant in general was abundant, it
was challenging to find video clips with a narrower focus on Guatemala, aside from a few
fan videos and video introductions that candidates had to submit for the contest. Much of
the material that my search afforded was entirely unrelated to Guatemala, despite using
specific search terms that included the nation.
39
Content Analysis
Throughout my examination of these cultural phenomena through their YouTube
coverage, I aimed to remain conscious of the very high poverty rate within Guatemala,
particularly within the indigenous population. High levels of poverty disallow access to
computers and the internet, so would limit access to the pageant content on YouTube.
These efforts will enable me to maintain cultural and contextual sensitivity, without
which my investigation would carry an undue Western bias. Along with examination of
the two pageants, I plan to study necessary background information regarding
Guatemala’s history and the ways in which its colonial and neocolonial history have
shaped its sociopolitical landscape today.
The process of determining the best methodology for my study was guided by several
factors: loyalty to a feminist methodology, attention to the debate regarding the
legitimacy of positivism as part of a research method, and inspection of the possibility of
objectivity in my research. Once I examined the various perspectives of other researchers
regarding the elements that characterize feminist research, I concluded that most feminist
methodologies share three qualities: awareness that the gender hierarchy causes conflict
and a lack of equality, agreement upon the social construction and maintenance of the
concept of gender, and a dedication to some sort of feminist action or practice (Chafetz).
Next, despite the widespread condemnation of positivism by many feminist researchers, I
advocate that it be assessed, not condemned altogether. Striving for objectivity in
research is important, but it must be done while also acknowledging that complete
objectivity is always impossible. I recognize that pure objectivity cannot be achieved in
this thesis, as it is not in human nature and recognizing that, as the researcher, I decide
40
which parts of the case study to emphasize and which to ignore. However, I try to
achieve some level of objectivity while incorporating positive elements of subjectivity
such as refraining from treating the subjects studied as objects and by remaining
conscious of the ways that racism and patriarchy construct pre-existing forms of positivist
“knowledge.”
41
IV.
GUATEMALA: FROM COLONIALISM TO NEOCOLONIALISM
The history of Guatemala is characterized by the intervention, be it colonial or
neocolonial, of other nation states with economic interest in the region. In order to best
understand the ways in which Guatemalan women represent national identity in a
contemporary context, it is imperative to examine the ways in which Guatemala became a
nation state and the circumstances in which its sovereignty was challenged. Historical
context allows for better comprehension of the current sociopolitical atmosphere in
Guatemala, particularly the social dynamic between ladino and indigenous constituents, a
dynamic that is the result of colonial and neocolonial intrusion into the affairs of the
nation.
Spanish Rule
Like many other nations in Central and South America, Guatemala suffered the
invasion of Spanish colonists in the sixteenth century. Pedro de Alvarado, second in
command to the better-known Hernán Cortés, was charged with the conquest of
Guatemala in 1523. Despite being greatly outnumbered by the indigenous army that met
Alvarado’s 435 men, the Spanish conquistador’s forces eventually triumphed against the
Mayas’ inferior flint weapons (Calvert 56). Spain sought wealth in Guatemala, namely
in the form of gold and silver, and justified their conquest through their efforts to convert
indigenous peoples to Christianity to save their souls (Farriss 29-30). Shortly after arrival
in Guatemala, however, Spanish forces soon found that there was little gold to be found,
aside from a few artifacts taken from Mayan temples. Moreover, Guatemala’s climate
42
was inhospitable to many crops. The Spanish did find silver and a bit of gold in the
highlands, though, which justified remaining in Guatemala (Farriss 30-31).
In spite of the Spanish settlers’ physical takeover of Guatemala, Guatemalan
Indians were able to maintain their identity to a certain degree as a result of Spanish
administrative tactics. Carol A. Smith notes that Spanish settlers as well as their later
Creole [ladino] offspring were gifted encomiendas, or Indians/areas of Indians over
whom to rule (14). While these Creole offspring did own rural property, they were still
lesser elites than pure-blooded Spanish setters (Lutz and Lovell 39). Smith reflects that
the Spanish settlers’ desire to generate order in their new colony resulted in the creation
of encomiendas with borders around “preexisting territorial units…[which] helped
Indians maintain their identity during their most difficult period, when as many as 80
percent of them died (see Lovell 1985)” (14). However, “When the Indian population of
the highland core, after a century or more of decline, began finally to stabilize and then to
grow, with population recovery came increased pressure on land resources. The end
result… was Indian landlessness and loss of Indian identity, or ladinoization” (Lutz and
Lovell 39).
Spanish conquistadors strove to create a racial hierarchy in which those with
Spanish blood maintained the most power and control, but racial distinctions were more
complex than simply indigenous and non-indigenous (Grandin, Levenson, and Oglesby
40). Grandin, Levenson, and Oglesby explain,
Children born in the colonies to mixed-descent parents - Maya, Spaniards, and the
Africans the Spaniards brought to supplement indigenous labor - belonged to
many worlds at once. The Spaniards, however, ranked them into a racialized
43
caste system that started with blancos (whites) at the top of the hierarchy and
traveled through various combinations to los indios and los negros at the bottom
(40).
The origins of the term ladino actually predate Spanish colonialism, originally used to
refer to Jews in Spain during the 15th century and the Castilian Spanish they spoke, which
other Spaniards labeled “Ladino” (Peláez 129). It is essential to note that “children born
in the colonies to mixed-descent parents” almost always refers to children that were
products of rape. After the Spanish conquest of Guatemala, many Spanish men raped
indigenous women, which resulted in a mixed mestizo race, the Spanish-speaking
members of which eventually were described as being “ladino.” However, not all nonindigenous people were described as being ladino. As time passed, the term mestizo fell
out of favor in Guatemala and was gradually replaced with the term ladino (Peláez 130).
Peláez reflects that many Mayas consider ladinos as blanket adversaries, but he
stresses the importance of recognizing the hardship that ladinos suffered under colonial
rule (131). In fact, ladinos were just as much indigenous as they were Spanish, but they
often took advantage of anti-indigenous legislation imposed by the Spanish to advance
their social standing. For instance, some ladinos took advantage of the forced labor of
Mayas on Spanish property to “to collaborate in the control of Indians” (Peláez 132).
Peláez links the idea that all non-indigenous people in Guatemala are ladino to the 19th
century rule of Justo Rufino Barrios, who played into the interests of elite coffee planters
by crafting laws that subjected only Indians to forced labor on plantations (132). He
stresses the recognition of class complexity and the idea that there are class variations
within Mayas and ladinos alike (Peláez 132).
44
The United States and the United Fruit Company
The United States’ involvement with Guatemalan affairs began full force in 1906
with the arrival of the United Fruit Company. Guatemala was an extremely attractive
option for the United Fruit Company’s investment because it “…was able to acquire
extensive plots of land at cheap prices, essentially tax free, to establish banana plantations
on which the Indians were forced to work at slave wages. Landowners and local officials
ensured that the peonage system continued to operate, and those who protested were
incarcerated or assassinated” (Shea 8-9). The company created the International
Railways of Central America to aid its efforts, “…which made the export of bananas
from the Atlantic valley lowlands a practical proposition” (Calvert 68-9).
Later, Guatemalan President Jorge Ubico strengthened the nation’s ties with the
United States government. In order to maintain a strong relationship with the United
States, Ubico obeyed all instructions given to him by U.S. authorities (Calvert 70-1).
Given the nature of this intimate relationship, Guatemala expressed its support of the
United States and the Allied forces in World War II, an expression which grew
problematic considering the German foothold on a great deal of Guatemalan coffee
plantations – a source of great economic income for the nation (Shea 10). Thus, “…in
1944 Ubico moved to expropriate the German-owned plantations, only to find that
Guatemalans were by then asking why they might not do the same with other foreign
interests” (Calvert 71). During this time, “Indians were not regarded as warranting
political attention from the government. Their political invisibility assured their virtual
enslavement to the coffee farmers requiring labor for the production of their export
45
crops” (Adams 141). Eventually, citizens of Guatemala engaged in public protests and a
strike, motivating the resignation of Ubico (Calvert 71).
Following the resignation of Ubico, Dr. Juan José Arévalo Bermejo became the
next president in the nation’s first set of free elections in 1944 (Calvert 75). Arévalo was
swift to implement a great deal of political and social changes in Guatemala, which
“…forced each male citizen to carry a work card showing how many days he had worked
in the past year. Those not having an adequate number formed a convenient supply of
forced labor for the plantation owners” (Calvert 70, 75).
Control of the Indians became
a major concern of the government because Indians supplied the labor necessary to
maintain coffee as an important national export (Adams 153). Richard N. Adams
identifies five popular strategies utilized by ladinos to control Indians:
…(1) a constant depreciation of Indian society and culture… (2) a constant effort
to best Indians in the market economy, manipulating state support by whatever
means to reduce Indian control over land and share of the market; (3) using both
legal and illegal devices to inhibit Indians from full political participation…(4)
periodically exercising force to remind the Indians that they must accept political,
economic, and cultural subordination; and (5) hiding the constant fear of Indian
violence, treachery, and rebellion that enabled ladinos to work directly with
Indians on farms, in labor gangs, in the kitchen, and so forth (154).
On the contrary, Indians possessed few strategies to combat ladino domination and abuse
(Adams 157).
After the conclusion of the Revolution of 1944, many of the civil rights
advancements won by past president Arbenz were reversed. For instance, with the
46
support of the United States in the form of about $80 million, the new president Castillo
Armas was able to reinstate the plantation system of agriculture, forcing the peasants to
relinquish any land they received under the Arbenz administration. Guatemala suffered a
new recession and amped up political oppression during and after the rule of Castillo
Armas (Calvert 80-2). Arturo Arias recognizes, “Following the 1954 coup that returned
Guatemala to military rule, the army maintained its authority through fraudulent elections
and death squads. In response, a small, urban guerrilla movement arose and sought its
base among the hungry and landless ladino peasants of eastern Guatemala” (231).
Moreover, as repression rose in the 1970s, Indians began considering joining the guerrilla
movement (Arias 252). Eventually, however, with the help of the United States military,
the Guatemalan government was able to quell the efforts of the guerrilla movement
(Arias 231).
Government Brutality and The Panzós Massacre
Ignoring threats from international powers, the Guatemalan government
continued sponsoring countless human rights violations. One such human rights abuse
that the Carter administration protested was the Panzós massacre of 1978. Despite the
fact that the group of 700 Indians of Panzós, Alta Verapaz were protesting their lack of
land rights peacefully, soldiers attacked the Indians, slaughtering 140 and injuring over
300 (Calvert 85). During this time, many Mayan activists, including contestants for the
indigenous Rabín Ahau pageant, publicly condemned the government-controlled
National Folklore Festival and pageant for its appearance of indigenous support coupled
with actual discrimination against the Mayas. During the same year as the massacre, a
47
group of unsatisfied Mayas expressed their disdain in an article published in an
indigenous newspaper:
Blasting the Folklore Festival as a modern vestige of colonialism and exploitation,
the authors charged that under the pretext of maintaining cultural authenticity, the
state sought to obstruct social change, to halt the development of the Mayan
community at a stage of history convenient for ladino domination (Konefal 61).
After the massacre itself, many indigenous figures associated with the Rabín Ahau
pageant “disappeared,” although the contestants themselves lived (Konefal 70).
For the next four years after the Panzós massacre, a “war of attrition against the
Indian community at large” followed, resulting in more murders and countless cases of
brutal torture (Calvert 85). Journeying to the capital of Guatemala in 1979, a group of
Indians intended to ask the Guatemalan president to cease the oppression and military
brutality in the Ixil area. When President General Lucas García and the congress both
rejected the Indians’ request to speak, “Desperate due to the seeming futility of their
efforts, the group peacefully occupied the Spanish Embassy on January 31, 1980, with
the hope of thus finding international recognition and relief for their situation” (Arias
253). Unsurprisingly, the government failed to respond to this effort as well, but in an
especially gruesome act government forces burned the embassy with the Indian protestors
inside (Arias 253).
After the massacre of Indians at the Spanish Embassy in 1979, most Indians
recognized the need to join revolutionary forces against the Guatemalan government
(Arias 253-54). Government forces “…correctly saw danger not in the guerrillas'
military capacity, but rather in the enormous mobilization of the Indians in the highlands”
48
(Arias 255). As a result, a genocidal effort against the Indian population began in 1981
(Arias 255). Women suffered especially during this time period. Rape was used as an
instrument of war to terrorize and intimidate indigenous and dissenting women across
Guatemala. Izás notes, “Through rape, the army and civil-patrol commanders also sought
to denigrate the women and destroy them physically and mentally. In this way, they
assured the silence of these women in the face of what was going on” (405). As a tool of
war, the rape of women also serves to emasculate a nation’s men, who are powerless to
protect “their women” (Mookherjee). Many women were left alone because their
husbands, fearing government violence, fled to the mountains to hide. This phenomenon
rendered many women vulnerable to government efforts that used them to lure their
husbands to capture and consequent torture (Izás 407).
Matilde González Izás conducted field research in the town of San Bartolo,
Guatemala to investigate the atrocities performed against women during this period. Not
only were individual rapes routinely performed, but mass rapes were performed in public
(Izás 407). She describes the horror for dissenting men and women alike, writing,
“During these mass rapes, many men who were already on patrol duty were forced to be
present as soldiers and other patrollers raped their mother, sister, wife, or daughter with
impunity” (Izás 408). Izás explains the “service” of women ages 11-20, forced to live in
groups with government soldiers, cooking, cleaning, and enduring frequent rape (408).
Some military officers forced individual women to be their personal sexual slaves, many
of whom continue to live with the men that enslaved them to this day (Izás 409). Of
course, many women and children attempted to escape by the cover of night; some were
successful and others were caught and suffered horrific torture. In any case, Izás reminds
49
us, “Either fleeing or staying required an extraordinary bravery on the part of the women
in San Bartolo, just to continue living after the atrocities to which they had been
subjected” (Izás 410).
Due to the racial hierarchy established during colonialism, ladinos still tend to
look down upon “primitive” indigenous populations. For reasons of etiquette, and even
personal relationships across cultural divides, extremely negative portrayals of
indigenous people are rarely displayed publicly (Hendrickson). However, outward
respect for indigenous peoples does not equate to fair social treatment. Hendrickson
notes the political discrimination of non-indigenous policy makers, discussing how
government farm loans are not usually given to poor, indigenous communities that need
the aid but have just under the minimum requirement of land necessary to receive
financial aid. Without land reform, great positive change within Guatemala is not likely
(Shea 19).
Multicultural Politics
Charles R. Hale discusses the rise of multiculturalism in Guatemala as a result of
indigenous efforts in national politics. However, Hale does not applaud these efforts,
claiming, “Far from opening spaces for generalized empowerment of indigenous peoples,
these reforms tend to empower some while marginalizing the majority…” (518). He uses
the term indio permitido [authorized Indian] to describe how the Guatemalan government
accepts only a certain form of Indianness, thus maintaining control of the nation (Hale
519). Furthermore, Hale highlights the important distinction “between cultural rights and
political-economic empowerment” (Hale 519). There are two principles under
Guatemalan neoliberal multiculturalism, Hale posits, that limit the amount of freedom
50
and power that indigenous people can achieve. First, “…indigenous rights cannot violate
the integrity of the productive regime, especially those sectors most closely linked to the
globalized economy” (Hale 520). Second, “Neoliberal multiculturalism permits
indigenous organization, as long as it does not amass enough power to call basic state
prerogatives into question” (Hale 520).
The Indian that engages in activism that falls within the scope of the two principles
Hale outlined is the indio permitido. Of course, there must be a negative complement to
the praiseworthy indio permitido: “Its Other is unruly, vindictive and conflict
prone…Governance proactively creates and rewards the indio permitido, while
condemning its Other to the racialized spaces of poverty and social exclusion” (Hale
521). Despite this reality, leaders of the indigenous population in Guatemala continue to
speak of idyllic indigenous freedom - a tendency that Hale claims supports the harmful
idea of the indio permitido and produces “authorized spokespeople, increasingly out of
touch with those whose interests they evoke” (521). In this way, only select Indians
(indios permitidos) enjoy advanced freedom and prosperity. Clearly, the doctrine of
multiculturalism falls far short of establishing any new form of social equality in
Guatemala.
Insertion into a Transnational Economy
Writing from within the context of neoliberal multiculturalism, Irma Alicia Velásquez
Nimatuj discusses the Mayan traje típico and how Guatemala has misappropriated its use
to further its economic goals in a transnational economy. Nimatuj argues how the traje
típico, particularly that produced and worn by indigenous women, has been utilized as a
51
symbol of Guatemala in the international sphere, despite its lack of acceptance on the
streets of Guatemalan cities. Expressing her concern, Nimatuj clarifies,
Guatemalan embassies and consulates all over the world commonly display
photographs, posters, or paintings of indigenous girls and women in regional dress,
all smiles and perfect silhouettes: native people are presented as Guatemala's biggest
tourist attraction, belonging to the past yet living in the so-called modern world (527).
She further explains that the culture presented to western tourists is one that seems
removed from time, immune to change. The display and sale of traje típico benefits the
government and tourism industry while the Mayas whose images and artwork are used
are given no artistic credit and enjoy no financial gains (Nimatuj 527). Nimatuj
condemns, “While Maya culture is commodified in these images, they bear no relation
whatsoever to the Maya men, women, children and elders who eke out a living in these
exclusive districts, working as labourers or servants, selling woven fabrics, furniture or
sweetmeats, or even begging” (528).
Nimatuj blames the government, elites, and the necessity for Guatemala to depend on
international tourism for economic stability for this tendency to “folklorize” Mayan
weaving (528). However, Nimatuj makes it clear that neither she nor a great deal of
indigenous people are against the tourism industry. Rather, there are ways of conducting
tourism business that could benefit the indigenous community. She suggests,
…small-scale foreign or local investment in the tourism industry can be regulated by
indigenous communities so that the profits made from tourism can benefit the
communities where such tourism is located and in ways where the tourism industry
52
does not harm the dignity of the Maya people or harm or privatize the biosphere
(Nimatuj 530).
These reflections only further reinforce Hale’s claims against neoliberal multiculturalism
in Guatemala and illustrate how both multiculturalism and the way in which Guatemala is
active in the transnational economy harm indigenous women in particular.
Investigation into Guatemala’s history of Spanish colonialism and American
neocolonialism reveals a great deal of information regarding the formation of the modern
Guatemalan nation state. Understanding the roots of the ladino/indigenous division, as
well as its complications, is key to understanding the intricacies of Guatemalan society
today and the tensions that come from hosting separate ladina and indigenous pageants.
Finally, it cannot be disputed that globalization has affected the sociopolitical landscape
of Guatemala and must be considered in the assessment of Guatemala’s participation in
national and international beauty pageants.
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V.
THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: VISUAL NARRATIVES OF
GUATEMALAN PAGEANTRY IN A TRANSNATIONAL ECONOMY
Examining the ladina, indigenous, and Miss World pageants in conjunction allows
for comparative analysis of the structure and components of each pageant. As previously
stated, for the purposes of my analysis, I selected 18 YouTube videos, with six videos
from each pageant, covering the years 2010, 2012, and 2013 to maintain consistency.
After assessing each video clip individually, I identified three themes that were prevalent
in the collection of clips as a whole: 1) Indigenous Identity and Authenticity, 2)
Nationalism and Sisterhood, and 3) Transnational Influence and the International Gaze.
Within the theme “Indigenous Identity and Authenticity,” I found that audience and
contestant appearance were the most salient variables that marked a contestant or video’s
presence of indigenous identity and authenticity, or lack thereof. As for the theme
“Nationalism and Sisterhood,” I recognized the construction of a national culture and
contestant interaction as the most important factors, and for “Transnational Influence and
the International Gaze,” corporate sponsorship and western female beauty were the most
important factors that helped identify this theme.
Indigenous Identity and Authenticity
Detecting the manifestation of indigenous identity in the YouTube video clips of
each of the three pageants was particularly useful in understanding the use of Mayan
culture in the Miss World and ladina pageants and the ways in which it was displayed in
54
the indigenous pageant. Similarly, assessing the degree of authenticity present or lacking
in each of the three pageants was important to understand how the “authentic” culture of
the Mayas in Guatemala is often used to create a sense of national identity and pride,
which is explored in the next section of this chapter, and to determine if the indigenous
pageant was indeed an authentic display and celebration of Mayan culture, or something
else altogether. Given the complex nature of the three pageants and their analysis,
occasionally the variables of audience and appearance overlap, but I have organized the
data in the manner best fit for cohesive analysis.
Audience
Rabín Ahau
YouTube user “quelexlf” posted the video “RABIN AJAU 2009 107.mpg,”
among various other parts of the pageant. Although the YouTube clip was from 2009
and not 2010, 2012, or 2013 as I planned, it provided unique insight into ceremonial
preparation for the pageant. The clip, covering a ceremonial part of the Rabín Ahau
contest in 2009, had a startling 2,000 views. Despite the wide availability of the
indigenous pageant, I had also not anticipated the seemingly widespread consumption of
the material. That is to say, although there was an indigenous presence online at least in
terms of content, I did not expect that presence to be much acknowledged by the general
population with access to the computers and the internet. Such modern and widespread
consumption of the material seemed unlikely not only because of the socioeconomic
disadvantages of the Mayas in terms of accessing the material online, but also because I
predicted that the ladinos’ general disdain for the indigenous population of Guatemala
would prevent them from seeking out this content as opposed to simply seeing it in
55
person as a part of the National Folklore Festival. The online audience of this content
was likely composed of some mix of atypical, wealthy Mayas and/or ladinos and other
spectators around the globe, which speaks to the manipulation of indigenous identity to
represent Guatemala internationally, despite the true social division within the nation.
Unlike the other videos of the indigenous pageant that I review later in this
section, this video is filmed outside, not in the gymnasium where the contest takes place.
There is no narration, announcements, or text description of the event, but it appears to be
indigenous contestants proceeding from their village to pray before the event. The
women, dressed in what seems to be traje típico, appear content but solemn as they walk
barefoot out of the gate marking the entrance of the village. Many ladinos, or what I
judge to be ladinos based upon their appearance, crowd along either side of the
procession, watching and sometimes applauding. Any recognizable speech in the video
is in Spanish. Some ladinos take a picture or film the event and one man captures the
event on his camera while speaking to someone on a cell phone. From the contents of the
video clip, the majority of the audience viewing the procession appears to be ladino,
which only reinforces the idea that the authenticity of the event is somewhat curtailed by
ladino spectatorship and that part of the new identity of Guatemala’s indigenous
population is to serve as cultural symbols for the purposes of nation building.
It is unclear whether the women in traje típico are all taking part in the pageant or
if one is taking part and the others are dressed in support of her. They are dressed
similarly in white outfits, some with colorful embroidery on the sleeves or neckline of the
blouse, but all with red, woven cords hanging from their hair as it sits tied in back of their
heads. The procession of the contestant(s) is short and quickly reaches a building that
56
could be a church, school, or community center of some sort. An older woman, also
dressed in traditional garb, leads them in to the building, which is simple and consists of
rows of benches that sit behind tables that support an altar of candles. The women kneel
to pray, and one woman makes the sign of the Christian cross on her chest and forehead
before praying. There are five women kneeling in total, two of whom place folded cloths
on their heads before praying, two of whom wear the traditional silver Rabín Ahau
crown, and the last wears nothing on her head. One of the kneeling women is actually a
little girl wearing the Rabín Ahau crown, who holds hands with the woman wearing the
Rabín Ahau crown. Behind the kneeling women are the ladino spectators, making little
effort to be quiet. The event does not seem to be one in which a community is taking
pride and spectating to show their support. Strangely enough, despite the fact that Mayas
tend to identify with their local communities instead of their cultural identity or the
nation, it seems as though there are few Mayas in attendance of the procession and
prayer, calling the authenticity of this event into serious question. Again, the indigenous
identity seems to be one that is manipulated to fit the ladino agenda. Here, the ladino
gaze is powerful; they are welcome to view whatever pageant they please, while the
indigenous gaze is less sovereign.
YouTube user “Manuel Yat” also posted a video pertaining to the 2012 contest:
“RABIN AJAW - LA HIJA DEL REY (I PARTE) [RABIN AJAW – THE DAUGHTER
OF THE KING (1 PART)].” The video clip, with approximately 10,000 views, is unique
in that it explains the tradition of the competition, featuring interview portions with the
founder of the pageant himself. Like some of the other pageant videos on YouTube, the
clip begins with a title introducing the footage.
57
As the video begins again, a crowd gathers around what appears to be the
outgoing queen and the new, incoming queen of the indigenous pageant. Some of the
onlookers dance subtly to the folk music playing in the background, while others watch
solemnly. The outgoing queen takes the silver crown off of her head, smiling, and walks
around the stage with it, bowing at certain points and lowering the crown while the
incoming queen watches solemnly. The scene changes to color video with other women
in different types of traje típico, performing what appear to be rituals with candles,
smoke, and elements of dance. A narrator begins to explain the tradition of the pageant,
commenting in Spanish that the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous people have deep
roots in Alta Verapaz and that the culture has been preserved to some extent through this
pageant and folklore festival that hosts it. He notes that this is an "authentic
manifestation [my translation]" of the Mayan culture. It seems almost suspicious that the
narrator feels the need to report that the display of the Mayan culture is authentic.
The narrator credits the event to Marco Aurelio Alonzo, and the video switches to
the founder of the pageant himself, explaining the pageant. Speaking in Spanish, Marco
Aurelio Alonzo says he came up with the idea for the pageant, which features food,
dance, rituals of the Maya, but especially displays the Mayan traje típico. Pictures and
videos of past pageants play in the background at times as he speaks. He says it is
unfortunate that the traditional dances of the Mayas have not been able to be maintained,
but makes this claim without explanation. Other clips of the Rabín Ahau contest boast of
traditional displays of Mayan dance, which clearly fall under the umbrella of the
“authentic” celebration of Mayan culture. Undoubtedly, some of the elements of this
pageant must be slightly manipulated. Yet, if questioning the true authenticity of the
58
pageant, it seems as though a truly authentic pageant would celebrate the actual dances
performed by Mayas today instead of trying to maintain a timeless, unchanging image of
the indigenous past, minus, of course, evidence of their extreme suffering.
Marco Aurelio Alonzo explains more of the history of the pageant and how more
departments of Guatemala began participating. He stresses that the queen elected in this
pageant is not a national beauty queen in the traditional sense. The indigenous queen of
the nation has characteristics of an indigenous woman - her physiognomy, but the most
important thing is that she is a descendant of the Mayas and authentically represents her
municipio- a municipio that is traditionally indigenous.
As the clip concludes, Alonzo
asserts that the pageant is solid and that all of the participants know what they are doing.
This assertion seems rather strange within the video clip and calls the intended audience
into question. With so many claims of authenticity and authentic displays of indigenous
identity, it makes little sense why Alonzo would feel the need to convince anyone of the
solidity of the pageant, unless it were indeed in question.
With approximately 3,000 views, the clip “BAILANDO EL SON EN ‘RABIN
AJAW’ [DANCING EL SON IN ‘RABIN AJAW’]” displays a dance portion of the
contest. The clip, posted by “videosdenelson,” received one comment: “GRACIAS
PAIZANO[sic] NELSON POR MOSTRAR AL MUNDO NUESTRA CULTURA Y
FELICITACIONES POR SU TRABAJO [THANK YOU COMPATRIOT NELSON FOR
SHOWING THE WORLD OUR CULTURE AND CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR
WORK].” Responding to the comment, “videosdenelson” expressed his appreciation for
the compliment. The beginning of the video shows contestants dancing on stage in the
dark, with some women carrying candles. Text is superimposed over the image, reading:
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“Candidatas a Rabin Ajaw, bailando el son frente al jurado calificador y público presente
[Candidates for Rabin Ajaw, dancing el son in front of a jury qualifier and the present
public].” The women and the backdrop of the stage are lit, the backdrop posing as a
recreation of a Mayan temple/pyramid, with tall stone steps approaching its summit. If
the candidates in this video are supposedly dancing the traditional dance el son, it is
curious that Alonzo, the pageant’s founder, would lament the loss of traditional Mayan
dances in the previous video. Is the recognition of the “authentic” dance in this video just
for identification purposes, or is it to convince some audience that this dance, with its
own name, is indeed an authentic manifestation of the indigenous identity? The intended
audience of this video cannot be determined, but the issue of dance makes the
authenticity of this cultural display highly questionable.
Miss World
The next video, “Non-Profit Miss Mundo 2012 Guatemala,” posted by YouTube
user “reellifestudio” shows the philanthropic initiative that Miss Guatemala supports and
would bolster with funds and opportunities granted by winning the Miss World pageant.
This video presents the "Beauty with a Purpose" initiative of the 2012 Miss Guatemala
Miss World contestant. She aims to fight world hunger, but particularly within Guatemala.
Introducing the topic with emotion-inducing footage of extreme poverty and hunger in
Guatemala, the contestant speaks of the people of Guatemala being her family, which
motivates her to do something. She discusses how chronic malnutrition does not just cause
deaths, but also severely limits the growth and brain development of children. Guatemalan
children are especially affected by this affliction, with six out of every ten Guatemalan
children suffering from chronic malnutrition.
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Miss Guatemala works with the Fundación contra el Hambre [Foundation against
Hunger], or FH, to educate mothers, leaders, and communities to bring awareness to the
problems of poverty and hunger in Guatemala. How she is going to solve the problem is
unclear, but the emotional appeal of the video is great. Interestingly enough, the contestant
fails to mention the extreme poverty of the indigenous peoples in Guatemala, which is
undeniably a significant part of the problem she strives to combat. Most of the videos
covering the Miss World pageant have large numbers of viewers and often quite a few
comments about the material, but this video has just 140 views and zero comments. Of
course, the cause of the deficiency of views cannot be ascertained for sure, but with its
emphasis on beauty and fashion, it seems that the Miss World pageant footage itself is far
more appealing to the audience interested in pageantry. In any case, this video showcases
a lack of authenticity in that it espouses lofty philanthropic goals but ignores the social
strife that both contributes to the problem the contestant is trying to solve and is a part of
her later representation of the nation. As part of an international beauty pageant, this clip
anticipates an international audience, which makes this hypocrisy more difficult to detect.
Appearance
Rabín Ahau
YouTube user “felix macz” posted the video “Rabin Ajaw 2013,” covering the
2013 indigenous pageant. When the first place winner is announced, she walks to the
front of the stage, kneels, and raises her arms towards the ceiling in some sort of
salutation. Her name and department information appear at the bottom of the screen,
revealing that the winner is 20 years old and has studied for four semesters at a
university. She appears fairly happy, but not as overjoyed as the ladina winners were.
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Eventually the winner cries a bit, but it seems genuine and she does not pose for pictures
as the ladina winners did.
The scene changes to her seated in front of the other runners up and the outgoing
queen, who ties a necklace and red scarf around her neck. Filling in the background, the
other candidates sway in rhythm with the music. The outgoing queen takes off the silver
crown, which is encrusted with jewels and as the announcers inform the audience, with
authentic feathers of the Quetzal. In this clip, it is not only the indigenous physical
appearance of the candidates that speak to its supposed authenticity, but also the
appearance of the pageant accoutrement. The silver crown adorned with Quetzal feathers
marks an authentic display of at least some element of indigenous identity. I recognized
no stiletto heels or other signs of western influence as McAllister did in her observation
of the Rabín Ahau pageant. Whether this outweighs other signs of inauthenticity is
difficult to discern.
Holding the crown in front of her body, the outgoing queen dances around the
stage, presenting the crown to others and lowering it at times. Finally, she places the
crown on the solemn-faced incoming queen and the incoming queen’s information
flashes again at the bottom of the screen. A few of the women in the background smile,
but most are fairly solemn. It appears that they have not been coached to act one way or
another, unlike the candidates in the highly rehearsed ladina pageant. The outgoing
queen helps the incoming queen to her feet and they dance hand in hand, along with those
in the background and she is finally given some sort of metal trophy-like prize.
At this conclusive moment, one of the announcers comments that they, implying
either those in attendance of the event or the people of Guatemala, all appreciate and
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value this type of activity. For the third time, he announces the winner. The outgoing
and incoming queen are still dancing hand in hand but with their backs to the audience as
the announcers thank everyone for coming. As the other contestants bow, both the
outgoing and incoming queen circle around to face the audience. Eventually the outgoing
queen gestures for the incoming queen to sit down on steps that are part of the stage
backdrop. This seat is her "throne," as the announcer, who is now on stage, tells us. He
hands the microphone to the incoming queen, who addresses the crowd in an indigenous
language and then in Spanish, tearfully thanking the crowd for the opportunity to
represent them. In this sense, it seems that the contestant assumes, whether literally or
symbolically, that her audience is indigenous. Additionally, the incoming queen thanks
several groups such as her village and family, promising to represent them in a dignified
way. The visual narrative of this scene tells the story of a sincerely grateful contestant,
who appears to believe that this activity is valued by all, as the announcer declared. She
seems to be confident that she is representative of the indigenous community’s identity,
as is evident when she thanks the crowd for the opportunity to represent them. The
appearance of this portion of the event, from costume to appearance of gratitude, do seem
to indicate a certain degree of authenticity and indigenous representation.
Miss World
The Miss World pageant actually hosts a YouTube account under the profile handle
“OfficialMissWorld,” delivering close to 1,000 videos covering the pageant and its
contestants to the public via the internet. In one video clip, “Miss World 2013 - Profile
Video – Guatemala,” the Guatemalan contestant introduces herself to her international
audience, about 7,000 of whom viewed this introduction on YouTube. The video received
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23 comments in a mix of Spanish and English, mostly commenting on how beautiful the
contestant looks and the surprising fluency of her English. As is common with most of the
Miss World contestants, Miss Guatemala possesses no physical features that could
distinguish her from the thin, white, hyper-feminine beauties of the west’s ideals. Here, the
contestant’s appearance speaks to her lack of indigenous identity, which is key to
permitting her insertion in the international contest. As with most western pageants such
as Miss America, the flattening of difference and the glossing over of race is key to creating
the illusion of global sisterhood, which I explore in greater depth in a later section of this
chapter.
The candidate is a traditionally beautiful, white-looking woman who introduces
herself while standing beneath palm trees, possibly near the coast, as the breeze is blowing
her hair back. It is uncertain which country she is in, but it is likely safe to presume that
she is in Guatemala due to the nature of the environment in which she speaks. She
introduces herself, stating that she is 25 years old, speaks English, Spanish, French, and
Italian. Of course, the candidate’s level of education is atypical of a great deal of
Guatemalan women. In the short clip, she informs her audience that she is an interior
designer and professional hip-hop and funk dancer in Guatemala, but is greatly looking
forward to meeting the other girls participating in Miss World 2013. Again, the friendly
unity of the contestants is emphasized, even in an individual profile video. If one were to
essentialize who a representative Guatemalan woman is, would this contestant be the
authentic representation of the nation? Of course, there is no true authentic Guatemalan
woman, not only because of the social constructedness of authenticity, but also because
Guatemalan women possess a multitude of intersecting characteristics and lived realities
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that cannot be condensed into one person. For the sake of argument, however, this highly
educated, fairly affluent contestant is surely not representative of the majority of
Guatemalan women’s lives.
In a much more detailed introduction posted by “OfficialMissWorld,” entitled
“Miss World 2013 - Guatemala - Contestant Introduction,” the Guatemalan contestant
shares more about her identity and nation. This video received approximately 4,500 views
and ten comments, also in a mix of Spanish and English. The comments do not reveal
much, but one exchange in English was of note. One YouTube user commented “She
doesn't look Guatemalan :),” clearly indicating that not looking Guatemalan, which can be
interpreted as looking white, is a positive occurrence. Later, another concerned YouTube
user responded, “Of course she's guatemalan[sic]. Guatemala is a diverse country.” The
attention to race and its associated physiognomies in this exchange reveals the very partial
nature of Miss World’s audience. Clearly, appearance is one factor by which at least
portions of the international audience judge authenticity. An authentic Guatemalan, in the
eyes of the first commenter, is both of a darker complexion or perhaps with indigenous
physical qualities, and by proxy, lesser than the white contestants in the Miss World
pageant.
The video is a compilation of the Guatemalan contestant speaking about herself and
engaging in activities in Guatemala. She reflects, "Guatemala is a magical country. We
have an exceptional history background, one of the most amazing and ancient cultures in
the world: the Mayans." As she says this, the camera shows her walking in stiletto high
heels and reveals that she is strolling through a street market, looking at Mayan “traditional
dress” and jewelry sold by different vendors. The contestant pauses to thoughtfully admire
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indigenous artwork displayed at one of the stalls. One of the indigenous workers in the
street market stall is helping her with the traditional dress and she turns to look at the
camera and make a goofy face. Trying on traje típico was not something she did with
honor, but rather a fun, frivolous activity for her. Throughout the video montage, the
contestant’s attitude is one of intentional reverence for the Mayan culture, but she treats
the culture as a sort of ancient, kitschy relic for consumption. Whether the Mayan cultural
elements that the contestant admires are “authentic” or not, the presentation of the
indigenous identity to the international community is what is important. Representing the
indigenous culture in such a way, as it is exploitatively borrowed by the Guatemalan Miss
World contestant, is not only inauthentic, but speaks to the power imbalance that exists
within Guatemala, but is glossed over in the international competition.
Finally, I looked at the clip “Miss World 2013 - Dances of the World,” also
posted by “OfficialMissWorld,” to examine the Dances of the World portion of the
contest, in which contestants wear costume representations of their nations’ cultures and
express their culture through dance. This video accrued over 159,000 views, reflecting a
wide international audience seeking content about Miss World. The Dances of the World
presentation was approximately six and a half minutes long. It began with a solo dance
from the Chinese contestant, followed by all of the contestants dancing out onto the stage.
Several countries were selected to feature their dances solo, then joined by the rest of the
contestants in a highly choreographed number as they all mimicked the solo dance in
unity. Guatemala was not one of the nations selected to perform solo, so I decided to
watch the Dances of the World videos from 2012 and back through subsequent years to
try to find Guatemala featured. I figured that the nations receiving solo performance
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spots would rotate, but this did not appear to be true as nations such as Mexico, Nepal,
and China were featured in multiple dances within a five year span. The Miss World
official website did not have any photos of the 2013 Guatemalan contestant’s cultural
costume. While it first appears as if this particular video clip cannot contribute much to
the understanding of either indigenous identity or authenticity, it does reinforce the lack
of cultural authenticity in the Miss World pageant. The Miss World pageant, along with
the ladina and indigenous pageants of Guatemala, do possess similar elements that
contribute to nation building efforts and the construction of a myth of national and
international sisterhood that cannot possibly exist.
Indigenous identity and authenticity were important themes to highlight in my
analysis of the YouTube clips from all three pageants due to the interrelatedness of the
segregated Guatemalan pageants and their connection to the Miss World pageant. These
themes were most evident in clips covering the indigenous Rabín Ahau and Miss World
pageants. According to the espoused goals of multicultural appreciation, the indigenous
pageant should have shown strong evidence of both indigenous identity and authenticity.
While certain elements of indigenous identity were present, the true indigenous
authenticity of the event is dubious. As much of the literature regarding Miss World
indicated, indigenous identity was borrowed when convenient for the ladina contestants
at Miss World in order to display an authentic, cohesive national culture for an
international audience. These efforts to create a national culture are strongly connected
to the following section on Nationalism and Sisterhood.
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Nationalism and Sisterhood
The themes of nationalism and sisterhood are very prevalent in analyses of the
Miss World pageant, in which nations must present a cohesive identity but also adhere to
the pageant’s aims of presenting a sort of global sisterhood in which all participating
nations engage in friendly competition. Nationalist sentiments and displays of sisterhood
are also present in the ladina and indigenous pageants of Guatemala. These themes are
best analyzed when examined through the variables of the construction of national culture
and contestant interaction. As in the previous section, a great deal of the data reveals
both the construction of a national culture and friendly contestant interaction.
The Construction of National Culture
Señorita Monja Blanca
First, I looked at 2010 video of part of the ladina pageant entitled “Nuestra
Belleza Monja Blanca 2010: Segunda y Primera Finalistas[Our Beauty the White Nun
2010: Second and First Finalists]” posted by “Mynor David Cú Oxom,” whose profile
described him as posting “Vídeos sobre actividades en Cobán, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala,
C.A. [Videos about activities in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, C.A.].” The video clip,
with approximately 4,000 views and no comments, covered the announcement of the top
3 finalists in the contest. The authorship of this clip is quite important in its analysis;
clearly this clip was part of a collection of videos that illustrate the important activities in
Guatemala, or at least a certain area of the nation. Nonetheless, it is considered a
sufficient representative of at least some part of the Guatemalan identity and an effort to
create the sense of one cultural identity that all Guatemalans share.
Rabín Ahau
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YouTube user “Municito Cobán,” who also posted a video of the 2012 Señorita
Monja Blanca competition, posted a clip entitled “Elección Rabin Ajaw 2012 [Election
Rabin Ajaw 2012].” Like several of the other YouTube clips covering the indigenous
pageant, this clip had a large audience with approximately 9,000 views. In a sort of
commercial, this clip is constituted by pictures and video clips of Rabín Ahau,
advertising the pageant as a part of the celebration of folk culture in Cobán. The clip is
underscored by announcements from what seems like a professional announcer and
closely parallels the commercial for the ladina beauty pageant. As with the ladina
pageant’s commercial, this clip also lists the location and price of admission to the event.
While the ladina pageant’s tickets cost 35 Guatemalan Quetzales, or approximately
US$4.50, the indigenous pageant’s tickets cost 40 Guatemalan Quetzales, or
approximately US$5.13. However, the location of the indigenous pageant cannot account
for the higher ticket cost. In fact, both pageants take place in the exact same local
gymnasium: Gimnasio del injud [Injud Gymnasium].
Although this commercial for the indigenous pageant seemed less produced than
the ladina commercial due to a lesser use of screen graphics, both commercials used still
shots and video of past pageants to entice viewers to attend. The use of music and
vibrant shots of contestants dressed in colorful garb to attract attendees were similar in
both commercials. The tactics employed, however, were different. In the ladina
commercial, the announcer assumed a more flirtatious approach, emphasizing the
physical beauty of the contestants and touting a “date with beauty.” In contrast, the
announcer in the indigenous commercial seemed to strive to create a sense of community
with the viewers as opposed to an opportunity to admire beauty. The sense of community
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created was not one pertaining to any local community, but rather the creation of a broad
sense of a Guatemalan community with pride in their culture and nation. Advertising the
event, the announcer professed, “Eligiremos a la Rabín Ajaw [We will elect the Rabín
Ajaw],” actively stating that we would be electing the new queen, not that she would be
elected. Moreover, he tempted, “Te esperamos [We wait for you],” emphasizing that the
event waited for and depended on community involvement. Considering the high
poverty rates among indigenous populations in Guatemala, it is unlikely that they would
possess the monetary funds to pay for a ticket, travel to Cobán, or see this commercial.
Undoubtedly, a great deal of this community involvement was that of community ladinos.
This commercial for the indigenous pageant held true to past accounts of
corporate sponsorship funding the event, with the announcer thanking their multiple
sponsors and the screen displaying a banner of their logos as they were individually
mentioned. A full 15 seconds of the 55 second commercial was dedicated to thanking the
sponsors: Coca-Cola, BANRURAL, a local pizzeria, a Central American brewing
company, Instituto Guatamalteco de Turismo [Institute of Guatemalan Tourism],
Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes [Ministry of Culture and Sports], and the
Municipalidad de Cobán [Municipality of Cobán]. The cooperation of so many
Guatemalan entities, aside from Coca-Cola, indicated a great deal of cooperation and
effort to create a unified vision of Guatemalan culture in the spirit of nationalist efforts.
Contestant Interaction
Señorita Monja Blanca
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In the video posted by “Mynor David Cú Oxom,” entitled “Nuestra Belleza
Monja Blanca 2010-2011: Shaylla Michelle Zamora,” there is great evidence of the
efforts to present a unified, friendly image of the women representing Guatemala. Their
actions and facial expressions communicate the idyllic “sisterhood” evident in many
western and international beauty pageants. Despite my lack of ability to determine what
the announcers are saying, it is clear that the winner is to be crowned as two men in suits
and a woman in a short cocktail dress carry the tiara on a pillow across the stage. There
is a great deal of cheering in the audience as the winner is presumably announced and she
is hugged by the two runners-up. As the video concludes, confetti falls from the ceiling
and the remaining beauty queens come up to hug and congratulate the winner of the
pageant in a style very reminiscent of western pageants. While the contest is indeed
competitive, an atmosphere of very friendly competition is created, one in which it
appears as if all of the women want each other to succeed. Again, the false illusion of
sisterhood is cultivated.
One valuable finding in my investigation of the 2012 Señorita Monja Blanca
competition was a commercial advertising tickets to the event. The clip, “Elección
Nuestra Belleza Monja Blanca 2012 [Election of Our Beauty the White Nun 2012],” was
posted by “Municito Cobán,” a profile with only five videos. The “Municito Cobán”
profile’s videos seemed to cover fairly random Guatemalan accomplishments, such as
Guatemala winning an Olympic medal in running, but also had a video of the 2012 Rabín
Ahau pageant. However random the representations of Guatemalan success, the profile
had a clear agenda of portraying the nation in a positive light.
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Comprised of an appealing montage of video clips from previous years’ pageants,
the commercial enticed perspective audience members, encouraging “Todos tenemos una
cita con la belleza. [We all have a date with beauty.]” Framed in this way, the pageant
appeared magical, carefree, and certainly ignorant of the political and social strife within
the nation. Emphasizing the search for the most physically beautiful woman in the
Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz, the commercial flashed clips of contestants
dancing in short cocktail dresses, prancing in bathing suits, and parading in elegant
evening gowns. In addition to camera shots of the audience and shots of a previous
winner being crowned with a tall tiara, the commercial further enticed its audience with
mention of musical artists that would be performing at the event.
Before listing the details of when and where the event was taking place, as well as
cost of entry (35 Guatemalan Quetzales, or about USD$4.50), the commercial quickly
listed the sponsors of the event. The first sponsor of the pageant listed was Coca-Cola,
followed by BANRURAL, a local pizza place, a Central American beer company, and
the Municipalidad de Cobán [Municipality of Cobán]. Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the
event was, of course, very indicative of the westernized nature of the pageant as well as
the presence of transnational corporations within Guatemala as a result of the forces of
globalization. Further investigation revealed that BANRURAL, the company name being
an acronym, “…is a leading banking institution in Guatemala focused on the rural
development of Guatemala by providing loans and credits to small and mid size
businesses throughout the largest network in Guatemala of 320 offices” (Business Wire).
Not only the involvement of BANRURAL, but the visible presence of the government of
Cobán, spoke to the political nature of the pageant. Clearly, the pageant was not just “a
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date with beauty,” but an organized event with an organized agenda. Unquestionably,
this agenda included nation-building in its purposes.
The clip “SEÑORITA COBAN 2013-2014” posted by “elias cacao cu” covers a
crowning ceremony for the most recent 2013 ladina pageant. With 1,000 views, the clip
is fairly popular, and follows a similar format as the coverage of the previous years’
pageants. As before, the event takes place in a gymnasium with raised bleachers, but
features professional announcing over a loudspeaker and lighting for the contest on stage.
The videographer appears to be coming from the audience of the event and while the
sound is muffled, it is not as poor as some of the other unprofessional videos posted to
YouTube.
While most elements of the clip are reminiscent of older Señorita Monja Blanca
pageants, there are a few changes of note. Just as before, the finalists stand on stage
smiling and posing for the audience while they wait for the results to be announced. Yet,
this time, the poses seem much more rehearsed, the smiles bigger, and the fashions that
the women wear quite different. Two white- looking women stand on stage in front of a
backdrop of a yellow building that looks like it could be a town hall or some other sort of
government building, bodies angled to the audience, hands on hips, smiles plastered on
their faces, and holding hands. Although all of the Señorita Monja Blanca videos I have
reviewed featured the contestants in western-style evening gowns, the gowns that these
two women wear are far more revealing than years past. Both styles are very formfitting, one in all silver sequins and with a thigh-high slit, the other with sheer lace that
reveals the woman’s midriff and legs with little coverage underneath the lace. The
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necklines of the dresses plunge, and sashes or contestant numbers are absent from their
ensembles.
The same western elements of the past years’ pageants remain. Both the
backdrop and stage are professionally lit with colored lights and spotlights. As before,
the finalists’ hair is perfectly coiffed, they are thin, and they are wearing full faces of
makeup, again reminiscent of western beauty norms. After an undecipherable
announcement is made, the women hug as if close friends, smiling and posing for
pictures. Another woman comes up with a gift for the runner-up and leads her away, but
not before the runner-up hugs the outgoing queen in another gesture of sisterhood. While
a great deal of this clip shows evidence of transnational influence from western nations, I
feel that it is greater proof of showcasing a unified, proud nation. Particularly, this clip
displays the creation of a friendly competition characterized by sisterhood, most likely in
preparation for the Miss World contest.
After some time smiling at the audience, the winner is addressed by the outgoing
queen, who approaches her with a sash that reads “Señorita Cobán,” but not without the
BANRURAL logo. Two other women come up to give the new winner hugs,
congratulations, flowers, and a gift bag. The two extra women leave, leaving just the
former winner and the current winner on stage. Both smile and pose for pictures as the
former winner slowly crowns the current winner with a tiara, pausing along the way for
photographs. Interestingly enough, the pillow upon which the tiara rests is draped in a
cloth with a larger version of the BANRURAL sponsor logo to complement the logos on
the sashes of the outgoing and incoming ladina queen.
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The two beauty queens, outgoing and incoming, pose for more pictures in the
same hand-on-hip pose of the two finalists, then walk together smiling, hand in hand to
the edge of the stage where the former winner raises the arm of the incoming queen in a
gesture of triumph and unity, posing again for pictures. As in most pageants, the way in
which the women walk is highly stylized and clearly rehearsed, which is rendered much
more striking when two large BANRURAL banners are spotted in the background of the
stage and the audience as the women walk. The sponsors’ logo speaks volumes while the
queens themselves are literally silent, communicating the importance of BANRURAL to
nation-building efforts while the contestants are merely figureheads.
Rabín Ahau
Towards the end of the “felix macz” clip entitled “Rabin Ajaw 2013,” the video
changes to footage of the incoming queen being presented with prizes by people in
western dress, presumably ladinos. A woman presents the winner with a basket of gifts
the woman’s husband presents the winner with what looks like a check. After posing for
a picture with the incoming queen, the couple exits, taking the gifts with them. Two very
clearly ladina beauty queens with sashes and tiaras appear on stage, talking to some of the
other contestants. There is very little effort to disguise the intentions behind the presence
of the ladina beauty queens at the indigenous pageant. The friendly interaction among
the groups of ladina and indigenous contestants serves as a gesture of national sisterhood
and celebration of a national culture – that of the Mayas.
The announcer invites the other indigenous participants to congratulate the
incoming queen. As the camera eventually pans out, the whole stage backdrop becomes
visible, which appears to be some sort of Mayan temple. In their closing statements, the
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announcers praise the diversity and richness of their country, applauding the brotherhood
in their great country. The sisterhood of the ladina and indigenous contestants is a placemarker for the brotherhood that supposedly exists in the unified Guatemalan nation state.
Miss World
Next, I examined the crowning ceremony from the Miss World pageant in 2012.
Posted by “Official World Beauties,” the clip “MISS WORLD 2012 Crowning Moment
(Official Miss World)” attracted approximately 1,000 views. Miss Guatemala is not one
of the top seven contestants honored at the ceremony, but it is worthwhile to see the
crowning ceremony at the Miss World competition to enable comparison with the other
two pageants. The introduction of the clip shows the Miss World logo and states the
location of the pageant: “Miss World/Logos China 2012.” The camera, clearly operated
by a professional videographer for the purposes of appearing on television, zooms in to the
stage from the ceiling above the audience. The announcer asks the crowd to welcome the
seven finalists to the stage, where the remaining contestants are already standing in two
parallel groups, making a sort of aisle for the finalists to walk down as they emerge onto
the stage. They each strut out in evening gowns with sashes on and take their places on
stage, smiling and posing, appearing almost doll-like as they hold hands in a signal of
sisterhood.
The announcers welcome the chairman and CEO of the Miss World
Organization, Julia Molly, to the stage to announce the winners, starting from third place
and moving up to first place as the outgoing queen crowns each of the top three contestants.
When it is announced that the contestant from The People's Republic of China has
won first place in the competition, she gasps and hugs other contestants, again in a display
of friendship and sisterhood with women from all over the world, whom she undoubtedly
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hardly knows. She then walks to center stage where she is presented with a Miss World
sash to replace her old sash representing her nation and sits on a throne while the outgoing
queen takes the crown off of her own head and puts it on the incoming queen's head. The
winner then stands and walks forward on the stage towards the audience, smiling and
waving to the crowd in a very demure manner as confetti falls from the ceiling. Striding
back to the throne, the winner sits, waving at the audience, as the two runners up stand
smiling on either side of her. They hug her and congratulate the winner before the
remaining contestants walk up, all joining hands and singing a song communicating themes
of sharing love together, one united world, and one mutual dream. Of course, the Miss
World contest is rife with transnational influence and shows awareness of the international
gaze thrust upon it- two factors that I examine in the following section.
Transnational Influence and the International Gaze
Unlike the previous two sub-sections of this chapter, all three pageants are
strongly represented under the themes of transnational influence and the international
gaze. Analysis of neither the Rabín Ahau pageant nor the Señorita Monja Blanca can
occur without attention to Guatemala’s position within the world today.
Transnationalism has resulted in the blurring of national borders, international economic
endeavors, and the proliferation of a great deal of western media across the globe.
Guatemala, along with other nations in the global south, show proof of transnational
influence particularly in sectors of their economy. Furthermore, just as the Miss World
pageant flattens out racial and ethnic differences among contestants, favoring western
forms of female beauty, so too do ladina Guatemalan national pageants. Once more,
much of the data does not fit neatly into the chosen sub-themes of “Corporate
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Sponsorship” and “Western Female Beauty,” but use of these categories aids in
comprehension of a great deal of material.
Corporate Sponsorship
Rabín Ahau
As with many of the search results for Rabín Ahau, “Rabin Ajaw 2010” utilized
an alternative spelling of the indigenous pageant’s title. YouTube user “guatetodd”
posted the clip, which received approximately 6,000 views and just one comment:
“Nuestras Tradiciones… [Our Traditions…],” possibly indicating pride taken in the
event. The user “guatetodd” has just five videos associated with his account, one of
which shows him speaking to the camera and reveals that he is a white, western man
speaking English, likely American. While the identity of the author of this clip does not
necessarily change its visual narrative, the pictures and footage that were included and
emphasized were the choice of “guatetodd,” a man occupying what is arguably the
greatest position of social power: a western, white man. The authorship of this video
shows the transnational proliferation of images, as many of the people consuming this
content may not be Guatemalan and the images presented were chosen through the filter
of a western gaze. Moreover, the author’s misspelling of Spanish words and incorrect
tendency to capitalize every word in Spanish titles signal his distance from the material.
Finally, contestants dance on stage, sometimes accompanied by men carrying
balloons, knick-knacks, or cotton candy for sale, dancing around the women. It is unclear
whether the men are indigenous or ladino, but they are dressed in festive white and red
outfits with straw hats. The announcers introduce the event and its contestants and
announcements continue as five contestants dance on stage with five men, sometimes in a
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circle, sometimes as a couple, and sometimes facing each other in gender-segregated
groups. As a result of the video’s poor audio quality, it is difficult to hear the
announcers. Behind the dancers in the doorway of the building backdrop, either the
outgoing or the current winner of the pageant sits on a throne watching. The video then
switches to her making an impassioned speech in an indigenous language and the camera
switches to focus on the crowd on the bleachers and a black and white projection of the
contestant making her speech in Spanish. Next to the screen showing the speech is a
large, inflated, red Coca-Cola bottle. The presence of an ostentatious Coca-Cola
advertisement is perhaps one of the most salient parts of the video and most certainly
indicates a strong transnational economic influence in the “authentic” indigenous
pageant. Even with all of the indigenous elements in the video, whether authentically
indigenous or not, visual evidence of Coca-Cola’s corporate sponsorship is one of the
most powerful images and signals significant transnational influence in the economy and
affairs of Guatemala today.
Once again, the video switches to a silent slideshow of photos from the event.
Finally, the clip returns to the video of the stage, with the outgoing or incoming queen
seated at her throne as men in dark but embellished costumes dance around the stage.
Looking closer, one can see that the men are wearing masks that look like monkeys and
carrying maracas. They dance towards a gathering of contestants on the left of the stage,
about whom the announcers are presumably speaking. As the video transitions, a title
screen reads: "Una Ceremonia Para Maximom[sic] [A Ceremony for the Maximum]."
A silent picture of the stage is followed by a very blurred video, filmed from far away, of
the stage and the contestants progressing across it in a rhythmic dance as the outgoing
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queen sits on her throne in the background. A dark figure with an unspecific gender
ceremoniously waves a canister of smoke around the center of the stage. There are no
announcements at this time and it is unclear what the mood of this ceremony is.
The screen changes again to show two men dressed in what looks like peasant
clothes, carrying heavy baskets of produce on their backs comically across the stage,
often losing control of their load in an exaggerated way and miming things that make the
audience laugh. All of these activities are accompanied by festive music and some
candlelight from a few contestants holding candles. Towards the end of this, there are
three men tending to a fallen "peasant." Several of the women kneel, looking on with
supposed concern. Clearly, the concern is rehearsed, but it does not seem to be in an
intentionally funny way.
Signifying the final transition of the clip, the screen reads “La Fase Fnal[sic] y la
Eleccion[sic] de la Nueva Rabin Ajaw/!Felicitaciones a Sara Dalila Mux Mux de San
Juan Comalapa, Chimaltenango! [The Final Phase and the Election of the New Rabin
Ajaw/Congratulations to Sara Dalila Mux Mux of San Juan Comalapa,Chimaltenango!]”
The text is followed by a picture of the crowd of contestants and a picture of the
incoming queen being crowned and a final screen that reads “Film by Todd Andrews.”
The mix of Spanish, albeit often incorrect Spanish, and English calls the video’s intended
audience into serious question. Is this a video for international consumption?
Miss World
Posted by “Geovanni Méndez Prera,” the video “Monique Aparicio - Miss World
2012 Guatemala” would best be categorized as a fan video. The video obtained over 2,000
views and eight comments, which were all in Spanish and mainly referenced the
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candidate’s ability to win in the competition. Beginning with a slide introducing the
candidate in text, the video, interestingly enough, is set to a song by American pop star
Pink. Of course, the video was not sponsored by any representative of the western music
industry, but the mere presence of it within the clip is instrumental. The utilization of a
western pop star’s music in a fan video praising the representative of Guatemala speaks
volumes about the transnational nature of the world’s economy and culture today as well
as the possible anticipation of the international gaze.
Western Female Beauty
Señorita Monja Blanca
Towards the end of the clip “Nuestra Belleza Monja Blanca 2010: Segunda y
Primera Finalistas,” five finalists stand proudly on the stage on either side of a woman in
an evening gown, sash, and tiara, who it seems safe to assume is the winner from the
previous year. The body language of the finalists is rather stilted and clearly planned,
standing with their bodies carefully angled towards the audience and hands on their hips,
each with a classic beauty-queen smile plastered to her face. As with each of the other
videos covering the ladina pageant, each of the contestants is thin, relatively fair-skinned,
and what is considered beautiful in western societies.
Another woman, clearly not a contestant or previous winner due to her uniform of
a blouse and slacks, comes up to each finalist as they are announced and presents them
with an envelope, pausing to pose with the finalist for photographs taken from the audience.
Throughout this process, the crowd cheers incessantly, and despite the on-stage
announcers’ signals for the crowd to settle down, the audience continues unabated, even
using air horns at one point when a finalist is announced. The crowd’s unstifled enthusiasm
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is one of great unity and pride. After the announcement of each finalist and their posing
for the camera, they walk to the front of the stage and wave to the audience.
The YouTube user “Mynor David Cú Oxom” posted a ladina pageant video
entitled “Nuestra Belleza Monja Blanca 2010-2011: Shaylla Michelle Zamora.” This
next video clip, with approximately 4,000 views, showed a crowning ceremony for the
final winner of the Señorita Monja Blanca contest. Just as before, the on-stage
announcers read the results over the loudspeaker for the rowdy audience, but the poor
audio in the video recording makes it nearly impossible to understand the
announcements. The three finalists chosen in the previous video stand at the front of the
stage, holding hands, each with a number pinned to her gown. They smile, posing for the
crowd, still very aware of their posture and movements. All three women are thin, wear
western style evening gowns with makeup, jewelry, and their hair perfectly coiffed. Any
indigenous physiognomy is absent from the women; while not necessarily Caucasian, the
women have similar western or European-looking appearances. Here, the transnational
influence of western beauty norms and norms of performing appropriate femininity are
apparent. Moreover, the contestants seem to be groomed for an international audience.
That is, they have no physical qualities that strongly distinguish them from other white,
western beauty queens, and thus constitute an acceptable representation of difference –
something digestible for the international audience of the Miss World pageant at which
one of the contestants will later compete.
Covering the same 2010 ladina pageant, the clip “coban.mp4” had a mere 540
views, no comments, and was posted by the username “Alex Galvez,” whose profile had
a total of 130 videos posted online, mostly from all levels of beauty pageants. To my
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surprise, this video too was of very poor quality with muffled sound that prevented the
interpretation of dialogue. Galvez’s clip shows the train backdrop more clearly, revealing
that it reads: "Ferro-carril Verapaz [Verapaz Railroad].” One beauty queen is helped
onto the stage by a man in a suit and the woman parades and poses across the stage,
waving occasionally, and constantly smiling as an unseen woman announces facts about
her, such as her interests and her age (19). The pageant contestant then gives a brief
speech in Spanish at a microphone, addressing the crowd. Still, it is too difficult to
decipher the content of her speech due to the poor audio/video quality of the YouTube
clip. As with the first two clips of the 2010 ladina pageant, Galvez’s clip reinforces the
assessment that this production is highly westernized. The professional sound and
lighting evident at the pageant itself, the western appearance of the beauty queen, and the
format of the production all mimic western beauty pageants such as Miss America.
Among YouTube user Alex Galvez’s collection was a clip entitled “Señorita
Monja Blanca 2012 - Traje de Baño [Miss White Nun 2012 – Swimsuit],” which detailed
the swimsuit portion of the competition. While Galvez’s clip of the crowning ceremony
in 2010 had only 540 views, the swimsuit segment of the pageant had approximately
1,600 views. Perhaps the pageant’s focus on physical beauty contributed to the greater
interest in viewing the women in bathing suits. Again, the audio/video quality of the clip
was poor, but this time it seemed to come not from the audience but from a television
screen, as was evident by the text display of each contestant’s name and home location as
they walked across the stage. Nevertheless, the visuals were informative. Beginning
with a shot of the contestants jutting one hip out, hands on hips, backs facing the
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audience, the clip shows that each contestant is wearing a one piece bathing suit with a
sarong around her waist.
When the contestants are called to parade individually across the stage, they each
turn around and take off the sarong, revealing a number pinned to their hip. The onepiece bathing suit is surprisingly modest, consisting of a halter-top that covers the
women’s cleavage, but all of the contestants have their hair done and sport jewelry and
stiletto high-heels. All of the women wear the same style swimsuit, with two different
color variations. An American pop song plays in the background, in English despite the
pageant’s dominant language of Spanish, as each contestant parades proudly across the
stage, posing at times and smiling at the audience. A male and female announcer behind
a podium onstage read the contestants’ information out as each sashays the length of the
stage, flirting with the audience.
Miss World
As was the case with clips from other years of the Miss World pageant, it was quite
difficult to obtain material specifically about Guatemala and their position within the
competition. However, a fan video entitled “Miss World 2010 Guatemala” was rather
illustrative. The video was posted by user “Alex Galvez,” the same source as a video I
utilized to investigate the 2010 Señorita Monja Blanca contest. Garnering about 1,000
views and four comments about her beauty, the video introduced Miss Guatemala, who
served as representative for Guatemala in the 2010 Miss World pageant.
The
video
begins with a title slide showing logos of the Miss World pageant, the contestant's name,
the location of Sanya, China, and symbols of Guatemala. Structured as a sort of tribute to
the 2010 contestant, the clip is set to instrumental music and features both pictures and
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portions of video highlighting the Guatemalan contestant’s beauty. Clips reveal her
sauntering in a bikini, strolling along the Great Wall of China with other Miss World
contestants, wearing a pageant crown and holding flowers, wearing a pageant sash, and
looking out of a hotel window with other contestants. Much of the footage included in the
montage was clearly taken from promotional material produced by the Miss World pageant
itself, not personal footage garnered by “Alex Galvez.” This fact is made definitively clear
by the distinction between the professional video quality of the Miss World clips and its
strong focus on groups of contestants as opposed to the grainy, unprofessional video that
the YouTube user posted from the ladina pageant in Cobán.
Characterized by their stilted, posed nature, all of the photos displayed in the tribute
were noticeably created with the contestant’s awareness of a gaze being thrust upon her.
While all photos evidenced cognizance of the western male gaze due to their adherence to
western standards of feminine beauty, some were with awareness of a national audience
and others with awareness of an international audience. There were multiple photos of the
contestant in revealing bikinis as well as other beauty shots typical of western pageants.
Throughout the video there were pictures of the contestant in a tiara and holding flowers,
sometimes with a sash adorned with “Miss Mundo[World] Guatemala.” These particular
photos were not candid shots of her winning a ladino pageant in Guatemala, but rather
posed productions for both the national audience of Guatemala, whom she represents, and
for the international audience to whom she caters in the Miss World competition.
Although the data I obtained covered a limited amount of material and a small
snapshot of all three beauty pageants, when considered in the context of the literature I
have reviewed, it is indeed useful. The 18 YouTube clips I examined reveal a great deal
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not only about the nature of the ladina and indigenous pageants within Guatemala and their
involvement in nation-building efforts and supposed multicultural celebration, but also
about how Guatemala uses female representations of the nation to distance itself from its
colonial past and signify modernity and legitimacy in the new global order. All of these
findings communicate deeper conclusions regarding the very political nature of beauty.
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VI.
CONCLUSION
My research has supported the claims of many scholars like Cohen, Wilk, and
Stoeltje that conceptions of beauty are implicated with a great deal of power, particularly
when examined in the context of the intersection of race, class, and nationality. The ladina,
indigenous, and Miss World contests do not exist in isolation, ignorant of their counterpart
competitions and audiences. Alternatively, each contest evidences acute attention to issues
of presenting cohesive, authentic cultures and national identities to both their national and
international audiences. Hendrickson notes the individual agendas of the ladina and
indigenous pageants in Guatemala, remarking upon the image of national unity that both
pageants strive to create by both donning traje típico, despite the obvious denigration of
indigenous culture and people within Guatemala. My findings certainly indicated the aim
of both pageants to portray national unity, but I recognized a distinction between the
particular goals of the ladina and indigenous pageants.
In one video of the Rabín Ahau pageant, the announcer stated that “they all”
appreciated and valued this sort of activity. Whether this comment referred to the citizens
in attendance of the event or served as a broader, sweeping statement of Guatemalan
support of the activity across the board, this statement quite clearly intended to produce a
sentiment of national unity, whether it was apparent in the pageant or not. Similarly, in the
commercial video advertising the Rabín Ahau pageant, the announcer professed that “we”
would elect the new indigenous queen at the pageant. The use of “we” was most definitely
a rhetorical strategy used to depict a sense of unity within the nation, or at least a sense of
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community support for the event. Claiming that this use of “we” was a rhetorical strategy
is a strong declaration indeed, but I feel that it is supported by the continued use of the
pronoun in the commercial. Later, the announcer says “We wait for you,” which, as stated
earlier, emphasizes the importance of community to the event and constructs a sense of
unity. The nation-building efforts of the indigenous pageant seem to be nation-building
efforts for ladinos. Mayas generally do not identify with the nation, so it seems highly
unlikely that the unifying purposes of the indigenous pageant would be aimed towards or
affect them. Additionally, the indigenous people that benefit from this event are indios
permitidos, who do not, as Hale reflected, truly benefit in any concrete way from symbolic
displays of multiculturalism.
On the other hand, my findings from the ladina pageant seemed to focus more so
on sisterhood than on national unity. The commercial for the ladina pageant did not
emphasize national unity in the way that the commercial for the indigenous pageant did.
On the contrary, it emphasized the physical beauty of the contestants and lured attendees
by mentioning that the pageant was a date with beauty. Instead, clips of the ladina pageant
proved the pageant and its contestants’ dedication to appearances of sisterhood and unity.
Like all beauty pageants, the ladina pageant is of a competitive nature, but in every possible
instance, sisterhood was stressed.
The congenial nature of interactions between
contestants, the contestants holding hands while waiting for placement results, the
unwavering smiles and congratulations exchanged among the women, and the overall air
of friendship cultivated through the narrative of the video clips all spoke to this accent on
sisterhood. Such a stress on unity through sisterhood and congenial communication among
contestants makes sense at this level of competition, because the winning contestant from
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this pageant advances to the Miss World pageant, where congeniality and sisterhood are
key.
Balogun highlights the importance of class in the purposes of different pageants,
such as the efforts of the Nigerian middle class to unite the nation and the work of the
Nigerian elites to create a modern, digestible representation of Nigeria for an international
audience. Within Guatemala, the lower socioeconomic class of the Mayas, while not
necessarily uniting the nation, helps prop up the image that Guatemala is indeed
postcolonial through their pageant endeavors. It is important not to oversimplify the Mayas
as simply being of a lower socioeconomic status. Alternatively, the social landscape of
Guatemala is quite complicated; the indigenous population is characterized by an intricate
mix of race, ethnicity, and class. Since the times of Spanish colonialism, the indigenous
people of Guatemala have been subjugated and submitted to unjust treatment,
discrimination, violence, and even genocide. This legacy has continued into the modern,
neocolonial era in which the ladinos with more Spanish blood continue to look down upon
and mistreat the Mayas.
However, as Peláez stressed, it is imperative to recall that there are class
complexities within both indigenous populations and ladino populations. Even further, it
is critical to be cognizant of the fact that ladinos are sometimes unjustly grouped as the
unified adversary of the Mayas and that they have always enjoyed a higher quality of life
and greater social and political freedoms. Ladinos too, Peláez reminds us, have suffered
injustices and cruelty at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, to the cruelty of the
Guatemalan government at times, all the way to the neocolonial invasion of the United
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States into the affairs of the nation. As in all feminist analyses, it is extremely important
not to generalize or essentialize any group.
The celebration of indigenous culture through the Rabín Ahau pageant is often
falsely interpreted as indicating the lack of social strife between ladino and indigenous
populations. Instead, Guatemala is a nation that celebrates its unique indigenous culture
when it is convenient- an indigenous culture, no doubt, that is key to attracting international
tourists for consumption. In fact, the commercial for the indigenous pageant unabashedly
lists the sponsors for the event, which happen to include the Instituto Guatamalteco de
Turismo [Institute of Guatemalan Tourism]. Here, the indigenous pageant, organized by
both ladinos and indigenous contributors, does not even attempt to mask the truth that even
its most “authentic” display of Mayan culture is done in efforts to bolster Guatemala’s
economy through tourism.
Of course, the attraction to Guatemala that tourism efforts engender is coupled with
an attraction to the beautiful Guatemalan women seen on the global stage of the Miss World
pageant, passing as white, at least in Ahmed’s sense of what white bodies can do and the
spaces in which they belong. Passing as such, the women can be viewed as moral,
intelligent, and respectable. Any sense of national unity created through these efforts is
only a façade of unity on the part of ladinos; indigenous populations remain in isolated,
rural communities and identify not with the nation of Guatemala but with these isolated
communities. In reality, Guatemala remains a fragmented state, divided by great social
and economic disparity. From the perspective of a nation struggling to recover from a past
of colonialism, social strife, and poverty, it is important to present a unified front.
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Authenticity has remained an issue of much contention throughout my investigation
of the ladina, indigenous, and Miss World beauty pageants. Nations of the global south
such as Guatemala must verify their authenticity to a western audience at the Miss World
pageant, pointing to their internalization of tourist perceptions of authenticity, which
indicates a great global power imbalance. Of course, it is impossible to determine who
should decide what qualifies as authentic, but in national efforts to present an authentic
culture to the world, it appears as though the judges of authenticity remain the western,
hegemonic global powers like the United States. Nations such as Guatemala have fought
against their colonial and sometimes neocolonial conquerors, but in their efforts to present
a unified, authentic culture, they appeal to the western gaze, once more submitting to the
hegemony of the global north. Internal social strife between ladinos and Mayas in
Guatemala reveal that the negative effects of Spanish colonialism strongly persist. In this
sense, any identifications of Guatemala as a postcolonial nation are premature. There may
be an outward celebration of multiculturalism through events such as the Rabín Ahau
contest, but this celebration is taking place in an environment in which the western gaze
remains hegemonic and the legacy of cruel colonialism reigns supreme.
Indeed, the presence of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola at both the
ladina and the indigenous pageants communicate the United States’ continued grasp on the
Guatemalan economy, posing as a significant deterrent to the nation’s true sovereignty.
Furthermore, the presence of western culture in the ladina pageant clips from 2010-2013
demonstrate not only the transnational proliferation of cultural elements such as American
pop music and the structure of western beauty pageants incorporated in the ladina pageant,
but also what I would argue are western beauty norms, as Banet-Weiser has noted.
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The
evening gowns, cosmetics, jewelry, and general physical appearance of the ladina
contestants mirrored that of contestants in western pageants such as Miss America.
Although their skin might be a bit darker than a Caucasian contestant, it was clear that these
women were, in a way, passing as white. These efforts allow Miss Guatemala to be
comfortably inserted into the Miss World contest as they are both digestible and appealing
to an international audience dominated by world hegemons of the global north.
At the same time, I agree with Wilk’s assertion that contests such as Miss World
motivate nations to display not one same western image, but particular kinds of difference
in the same way. In the Dances of the World clip from the Miss World pageant, Guatemala,
along with every other participating nation, represented the culture of their nation in a
simplified, often sexualized manner through costume and dance.
Expressing their
difference in a manner that adhered to western beauty norms and was intelligible to a
western audience, members of each nation’s elite expressed their national identity in
Dances of the World, undeniably borrowing cultural elements that did not belong to them.
It is even more curious that the Mayan culture is used as a signifier of Guatemala as a
nation when the Mayas themselves identify with local communities, not with the nation
state.
The Guatemalan contestant at the 2013 Miss World contest serves as a prime
example of the way in which the nation exhibits just enough difference to add local flavor
for identification but all other differences are flattened in order to fit in with the western
norms that shape the competition. In this way, she satisfies Wilk’s idea of portraying a
particular kind of difference as well as Banet-Weiser’s claim that differences such as race
are often blurred. She is thin, beautiful by western standards, and exhibits European
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features. Moreover, this contestant fails to show any mark of Guatemala’s poverty; she is
educated, speaks four languages, and is an interior designer.
Even more, she is a
professional hip-hop dancer – a genre that most certainly did not originate in Guatemala.
In fact, Miss Guatemala can be so comfortably inserted into the international
competition that it is hard to distinguish her from the other contestants, until, that is, Mayan
culture makes its presence known. In her video introduction, the contestant wanders
through a street market while reflecting tenderly upon her national pride. She mentions
the rich history of Guatemala and its indigenous culture, admiring “authentic” indigenous
artwork and crafts sold in a street vendor, even trying on traje típico. All of this admiration
is done with great levity and zero attention paid to the superior political and social position
that the contestant occupies within the nation, one that is superior because of the inferior
treatment of the Mayan people’s culture she claims as her own. This particular scene in
her video introduction is rendered even more exploitive when considered in conjunction
with Nimatuj’s assessment of the ways in which the Guatemalan elite have themselves
folklorized Mayan culture. The Guatemalan government has sold elements of Mayan
culture for their own political and economic benefit while the artists that created the
artwork receive no recognition or fair compensation for their efforts, often left to lowpaying work or even to begging in the streets for survival. This particular video clip of
Miss Guatemala trivializing Mayan culture with zero recognition of their lived realities
further supports the recurring theme that ladinos celebrate Mayan culture when, and only
when, it is convenient or useful for them. Even more, this practice occurs not just on a
national level, but on an international level as well when Guatemalan consulates and
embassies use the images of Mayan women and their artwork to present a national culture
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to their international audience. Clearly, the exploitation and misappropriation of Mayan
culture is not isolated to beauty pageants.
In a similar manner, the clip of the Guatemalan contestant for Miss World’s
philanthropic initiative ignores rather than borrows indigenous culture because in that
situation it proves useless to her. In this video, the Guatemalan contestant for Miss World
discusses the chronic malnutrition that plagues Guatemala, particularly its children. She
says she feels motivated to help end this chronic malnutrition because she considers all
Guatemalans to be her family, but she conveniently fails to address the fact that the
indigenous communities in Guatemala suffer extreme poverty and chronic malnutrition at
even greater rates than ladinos. Here, it is inconvenient for ladinos to acknowledge the
indigenous culture, put in a position of poverty by Spanish colonists and kept there by later
ladino participation in the exclusion and denigration of Mayas in Guatemala.
Wilk’s assertion compliments that of Banet-Weiser when she states that
international competitions like Miss World invest in the portrayal of a global sisterhood
where the imbalance of political and economic power resulting from globalization is
glossed over. In so doing, differences are not only obscured, but a unitary femininity is
created that is, of course, artificial. Promotional material from the Miss World pageant
showed Miss Guatemala laughing and gallivanting with contestants from all over the
world, many of whom enjoy far greater economic prosperity and political power than the
citizens of Guatemala. The narrative that the Miss World pageant creates is the same
observed by Neville Hoad; the Miss World pageant creates a false sense of equality and
an artificial, level playing field in which any nation can triumphantly win. Yet, any
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nation cannot truly win as there is gross economic inequity across the world as a result of
globalization and the monopoly that western, transnational companies enjoy.
In the romantic setting of the Miss World pageant, Guatemala could easily win
against a global superpower such as the United States. In reality, however, the
postcolonial state of Guatemala would be at a great disadvantage, having been ravaged by
Spanish colonialism that created political and social strife between and among ladinos
and Mayas. Guatemala is even further fragmented by the intervention of the United
States in its political affairs and manipulation of its elite to gain economic control over
the nation’s natural resources, as the United Fruit Company did. To put it candidly, there
is no unity, no sisterhood, and no equality between the United States and Guatemala,
however much the Miss World pageant would like to convince us that it is so.
Similarly, Guatemala adheres to Hoad’s theory of the illusion of a level playing
field that is created in international pageants like Miss World. On a national scale, there
is also a lack of unity, sisterhood, and equality between the ladinos and the Mayas in
Guatemala. In one of the clips covering the 2013 Rabín Ahau contest, after the incoming
Rabín Ahau queen has been announced, two ladina queens in sashes and tiaras walk
onstage to talk to and congratulate the indigenous contestants. On the other hand, there is
never any presence of indigenous queens at the ladina pageant. Of course, the ladina
queens’ presence is intended to signal unity between two clashing social groups, but it is
done so in a way that is almost condescending, signaling the social hierarchy that actually
exists. Generally, there is no unity and sisterhood between these two social groups in
day-to-day life in Guatemala. Yet, since the Rabín Ahau contest has strong motives to
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promote national unity and tourism alike, it makes sense to provide a visual of the two
groups “playing nice.”
In the above video, the atypical, educated, bilingual contestants of the Rabín Ahau
contest are regarded as indios permitidos, per Hale’s conception. In a sanitized, careful
way, the Mayan women competing in the pageant are able to display their “authentic”
culture and celebrate their indigenous identity. These actions are not prohibited because
not only are the indigenous contestants doing so in a way that is convenient to ladinos
because it serves to unify the nation and show that Guatemala celebrates
multiculturalism, but this watered down form of “indigenous activism” or celebration of
Mayan culture does not offend the two principles that Hale outlined when describing
what indios permitidos were allowed to do. This exercise of indigenous rights did not
“violate the integrity of the productive regime”; instead, it actually contributed to it by
advertising draws for tourists. Second, the activities within the pageant did not “amass
enough power to call basic state prerogatives into question.” In practice, it was a safe,
digestible display of indigenous culture for the mixed audience of the Guatemalan nation.
Throughout this thesis, authenticity has been a difficult concept to pin down.
Determining what is authentic seems impossible at times. As in the previous paragraph,
authenticity is often seen as a negative and essentializing force, many times connected to
western hegemony. Certainly, the social constructedness of authenticity and its various
interpretations are problematic. Yet, it is important to heed Van de Port’s warnings to not
excessively stress the social constructedness of authenticity or the authenticity of certain
cultural productions. Just because something may be a social construction does not mean
that it has no consequence. I assert that strengthening indigenous agency in defining their
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own version of authenticity is a positive use of the concept. The indigenous pageant is an
institution constructed by ladinos and indios permitidos, and it represents very atypical
Mayan women. In this sense, it seems to be another negative manifestation of
“authenticity.”
Throughout this investigation, I have striven to adhere to the principles of
feminist research outlined in the Method and Data section of this thesis. I have
endeavored to treat the research subjects as people with intersecting vectors of identity,
subjects highly influenced by the contexts within which they operate, and not objects for
strictly positivist research. As a feminist researcher, it is important not only to analyze
the content of my research, but also to do so with the aim of bettering society in some
way. Determining the most prudent suggestion for change was challenging. It is difficult
to try to combat centuries of oppression within Guatemala. I do advocate sensitive
attention to intersectionality, calling upon all future researchers to consider an
individual’s affiliation with the nation state, ethnicity, and class within traditional class
distinctions. Affiliation with a nation state, both present and past, race, ethnicity, and
social class are all demographics that should not be compartmentalized. However,
research by individuals like Balogun signal that feminist investigation is already trending
towards this sensitive intersectional analysis.
I believe that my research has a moderate degree of generalizability. The
sampling of videos from different pageants, different years, and different YouTube users,
coupled with the analysis of the number of views each clip received and relevant
commentary speak to a sensitivity to context that I think is essential to the
generalizability of research findings. Given this, my research indicates a lack of
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authenticity in the ladina, indigenous, and Miss World pageants. Hale’s ideas regarding
the indio permitido have caused me to question the potential good of allowing certain
atypical representatives to enjoy particular privileges that are determined and curtailed by
the ladino elite. These efforts allow the Mayan elite to become spokespeople for the
Mayas that are not indios permitidos, which distances public representations of
Guatemalan indigenous culture from the lived reality of the indigenous population. The
only privileges granted through the Rabín Ahau pageant are carefully constructed cultural
representations, while actual political and social power remains out of reach for most
Mayas. Still, I am unsure if it is better to maintain the pseudo-authentic tradition of the
Rabín Ahau pageant or abolish it altogether, rendering the Mayas even more invisible in
Guatemalan society.
Further, while I condemn the misappropriation of indigenous culture by ladina
contestants in the Señorita Monja Blanca and Miss World pageants, I cannot determine
the best course of action to mitigate this exploitation, despite determining that there are
negative social implications for these actions. The one suggestion I do want to make,
though, is that Nimatuj’s proposal of including indigenous communities in the tourism
industry be taken much more seriously. Of course, I cannot predict what effects this
course of action would have on the pageants within Guatemala and abroad, but I think
that engaging the Mayas in tourism would enhance their sense of agency while bolstering
the economy, which I feel can only lead to positive outcomes. In this course of action,
indigenous populations would engage more with the rest of Guatemalan society and be
able to take ownership for their craftsmanship, while also enjoying the economic benefits
that would accompany its sale. A joint effort by ladinos and Mayas would only benefit
98
the nation as a whole. Of course, the only concrete way to implement this idea would be
through governmental action on the part of Guatemala. Granted, suggesting this policy
from my standpoint as a United States citizen is somewhat problematic. Finally, as with
the application of any new policy, establishing this practice would require even greater
knowledge of the politics and culture of Guatemala, which is knowledge that I do not
possess. In any case, I advocate further research into the feasibility of this suggestion so
that it can be implemented to best serve the women and men of Guatemala, no matter
their ethnicity.
99
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