Election de Reina

One of the youth, America, invited me to the last day of her technical school before the holiday vacation for the Election de Reina ceremony (reina means queen). Picture a mix between prom and a quinceñera party, with hundreds of screaming teenagers in a tight semicircle around a stage. A panel of judges sitting behind a table in front of the stage. Entering stage left in a cloud of gasoline fumes is a scantily clad teenage beauty on a motorcycle behind a macho-looking guy, wearing a black t-shirt, jeans and sunglasses. Reggaeton music is blasting from huge speakers set up in the front, and a dozen girls dressed in shiny black pants and florescent colored shirts with sequins are doing a choreographed dance with an equal number of guys. The dance involves lots of shaking, thrusting, shimmying and slapping (if you´ve ever watched reggaeton music videos, you´ll understand what I´m talking about). The queen, dancing in the middle is lifted into the air repeatedly by 3 of the guys to the screeches of her compañeras who elected her as their candidate. When she wins, she smiles and waves continuously at the crowd who are chanting her name SARAH, SARAH, SARAH. This was the final presentation of 5, which became subsequently more dramatic. At the end, each candidate gave a speech while standing coquetishly with a hand on her thrust-out hip. Idolatry of the beauty queen. America told me that they elected Sarah party because of her white skin. All of the students had a blast and it seemed like the girls put a lot of planning into their presentations. I felt like I was watching American Idol on Telemundo (have you ever seen those shows from Mexico that go on for hours??) Maybe I won´t give my rant about beauty contests here, and appreciate that the youth were just celebrating the end of the year and having fun (I also won´t deny that I loved the dancing!!)