Miss Ibarra

Saturday night was the Miss Ibarra Pageant, and oh what a glorious event it was. Because it started at 7pm and lasted until midnight…I didn´t even stay for the talent/bathing suit/evening gown/weep and wave crowning action. But what I did stay for was really quite fantastic. It began with a series of dance numbers that lasted at least an hour. The nine contestants, bless their hearts, had surprisingly no rhythm whatsoever. My dance class and I were more in sync as 6 year olds doing the running man. But my favorite part was the obvious star of the dance program….some random tall lanky dude. Apparently he is the choreographer. I can only gather that they included him because he distracted everyone with his hip writhing stamina. I mean…it was just so weird! I thought these things were supposed to be about the girls! But there was this crazy guy on stage! If there wasn’t such gender discrimination in the world of pageants I´m sure they would have crowned him. Meanwhile in the crowd, in pure Ecuadorian style, there are people selling things. Water, cola, chips and…glowing devil horns?

Oh yes...they were a hit.

After the dancing it started to get kind of rough. It was like 9:30 and we had only seen the girls enthusiastically introduce themselves. So we decided to leave to meet up with some friends…unfortunately we missed the very end. Apparently it was pretty controversial because…a black girl won. People were pissed! Racism is alive and well in Ecuador. I saw my host mom and the first thing she said was, ¨La ciudad perdio su identidad! Gano una morena!¨ Translated that means…the city lost its identity! A black girl won! And the fact that she used ¨morena¨ makes her statement even more racist, because it’s a derogatory term here even though everyone still uses it. And, it seems a little weird to say the city lost its identity given the large Afro Ecuadorian population in Ibarra. It really kind of irritated me. But I´ve found so far that when I try to politely call people out on their racism they just speak to me like I´m a naive gringa who doesn’t really understand how bad black people are. Whatever. I guess with time I´ll figure out how to be more diplomatic when it comes to that conversation.