Claudia Moncada adjusted her yellow dress one last time to show off her curves. In a few minutes she was to take part in a beauty contest with a difference: the contenders for the crown have been convicted of murder, robbery and drug trafficking.
For the past 15 years every September, Colombian prison authorities let their hair down, and let female inmates let theirs down, too. To mark the celebration of the Holy Virgin in this heavily Roman Catholic country, inmates hold concerts and — in a beauty obsessed country — pageants.
“In Colombia there are beauty contests everywhere, it’s part of our culture,” said Teresa Moya, the director of Colombia’s prisons, explaining the decision to hold the pageant.
PHOTO: AFP
For inmates it is certainly a welcome respite from the difficulties of day-to-day life behind bars.
“It is an opportunity to forget all the pain and sadness of the prison. Today the food is better, the guards are nice and all the girls are happy,” said 30-year-old Moncada, who has spent two years in prison but refuses to reveal what her crime was.
“Sorry darling, I haven’t got any foundation for your legs!” shouted someone in one of the two bustling salons in the Buen Pastor prison, Bogota, where Moncada has two more years to serve.
The outburst came from Alfonso Llano, a professional hairdresser better known as “Pocho,” who said he helped out because the contestants are “decent and generous girls, who once made a mistake.
“They show me lots of affection and I treat them as I would any model,” he said with emotion.
Claudia Moncada was nervous. She was representing Section Four of the prison, one of only 16 prisoners out of 1,493 chosen to compete by their peers.
The other inmates were dressed in elegant white gowns lent to them by designers and they formed a cortege as the contestants were escorted to a podium in the prison yard.
When Claudia climbed the stairs, her comrades drowned her in confetti made from old magazines, shouting words of encouragement.
She kicked off proceedings, opening four hours of concerts, parades and even a moonwalk by foreign prisoners in homage to Michael Jackson.
Finally the jurors began their deliberations and the director of the prison stepped forward to announce the winner.
Claudia, like last year, was runner-up.
“It’s like that,” she said laconically, trying to contain her disappointment.
This year’s winner of the Buen Pastor — or Good Shepherd — crown is Sonia Vergara.
She is serving a five-year sentence for a high-profile kidnapping plot, in which she aided Carlos Ayala Saavedra, a European Commission official responsible for development projects in Colombia who had orchestrated his own disappearance for ransom money.
Gradually, the sense of joy evaporated into the prison’s flaking concrete walls and the girls returned to their cells.
“Thank you, Pocho,” whispered Ninfa, one of the participants, as she embraced the hairdresser.
With tears in his eyes Pocho held her in his arms and asked, “how long are you staying?”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not