The first black Miss Colombia and the limits of multiculturalism

Abstract

ABSTRACTTen years after the 1991 Constitution recognized Colombia’s ethnic diversity, the National Beauty Pageant crowned Vanessa Mendoza, the first black beauty queen in the pageant’s 65-year history. Mendoza won the 2001 crown as the representative of the Chocó, one of Colombia’s poorest and predominantly black departments. In this paper, I draw from critiques of neoliberal multiculturalism to discuss the terms under which a black queen was understood to represent Colombia. Drawing from pageant documents and the national press, I analyze how pageant affiliates, Mendoza supporters, and Mendoza herself understood the pageant victory. Mendoza supporters debated the race of the queen and whether she represented a mestizo or multicultural nation. Journalists and pageant affiliates reconfigured racial hierarchies and upheld Mendoza’s victory as proof of the absence of racism. In contrast, a group of journalists and academics used ideals of multicultural diversity and regional solidarity to emphasize the persistence of racial and regional inequalities. As a beauty queen and later aspiring black politician, Mendoza often reinforced the neoliberal logic of multicultural spaces.