In what has felt like a script from a tv drama, the authoritarian authorities claimed that the director of the Miss Nicaragua contest, which had chosen Ms. Palacios to signify the nation on the world competitors, was a part of an “anti-patriotic conspiracy” to overthrow President Daniel Ortega and his spouse, Vice President Rosario Murillo.
Each the director, Karen Celebertti, and Ms. Palacios, 23, had taken half in giant anti-government protests in 2018 that the Ortega authorities seen as a problem to its rule and which led to a brutal crackdown. Ms. Celebertti’s husband, Martín Argüello, was additionally concerned within the 2018 protests.
President Ortega’s daughter-in-law, Xiomara Blandino, a former Miss Nicaragua and a former Miss Universe finalist, had criticized Ms. Celebertti’s group final month, earlier than Ms. Palacios’s triumph.
Because the Miss Universe competitors in El Salvador, Ms. Celebertti’s husband and son have been arrested, mentioned an individual near the household who requested to stay nameless for concern of additionally being detained. Ms. Celebertti, who had been in El Salvador, was not allowed again into Nicaragua along with her daughter and, whereas stranded in Mexico, she resigned from her put up this previous Monday, after 23 years within the job.
These related to Ms. Palacios and the Miss Nicaragua group are the newest, if maybe essentially the most uncommon, targets of the Nicaraguan authorities’s marketing campaign towards its opponents. It has arrested or expelled political rivals and charity teams, Roman Catholic bishops and nuns, writers and poets, musicians and journalists.