When Sheynnis Alondra Palacios Cornejo stepped onto the stage at the Gimnasio Nacional José Adolfo Pineda in San Salvador on the evening of 18 November 2023, she was carrying more than a national costume. She was carrying the aspirations of a country that had not seen street celebrations since 2018, when mass protests against President Daniel Ortega’s government were crushed with lethal force, leaving over 320 dead. By the time R’Bonney Gabriel of the United States placed the crown on her head, Palacios had not only become the first Nicaraguan to win Miss Universe – she had, without saying a single overtly political word, become a lightning rod for dissent in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most repressive states.
The 72nd Miss Universe pageant, watched live across 190 countries via the Roku Channel and Telemundo, was notable for several reasons beyond the winner. It marked the first time since 1957 that married women and mothers were permitted to compete. Two transgender contestants appeared on the main stage. Jane Dipika Garrett of Nepal became the first plus-sized semi-finalist. But it was the figure from Managua – a 23-year-old mass communication graduate who had once sold buñuelos with her mother and grandmother to pay for university – who delivered the evening’s most resonant moment. And she did it by invoking an 18th-century British philosopher that most viewers had never heard of.
From Diriamba to the World Stage
Palacios was born on 30 May 2000 at Hospital Alemán Nicaragüense in Managua, but she grew up in Diriamba, a town in the Carazo Department known for its pottery and its annual festivals honouring San Sebastián. Her parents, Raquel Guadalupe Cornejo Pichardo and Édgar Arístides Palacios García, were not wealthy. To fund her education at La Salle Managua Pedagogical Institute, she and her mother made and sold buñuelos – fried dough balls – a fact that became public before the pageant and that regime-aligned media seized upon, with one television presenter labelling her “Miss Buñuelos” as a term of derision (Associated Press, 19 November 2023).
The bullying stung, but it also fed the narrative that would carry her to the crown. Palacios enrolled at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), a Jesuit institution in Managua, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mass communication in 2022. She played on the university’s varsity volleyball team. She also suffered from anxiety attacks, experiences that would later shape her advocacy. “When I was young, I went through episodes of anxiety that led me to hurt myself,” she told reporters during the Miss Universe press cycle, as quoted by Infobae (19 November 2023). That vulnerability became the foundation of Entiende tu mente (“Understand Your Mind”), a mental health awareness programme she hosted on Canal 11 in Nicaragua.
Her pageant career began early. At 16, she won Miss Teen Nicaragua 2016, then represented her country at Teen Universe 2017, reaching the top six. After a hiatus, she returned to win Miss World Nicaragua 2020, though the international Miss World competition was postponed twice due to COVID-19 before finally taking place in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in March 2022, where Palacios placed in the top 40. By the time she was crowned Miss Nicaragua 2023, she had accumulated more national titles than any other contestant in the country’s history.
The Final Question and Mary Wollstonecraft
The moment that sealed Palacios’s victory came during the final question-and-answer round. The judges asked: “If you could live one year in another woman’s shoes, who would you choose and why?” Palacios chose Mary Wollstonecraft, the English writer and philosopher best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), widely regarded as one of the founding texts of feminist thought.
“I would choose Mary Wollstonecraft because she opened the gap and gave an opportunity to many women,” Palacios responded, in a reply captured on the Miss Universe official broadcast and widely shared on social media. “And what I would do, I would want that income gap to open up so women could work in any area that they choose to work in, because there are no limitations for women. That was 1750. Now in 2023, we are making history.” (The exact date she cited – 1750 – is historically imprecise; Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 and published Vindication in 1792, but the gesture of linking Enlightenment-era feminism to contemporary women’s empowerment landed with the panel.)
It was a striking choice for a beauty pageant finale. Where competitors typically reach for safe, universalist answers about unity or perseverance, Palacios cited a radical thinker who argued that women’s perceived inferiority was the product of denied education, not nature. The answer signalled intellectual depth, but it also carried an undertow that Nicaraguans recognised immediately: Wollstonecraft’s work was, at its core, about dismantling systemic oppression. In a country where the UCA – Palacios’s own alma mater – had been shut down by the Ortega government and described as “a centre of terrorism,” the invocation of a philosopher who challenged the structures of her own era was difficult to read as apolitical.
A Blue-and-White Gown and the Flag That Was Banned
Palacios’s evening gown reinforced the reading. Designed in blue and white – the colours of the Nicaraguan flag – the crystal-embellished dress was interpreted by many observers as a deliberate reference to national identity in a context where displaying the flag had become an act of resistance. Since the 2018 crackdown, the blue-and-white flag had been adopted by the opposition as a symbol of defiance against the Ortega regime, and its public display had been effectively suppressed. As The Guardian reported on 2 December 2023: “Some Nicaraguans watching the Miss Universe ceremony saw Palacios’s outfit, with her white dress and blue cape, as a reference to the national flag that was banned after 2018.”
Her national costume, titled El Zanate, was designed by Jorge Salazar Caliz and drew on the Nicaraguan grackle (Quiscalus nicaraguensis), a bird endemic to the lakes of Nicaragua and northern Costa Rica. The black costume with iridescent accents represented, in the designer’s words, the idea that “in every adversity there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.” Ecologist Fabio Buitrago later described the zanate to Nicaraguan media as “a common and wild species – it eats whatever it can, adapts to any environment, and fights to survive.” The metaphor was not lost on a country where over 600,000 people have fled since 2018.
The Crowd, the Regime, and the Space Between
Palacios’s victory triggered something extraordinary in Managua. For the first time since the 2018 protests were violently suppressed, thousands of people took to the streets waving blue-and-white flags and singing the national anthem. “When Sheynnis won, people took to the streets with their national flags, singing the national anthem,” Elvira Cuadra, a Nicaraguan sociologist living in exile in Costa Rica, told The Guardian. “Since 2018, Nicaragua has lived in a police state.”
The regime’s response was confused and contradictory. Official media had mocked Palacios before the competition – the “Miss Buñuelos” epithet was just one example. But after her win, the government released a congratulatory statement, notably without the customary signatures of Ortega or his wife and vice-president, Rosario Murillo. Murillo then broadcast a speech warning of “coup plotters” planning “manufactured provocations” under the guise of celebration. A TikToker who defended Palacios against official criticism was detained. Two artists in the city of Estelí were forced by authorities to paint over a mural they had begun in her honour.
The crackdown extended to the pageant infrastructure itself. Karen Celebertti, director of the Miss Nicaragua franchise, was barred from re-entering Nicaragua after travelling to El Salvador. Her husband and son were reported missing on 29 November 2023, according to La Prensa. Celebertti had been accused by Ortega of conspiracy, a charge linked to her participation in the 2018 demonstrations – the same protests in which Palacios herself had taken part, as viral photographs from that period confirmed.
Human Rights Watch deputy director Juan Pappier described the regime’s posture as one of “paranoia, not weakness.” He told The Guardian: “More than 300 people have been stripped of their nationality. Half of the NGOs that existed have been shut down. And there are still more than 80 political prisoners behind bars.” The Universidad Centroamericana, where Palacios had studied, had been shuttered. Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, who refused deportation, had been sentenced to 26 years in prison. Nicaragua had completed its withdrawal from the Organisation of American States.
The Pageant’s Own Contradictions
Palacios’s win arrived at a moment of institutional crisis for the Miss Universe Organisation itself. As this publication has documented, the pageant’s subsequent editions have been mired in allegations of rigged judging, financial impropriety, and the quiet exodus of contestants who concluded that the crown was not worth the contract. In November 2025, the organisation faced accusations that the winner’s selection had been pre-determined by business connections between judges and the contestant’s family. The 72nd edition, however, had a different energy – partly because of the historic firsts (married women, transgender contestants, a plus-sized semi-finalist) and partly because Palacios’s story was genuinely compelling in ways that transcended the usual pageant narratives.
Her top three competitors illustrated the breadth of the field. Anntonia Porsild of Thailand, the first runner-up, cited Malala Yousafzai as her inspiration in the final round. Moraya Wilson of Australia placed second. The top five also included Camila Avella of Colombia – one of the first mothers to compete – and Karla Guilfú Acevedo of Puerto Rico. In a field of 84 contestants from countries and territories spanning every inhabited continent, the Central American representative emerged as the one whose story resonated beyond the arena.
A Reign Without a Homecoming
Three months after her victory, Palacios had still not returned to Nicaragua for a homecoming parade. The regime’s hostility made a return impossible. Instead, she visited Costa Rica in February 2024, where the Nicaraguan exile community – some 600,000 strong since 2018 – received her as a symbol of democratic hope. The OPA Television organisation, which holds the Miss Universe franchise in Costa Rica, described the visit as “an important occasion,” particularly for the Nicaraguan diaspora who “believe the beauty queen is a symbol of democracy.”
Palacios’s year as Miss Universe was spent travelling as an ambassador for the organisation, attending events, and representing the brand in markets across Latin America and Asia. In June 2025, she was named the official face of the Miss Universe swimwear line. But the political shadow never lifted. The Ortega government continued to restrict civic life, and the possibility of her safe return to Nicaragua remained uncertain.
What Palacios accomplished on 18 November 2023 was, in one sense, straightforward: she answered a question well, walked gracefully, and won a beauty pageant. But in a country where the simple act of waving a flag or gathering in a crowd had been criminalised, her performance became something else – a demonstration that national identity and personal achievement could not be fully controlled by the state. The girl who sold buñuelos to pay for school had, without raising her voice, given millions of people a reason to celebrate in a place where celebration had become dangerous.
As she dedicated her crown on stage – “to the girls of the world, the girl inside me … and the more than 6 million people of my country” – the words carried the weight of a political statement disguised as a beauty queen’s speech. Nicaragua had never won a Big Four international beauty pageant before. It has now won one. And the woman who won it cannot go home.
