Elina Salabarría was 18 months old when she left Cuba with her parents, and 18 years old when she represented Cubans in exile in the Miss Universe pageant, which was held on July 15, 1967, at the Miami Beach Auditorium.
She was the last Miss Cuba Libre or Miss Free Cuba, a strange and honorable title she will pass down to a young woman chosen in Miami to represent Cuba at the Miss Universe pageant on Nov. 16 in Mexico City.
“I didn’t want to go. I didn’t like going out in a swimsuit, I was always very shy,” recalls Salabarría, a former Miami-Dade school teacher who is still a splendid beauty at 77 years old. “From then on I began to know and value myself.”
Her mother signed her up for the pageant, which Salabarría entered without any special preparation and wearing dresses made by seamstresses in Miami.
“They put me on a salad and steak diet for a week,” recalls Salabarría. For her traditional costume she wore a one-shoulder Cuban robe to the Miss Universe pageant which she got from priest Jorge Bez Chabebe, a key figure in the Cuban community who founded the musical show “Añorada Cuba.”
Salabarría had just graduated from Miami Dade Junior College, the predecessor of Miami Dade College, which was just the North Campus at 27th Avenue and 113th Street. Coincidentally, Sylvia Hitchcock, the 1967 Miss Universe winner, had attended the same college because she grew up in Miami, though she represented the state of Alabama in the contest.
Salabarría has fond memories of the experience, like the time a Cuban man broke through the police barrier guarding a parade of Miss Universe contestants to find Salabarría. He look at her closely and shouted, “Miss Cuba! We’re looking great!”
She remembers how a large group – perhaps Cubans – were cheering loudly for her. A young man watching the scene asked another, “And who is she?” “The queen of Miami Beach,” was the answer.
Cubans in Miss Universe
The winner of the Miss Universe Cuba pageant, which will be broadcast on Miami’s MegaTV on Sept. 26, will attend along with the winner of United States’ contest, Alma Cooper, an Afro-Latina from Michigan whose mother arrived in the country at the age of six.
Miss Universe Cuba will be one of the “most anticipated” beauty queens this year, said Venezuelan fashion designer Julio César Cruz, known as Prince Julio César, who in April acquired the Miss Universe Cuba franchise, allowing the return of Cuban contestants after 57 years of absence from Miss Universe.
Cuba sent beauty queens to Miss Universe since the pageant’s founding in 1952 until 1960 when Fidel Castro condemned the contest as a “shallow frivolity.”
“There is no woman more beautiful than a female militia member, dressed in green, with her beret, her combat boots and her energetic female guerrilla look,” said Castro when he decided that “national efforts would be concentrated on matters of greater magnitude.”
The first Miss Cuba was Havana resident Gladys López, chosen at an event at the Blanquita theater in Miramar, later renamed the Carlos Marx theater.
In 1954, Miss Cuba was Isis Margarita Finlay García for the third edition of Miss Universe. Finlay was a descendant of Carlos J. Finlay, the doctor and epidemiologist who discovered the mosquito that transmits yellow fever.
In 1955, Gilda Marín was chosen Miss Cuba and competed in Miss Universe and later represented the island in its first foray into Miss World, where she finished third runner-up. In 1956, Marcia Rodríguez competed in Miss Universe and made the final 15.
In 1957, Cuba reached its highest position in the history of its participation in Miss Universe when María Rosa Gamio Fernández was the third runner up. That year, the crown stayed in Latin America when the Peruvian Gladys Zender won Miss Universe. Zender is the mother of the actor Christian Meier.
In 1958, Arminia Pérez represented the island in Miss Universe; in 1959, Irma Buesa, daughter of the poet José Angel Buesa (1910-1982); and in 1960, Flora Lauten was the last Cuban to compete in Miss Universe.
“In 1960, when I was asked my advice for contestants, I said something that I still consider relevant today. Don’t focus so much on the mirror. Look inside and work to always be better human beings,” Lauten said in a recent interview with Radio Martí.
Her later career as an actress, theater director and founder of the Buendía group on the island eclipsed the beauty title, which Lauten, now in Miami, prefers not to talk about much.
A history of passion for beauty queens
The Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) of the University of Miami contains magazines that document Cubans’ passion for beauty pageants throughout history.
“The publications show the evolution of beauty contests, the development of the industry and social classes,” said Amanda Moreno, director of the Cuban Heritage Collection at UM, pointing out that the photographs also show how the beauty standards changed.
Cuba y America magazine, which ran from 1920 to 1926, created its own reader-driven contest to choose the most beautiful young lady.
Laudelina “Nena” Machado, the eldest daughter of Gerardo Machado, who governed Cuba from 1925-1933, won the Cuba y America contest at a time when the winner’s prize was a diamond pendant with a large ruby, according to the description in the magazine.
Included in UM’s collection are copies of Carteles, one of the most important magazines in Cuba before the revolution, which covered beauty pageants in great detail, from the value of the prizes that winners took home to the clashes between fans of the different contestants.
Moreno also points out that the collection reflects how racial differences and segregation were expressed in the country and Black people held their own beauty contests.
The selection of the Carnival Queen and the court that accompanied her in the parade along the Malecón in Havana was documented with photos and interviews by the most important entertainment reporters of the time.
“A Matancera, Havana Carnival Queen,” published in Carteles in February 1954, about the rise of Clara Beatriz Santos López as Carnival Queen, shows that Cubans took this event, which was held at the Palace of Conventions and Sports, very seriously. (A Matancera is a woman from the province of Matanzas.)
Images of politicians and officials from the Republican period and commanders of the Revolution, such as Juan Almeida, who appears in a picture with a Carnival queen known as Consuelo I, in the early years of Castroism, reveal that even the political class couldn’t deny the cultural importance of a beauty queen.
Miss Cuba Libre and the Cuban exile
When Castro ended Cuba’s participation in Miss Universe, the queens who represented Cuba were chosen in Miami, often to a full house at the Dade County Auditorium. The photos were taken by a Cuban photographer Alfredo “Willy” Gort, father of former Miami commissioner and mayor, Willy Gort.
The only requirement was to be Cuban. Actor Rosendo Rosell was key in organizing the contest for young exiles and the event was sponsored by Cuban businesses throughout the county.
The first Miss Free Cuba was Martha García Vieta (1961), followed by Aurora Prieto García (1962), Alicia Margit Chía (1963) and Alina De Varona Rodríguez (1965).
The contest also include Little Miss Cuba Libre. Maria de los Angeles Fonte, 5, Little Miss Free Cuba 1965, was the first runner-up in the Little Miss Universe pageant. The girl’s father was a political prisoner on the Isle of Pines in Cuba at the time, according to the archives at UM.
“The community that was arriving considered these pageants important,” Gladys Gómez-Rossié, coordinator of Community Relations for the Cuban Heritage Collection, told el Nuevo Herald.
“Amidst all the tragedy they were going through, they made room for these pageants,” Gómez-Rossié said.
Lesbia Murrieta, Miss Cuba Libre 1966, was 21 when she heard about the contest and decided to apply.
“It was a very nice event. They assigned us a number, we went in swimsuits, then in evening gowns, and at the end they named the five finalists,” said Murrieta, whose name today is Leslie Cortina.
She had already taken off her shoes and was resting when her number was called. She was the winner of Miss Free Cuba.
Her experience at Miss Universe was different. She believes that the girls were not treated equally; those from the most important countries were accommodated at the Fontainebleau hotel, and those from Latin America in second-class hotels, she says.
“I had an unpleasant experience; people thought I was from communist Cuba and asked me questions,” Murrieta recalls.
Murrieta, whose father was a police captain in Cuba, had gone into exile in Miami with her parents in 1961. “I felt hurt because I represented the Cubans in exile,” she said.
Murrieta asked the organizers to get her a sash that read “Free Cuba” instead of “Cuba,” which they did. But she had another bad experience when she met with the judges, among them singer Eartha Kitt.
“She told me that I did not represent Cuba, and I answered that I was just as Cuban as those who were in Cuba, but the thing was that I was not a communist. I got up and went to talk to another judge,” recalled Murrieta, 78.
But in all, the experience was life changing, said Murrieta.
“It was something very special, you feel famous,” said Murrieta. “The pageant gave me confidence.”
