The
1974 Miss Universe Pageant winners. From left, Miss Aruba Maureen Ava
Vieira (fourth runner-up); Miss Wales Helen Elizabeth Morgan (first
runner-up); Miss Spain and the 1974 Miss Universe Winner Amparo Munoz;
Miss Finland Johanna Raunio (second runner-up), and Miss Colombia Ella
Cecilia Escandon (third runner-up). Photo source:
http://beautycontests.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-best-1st-runner-up-miss-universe-35_25.html
(InterAksyon.com Lifestyle Editor’s Note: The following is an
excerpt of a forthcoming novel titled ‘Wings of Desire’ by multi-awarded
poet and novelist Danton Remoto.)
The Bank for International Reconstruction and Development (BIRD)
based in Washington, D.C., held their XXth Annual Meeting in Manila.
“This historical event,” crowed the President that night on all the
TV stations (which again zapped Wonder Woman off the screen, she who
pilots an invisible plane) “proves that the bankers of the world agree
that we have indeed marshaled our resources very well and turned our
history of defeat into a future of hope.”
From that point, a flurry of questions had to be answered. How to
house the world’s bankers in the luxury they had been accustomed to?
Faster than Harry Houdini, the money from the Development and Aid
Package of BIRD was diverted to the construction of seven new five-star
hotels.
And so the commuters and office workers from Manila to Makati had to
suffer monstrous traffic jams as one hotel rose after another by the
bayside. One wag compounded the nightmare by suggesting that brick walls
be erected between the city and the bay. The people protested that it
would deprive them of a view of Manila’s magnificent sunset. Others
grumbled that the government only wanted to hide the people living in
the slums, who had begun to build their shanties of tin roof and
cardboard, by the seawall. The truly wicked said no, the government only
wanted to raise more revenue by charging PhP 100 for anybody who wanted
to see the sunset flaming barbarously beyond the wall.
Both hotels and fences were finished, in the nick of time, along with
a sprawling international convention center that could rival anything
found in Japan. But what about the bankers’ cars? Seven hundred
late-model Benzes were imported, and the citizens of Manila were treated
to the sight of Benzes gliding by, absorbing the shocks from the
potholes and the uneven paving of the roads, their windows tinted
against the harsh tropical sun.
After the bankers, the beauty contest.
Margarita Mon Amor was chosen Miss Philippines the previous year.
Many people thought the judges should have chosen somebody fairer, with a
more aquiline nose, to represent the country in the Miss Universe
contest held in Athens. They said Margarita won only because she
graduated summa cum laude from an exclusive girls’ school and had a grandfather who was a Justice in the Supreme Court.
But Margarita—with her wide forehead, her big and intelligent eyes,
her full, sensuous lips—won in Athens. Even before the coronation night,
the Greek press was already gushing about the “honey-skinned beauty
from the Philippines who walked regally like a queen.” “Like Helen,”
another paper gushed, “who could launch a thousand wars, er, ships.” And
so on coronation night itself, Margarita Mon Amor went to the Parthenon
in a simple silk gown the color of mother-of-pearl shell, her
blue-black hair in a bun. She played a haunting kundiman on the bamboo nose flute before the stunned audience, and went through the rigmarole of the Q & A.
Bob Barker: “Miss Philippines, what is the square root of 11,250 divided by 40 and then multiplied by 99?
Margarita Mon Amor: “How much time do I have?”
And now she was here, walking on the stage of the Folk Arts Theater,
while the wind from the sea fanned the audience crowded in the First
Lady’s latest project. Manila being Manila—this mad, maternal city of
our myths and memories—everybody was jumping at the prospect of the city
hosting Miss Universe that year. The machos were especially ecstatic,
as day by day the tabloids splashed photos of their favorite candidates
in their skimpiest bathing suits, getting their lovely tan from the
Philippine sun.
So on this night of nights, the candidates flounced onstage, speaking
in various tongues, a babel of greetings that were beamed worldwide.
Miss Brazil came in a dress whose colors could make the parakeets in her
country blush. Miss United States of America came from Texas and wore
the tightest cowgirl jeans Manila had ever seen. Miss Philippines was
Guadalajara de Abanico, a mestiza who had the habit of turning
her finely-chiseled nose up at every social function and who, Manila’s
reporters’ complained, always arrived late. “I’m sure there’s a friar
somewhere in the family line,” snapped Istariray X., mother hen of
Manila’s society columnists, in her bitchy column called W.O.W. (“Woman
of the World”).
The favorites of the Manila press included Miss Wales, Helen Morgan,
because she had pendulous breasts; Miss Spain, Amparo Muñoz, the
20-year-old señorita from Barcelona who looked like the Blessed
Virgin Mary; and Miss Finland, Johanna Raunio, because she looked like
the girl in the Bear Brand milk commercial. The country exploded with
joy when the three were called as finalists, along with Miss Aruba,
Maureen Ava Viera, whom the Manila press called “Black Beauty” even if
she were brown, and the señorita from Colombia, Ella Cecilia Escandon,
who had the face of an angel.
The judges, please:
1) Gloria Diaz who won the Miss Universe in 1969, just when the
Americans were landing on the moon. Like Margarita Mon Amor, she was not
your typical Filipina beauty queen, for she was short, brown, sassy,
and smart. After she won, she was asked if she had a message for the
three American astronauts. She said: “The United States has conquered
the moon, but the Philippines has conquered the universe.”
2) Zenaida Carajo, who smiled through her tenth face-lifting and had
difficulty walking, because on her neck, arms and fingers glittered the
country’s second-heaviest diamonds (after the First Lady’s). She also
wore makeup so thick that people called her Kabuki Lady behind her back.
Or even espasol, the rice dessert from the south smothered in layers of flour.
3) Joseph Carajo, Baby’s cousin, who taxed the country’s seven
million farmers with a levy ostensibly to fund the planting of mahogany
trees to produce “modern antique furniture,” but the funds have
allegedly been siphoned off to places as far as the Netherlands
Antilles.
4) Richard Head, the American Ambassador, called Dick Head by two
camps: the grim-and-determined Marxists and the applicants denied visas
by His Honor’s consuls.
5) Bernardo Tulingan, who called himself the country’s finest
painter, with his grotesqueries hanging like chopping boards in Manila’s
seafood restaurants.
6) Zosimo Zaymo, a successful talent manager famous for pimping his
female models in Brunei and fondling the male ones before hidden
cameras.
7) The young Emmanuel, bright and beady-eyed, opinion columnist par
excellence, thinking how soon he could bed as many contestants as
possible, especially those Latinas.
9) Mother China, the country’s number-one movie producer, who loved to have zombies in her movies.
10) And of course, the First Lady herself, the Chair of the Board of
Judges, Her Majesty Infinitely Brighter than the Blaze of Ten Thousand
Suns.
One by one the winners were called, to thunderous applause: Miss
Aruba, third runner-up; Miss Colombia, second runner-up; and Miss
Finland, first runner-up. And then, only Miss Wales and Spain were left.
Both held hands and braced themselves for the announcement, their eyes
closed, chins quivering.
Between Big Boobs and the Blessed Virgin Mary, of course the latter
would win in this Catholic country. After she was called as the newest
Miss Universe, Amparo Muñoz gave the crowd a beatific smile, tears
running down her face, ruining her makeup. But never mind, for here was
Margarita Mon Amor, gliding on the stage, relinquishing cape, crown and
scepter, and then the señorita walked around the stage, the flashbulbs
popping forever.
Miss Universe would constantly visit Manila as part of the First
Lady’s entourage of royalty and celebs, who would be flown to the city
to inaugurate a massive new building (part of what critics called the
First Lady’s Edifice Complex), or just have a party aboard the
presidential yacht RPS Ang Pangulo on Manila Bay. Later, Amparo
Muñoz would star in porn movies in her country, precious copies of
which were smuggled into Manila and shown at the parties of the rich and
the brain-dead, for they married within the family to keep their
fabulous, feudal wealth intact.
Helen Morgan would bare her humongous breasts in a Filipino movie called Nagalit ang Umaga Dahil sa Sobrang Haba ng Gabi (The Morning Got Mad Because the Night was Too Long), then returned to her cold, gray island after the movie flopped.
Johanna Raunio joined the Miss International contest in Tokyo and won. Ella Cecilia Escandon became a writer of Latin American telenovelas, the most popular of which –Mari Mar, Ay!
– was shown in an obscure Philippine station, promptly became number
one, and wiped the smug grins off the faces of the smart suits running
the number-one network. And Maureen Ava Viera married a wealthy
Filipino, divorced him, then returned to the Caribbean, to run as
governor of Aruba. She won.
* * *
News Item: A Surprise for Miss Nicaragua
During the Parade of Beauties of the Miss Universe contestants on
Roxas Boulevard, one man jumped aboard the float of Miss Nicaragua,
Mildred de Ortega, and hugged her. Filipino security agents, quick as
ever, were already dragging the man away “for routine investigation,”
when the Miss Universe contestant, who was then already in tears, said,
“No, no, please, por favor.”
It turned out the man, who was a mestizo, was the brother of Miss
Nicaragua. Danilo de Ortega had been in exile for five years. “I was
glad to know that my sister had been chosen Miss Nicaragua. I flew from
L.A. just to see her. I miss her and my family.”
Why did Danilo flee his country?
Perhaps it must have been the series of terrible earthquakes, forcing
Danilo to emigrate from his beautiful and peaceful country, opined the
columnist Juan Tabaco, a highly-paid columnist and a friend of the
President. One night at a party in the tony Forbes Park, a member of
the Opposition—with much help from Johnny Walker Black – stood before
Señor Tabaco and began to sing, “How Much is that Puppy in the Window,
arf arf.” And the eyes of Señor Tabaco—who used to write angry,
social-realist novels before the dictatorship co-opted him – began to
fill with bitter tears.
But when he was interviewed and asked why he left his lovely tropical
country, Danilo Ortega simply said, “I cannot stand the military
dictatorship in my country.”
His statement, of course, was not reported by Philippine media.
* * *
This, of course, is a fictional rewriting of the 1974 Miss
Universe in Manila under the Marcos regime. Comments can be sent to
drremoto@news5.com.ph
