Did Racism Beat Ms. Honduras?

By Karen Juanita Carrillo
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer

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At age 19, Erika Lizet Ramírez is a poised, polite young woman. She seems self-assured. Even while standing alone at the head of an auditorium with journalists staring up at her, Ramírez presents a comfortable bearing. And yet Ramírez has been through the kind of nightmare no parent would even want their child having dreams about.

On Oct. 13, 2001, Ramírez was crowned Miss Honduras Universe 2001. She had previously won the title of Miss Trujillo—as the representative of her hometown—but the Ms. Honduras award was a special delight because it made her the first Honduran of African descent to represent her nation in a beauty contest.

The Miss Honduras award made her happy, Ramírez told reporters when she won the award last year. She called it an honor and said it made her feel proud of Honduras for looking beyond prejudices to choose her, and that the award helped her develop a new goal—to show her Honduran pride and her pride in being Black.

But Ramírez has rarely had the opportunity to demonstrate pride in either category lately. So in late September 2002, she stood up before New York-based reporters to speak out against the national director of the Ms. Honduras Universe pageant, Eduardo Zablah. Zablah, Ramírez claims, signed a contract with her on Oct. 16, 2001 which promised her a college scholarship, jewelry, endorsements and a cash prize—all as payment for representing Honduras on the international stage. Ramírez was then flown to the United States, St. Martin, and other locales to promote Honduran beauty. But other than a promotional ring, she has not received any of the prizes that go along with winning the Ms. Honduras Universe contest.

Worst of all, Ramírez says she was flown to these various locations with no escort, was nearly raped at one site, was brought to New York last winter and not provided winter clothing, and has yet to receive any payment for her promotions of Ms. Honduras Universe.

But the fact that Ramírez is Black made her relationship with Zablah nearly impossible. "He told me, just how he made me he could destroy me," Ramírez complained. Zablah reportedly told her that a Black woman should not have been in his contest. "This is not just against me, it is against all the Black people," the young woman added, "because he said he didn't want Blacks representing Honduras."

Ramírez is a proud Garifuna, a member of the descendants of Africans and Carib-Indians who resisted slavery and were able to retain their own language—a patois of Creole, Bambu, and Patua—and to live independently for years. Because of immigration, Garifuna communities have spread out across Central America, the Caribbean, and the United States in the last few decades. There is currently a large Garifuna community in the Bronx, D.C., Boston, and Los Angeles. Yet, historically, the Garifuna were established in the countries of Belize, Guatemala, Panama, and Honduras and along the coastlines of Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

As in the United States, Latin America's Garifuna faced discrimination and have had to struggle to be politically incorporated within their nations of origin. Mirtha Colón, the director of Hondurans Against AIDS, pointed out that the Garifuna only started to be respected by the Honduran government after they'd marched on the nation's capital, Tegucigalpa, in the late '90s.

The Garifuna march was to protest a proposed reform of the constitution that would have allowed the sale of traditional Garifuna lands along Honduras' Atlantic Coast—lands the Garifuna had occupied for the past 200 years, but which were to be sold to foreigners at the highest price. Since then there's been more political recognition of Garifuna issues, but that recognition has only come with constant vigilance.

When the Garifuna community in New York heard that Ramírez was in the area last winter, but that her living accommodations included sleeping on the floor in someone's apartment, and that she'd caught pneumonia from the winter cold, many tried to organize to help her. Dionisia Amaya-Bonilla, the head of MUGAMA, Inc. (Mujeres Garinagu en marcha por educacíon), collected $600 to pay the Brooklyn designer Ka Iffa to create a special African-inspired dress for her. It was a dress Ramírez planned to wear during the Miss Universe 2002 pageant when it was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico this past May 29. But Ramírez claims that Zablah took the dress from her and still has not returned it.

During the past few months, the young pageant queen has made these claims against Zablah before the Honduran congress; to ODECO, Honduras' leading civil rights organization; in front of a United Nations women's forum; and—because her abuses took place on U.S. soil—before United States Embassy representatives. Investigations have been promised, but her Garifuna supporters are afraid that without international pressure on the Honduran government to take action against Zablah, little will come of Ramírez' complaints.

In fact, the only thing that has come from them so far is a lawsuit. Zablah held a press conference a few weeks ago in Honduras, claiming that Ramírez and her family were all suffering from mental problems and that their claims against him were a defamation of character. He said he had given Ramírez all the prizes that came with being Ms. Honduras Universe—but he had no receipts or other proof to show he'd awarded the prizes.

Zablah is suing Ramírez for 8.5 million Honduran lempiras, the approximate equivalent to 560,000 U.S. dollars. Zablah says he will only drop his lawsuit if Ramírez and her mother come to him, excuse themselves, and then offer a formal apology.

-- September 29, 2002

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