The Miss Universe Cuba pageant is not held in Havana or anywhere else on its namesake island. Instead, it takes place in Hialeah, a city shaped by generations of Cuban exiles, and a location that is not merely logistical.
One of the many changes brought by Fidel Castro’s revolution was a ban on beauty pageants, which he dismissed as “frivolous” and “shallow.” The ban remains in place today. Modeling — posing silently for the camera — is permitted in Cuba, but giving women a microphone and a platform is not.
For contestants like Mia Dio, that distinction is significant. “Why can’t this pageant occur in Cuba?” she asks in an interview with New Times. “It’s because you’re not giving [models] a microphone and telling them what they actually have to go home to — the lack of power, the lack of water, the lack of medicine.”…