A Mexican State’s Crowning Glory

She came home after a full day at the shoe store and walked into a living room crowded with expectation. There on the couch sat an old family friend, a young beauty queen and two founders of a new club representing her parents’ hometown in central Mexico. They smiled eagerly.

Flustered, her mother had entertained the unexpected visitors for half an hour. But it was Emir Estrada they wanted. And so they had waited as she finished work, rode the bus to central Long Beach and walked the two blocks to the tidy one-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother and two grown brothers.

When she saw them, Emir blushed in that peculiar way she had, just one cheek turning red. She’d been half-dreading this visit. For two hours, the guests cajoled, pleaded: Will you be our candidate for Senorita Zacatecas? More than once, they mentioned the responsibility of an immigrant’s daughter.

How could Emir say no? She remembered years ago, falling asleep at the back of the Montebello banquet hall as her parents--a parking lot attendant and a garment worker--chatted and laughed, catching up with fellow expatriates from the half-empty town of Tepechitlan, forgetting for the moment how hard life had been.

Friends had pointed to the beautiful child curled up on the floor and said, “Get ready, chica. Someday you will be up there on the stage.” Her father, Salvador, had merely smiled, but she could see how proud he was.

Now Salvador Estrada was buried in Tepechitlan, dead of an early heart attack that had cut short so many plans, and the family was newly returned to California. There was no time, no money, for this sort of thing. The contest would take up nearly a year of her life, a year of Friday night rehearsals, of studying Zacatecas culture and memorizing speeches.

She would be expected to travel through the Mexican state for two weeks, from cities to ranchitos. She would have to buy dresses--at least four, gowns with sequins and low-cut backs she might never wear again.

And there was the terrifying prospect of standing before a panel of judges and hundreds of guests, even the governor of Zacatecas, and--this was the hardest part for the very private Emir--speaking to them of her values and aspirations.

“They kept telling me it was a good cause, and a beautiful experience that leaves many good memories,” the 18-year-old remembered from that January night. “That was how they convinced me.”

Thus began a 10-month adventure for Emir, who joined 12 other young California women in a life-changing competition for the crown of Senorita Zacatecas. No mere beauty pageant, the contest is a cultural rite of passage for members of a bridge generation, caught somewhere between Mexico and the United States.

It is also the cornerstone of an effort by Mexico’s most abandoned state to hold on to the hearts of its lost sons and daughters. In many ways, the state’s survival depends on keeping those links alive. Expatriates send home an estimated $1.25 million a day, more than any other source of revenue.

Through a well-organized system of clubs and federations, not only in Los Angeles but also in Atlanta, Houston, Las Vegas and a half-dozen other U.S. cities, they have financed roads, introduced electricity and drinking water and bought garbage trucks and school buses for Mexican towns that might otherwise have died.

In turn, the expatriates have seen their influence grow in state politics. Both Zacatecas gubernatorial candidates campaigned in California last year, despite the fact that U.S. residents could not vote. One of the first official acts of the victor, Ricardo Monreal Avila, was to appoint a representative in Los Angeles, the core of the expatriate community, and he has asked the Zacatecas state legislature to create two additional seats for U.S. residents--a first for Mexico.

Senorita Zacatecas is the glue that holds all those pieces together. The contest is the premier annual event of the Federacion de Clubes Zacatecanos, a group spanning Los Angeles and Orange counties and representing 49 hometown clubs with thousands of members. It is run in three stages, each culminating in a ballroom event that also raises funds for Zacatecas projects.

At this year’s final competition, held at the Montebello Country Club last weekend, Gov. Monreal and a dozen Zacatecas mayors nurtured relationships and lobbied for help. And, with an eye toward future voters, several U.S. politicians, including Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) and Los Angeles Councilman Nick Pacheco, joined them.

Indeed, amid all the saludos and backslapping, the point of the evening seemed almost lost--until midnight, when the judges rushed in with their final tally as the 13 contestants stood in evening gowns and held their breath.

Long before that moment, however, the search for Senorita Zacatecas began, as it does every year, with a desperate scramble for candidates. Federation bylaws call for each club to participate, but despite resorting to radio ads and pestering all the teenage daughters of their members, more than half the clubs failed to produce a single qualified applicant.

It wasn’t easy to find the daughter of a Zacatecan, ages 16 to 24, unmarried, childless, who could speak Spanish decently, who had the time and was willing to put up with the old-fashioned corniness, all for the chance of winning $1,000 and a week in Mexico. Each year, the search was more difficult. American culture pulls strongly on these young women, while Zacatecas threatens to become ever more faded and remote.

Nearly every contestant had a story: One was called after a club member spotted her at a cousin’s quinceanera; another gave in after three years of entreaties by her uncle, a club president.

And so there was nothing excessive or unusual about Raquel Magallanes and the rest of the Tepechitlan selection committee marching to Emir Estrada’s apartment last January, unannounced. After all, Emir was an ideal candidate: Beautiful. Intelligent. A good daughter. A student at Long Beach Community College. A bit quiet and reserved, but they could work on that.

She had the quality of a winner, Magallanes could sense that immediately. “She is charismatic, and very sweet,” she said. “She cares about others. And she is willing to learn.”

Long before most of the other candidates had even been announced, Magallanes began coaching Emir. After school and her part-time sales job at Payless Shoe Source, the apprentice practiced walking, turning, speaking clearly and with focus. By July, the evening of the first group rehearsal, Emir was already on her way to becoming polished.

In contrast, many who gathered that first night in City Terrace, at the fluorescent-lighted meeting hall of federation headquarters, seemed confused, embarrassed, a bit lost. There were 13 contestants, clusters of their mothers and a handful of club directors. Federation President Rafael Barajas, an electrical engineer from Anaheim, appeared especially concerned: This was his first certamen, or pageant. It simply had to go well.

With visible relief, the crowd greeted choreographer Esteban Coronado, a veteran of these contests. Forget any pretenses, pay attention and stand tall, he told the participants. “You’ve already convinced your mothers, so don’t look at them,” he commanded. “What you have to learn now is to convince the public.”

Under his unforgiving attention, they learned to walk to center stage, address a crowd with confidence, and condense their histories and dreams into a few concise phrases. Who were they? High school seniors, community college freshmen. A volleyball team member with hopes of studying marine biology. An aspiring sociologist who likes to dance. A beach lover who dreams of becoming a pilot.

Emir, her voice just above a whisper, described her own modest goal: to be a legal secretary. Later, she would recall her shame at that moment. “To tell the people I just want to do this little bit, instead of something greater. . . . It made me think, is this all I want?”

Many such pageants are run in Southland immigrant communities--reminiscent of those staged in countless towns across Mexico, where winning may be the highlight of a young woman’s life. Clubs from Jalisco, Michoacan, Sinaloa and Sonora all choose their own queens in Los Angeles.

But the Zacatecas contest, which dates back to 1988, stands out for its emphasis on culture. The importance of “knowing your roots” and “remembering those left behind” is drilled into the contestants.

Zacatecans remember because to forget would condemn their beautiful but achingly poor homeland to ruin. With parched farmland, little industry and a history of official corruption, the state has lost more of its people to U.S. migration, per capita, than any other in Mexico. Only 1 million Zacatecans remain at home; at least that many live in the United States. And despite efforts of a new state administration to create jobs and eliminate government waste, residents continue to leave, at a rate estimated at 25,000 per year.

In the United States, many of those migrants have found success. They run construction firms, insurance companies and restaurants. They are accountants and Realtors, attorneys and car dealers. More than half have become U.S. citizens, many helped by classes at the federation. And yet they remain bonded by nostalgia and a sense of obligation.

“I used to ride 8 kilometers on a bicycle on a dirt path to school, often in the rain,” recalled Barajas, who left Jomulquillo, Zacatecas, as a teenager more than 30 years ago. “Now I go back and I see students on buses that we bought, on a road that we built. They don’t have to suffer the way I did . . . That’s why we have this contest.”

Organizers hope that through the certamen, they can pass those commitments on to a U.S.-born generation. And so, as an essential part of the process, candidates are required to take a two-week tour of the state--an exhausting journey by bus with stops at each town represented in the contest.

Taking a Tour of the Homeland

This year’s tour was in August. There were parties, banquets, and midday dances with boys not yet old enough to travel north. But much of the trip involved sober examinations of the reasons why people left, and the projects funded by U.S. clubs. Often, sleepy contestants filed off the bus, sashes over their shoulders, tiaras on their heads, to scuffle through the dirt of a construction site or peer into a new community well.

Some of the young women were born in Zacatecas, but most were native to California. Many knew only the state capital and a single small town, a vacation stop, a place to visit their grandparents.

Now they saw all of the state’s beauty and poverty. Everywhere, they were greeted by an outpouring of well-wishers and proud dignitaries. In these outposts, it meant so much that they had come. Many wept as they entered the hometowns of their parents.

Stoic by nature, Emir revealed little until midway through the trip, when the bus rolled into Tepechitlan for a short morning visit. Then the tears flowed. At the mayor’s breakfast, in the church, at the grocery store run by her aunt, she could not stop crying. Everywhere she looked, she saw her father’s shadow.

He was just 58 when he died, three days before Christmas 1997. How to describe him? Fun and full of life, beloved. Salvador Estrada always tried to do the right thing. And so when he started a family, he looked north, as most ambitious young men did.

In Los Angeles, he joined several brothers, landed a job at a downtown parking lot, missed the birth of his first son. He couldn’t stand to be away from them, so he sent for his wife, Leanor Rivas, and their son, Eloy, then only 8 months old, so young to be smuggled across the border.

Leanor went to work sewing garments in downtown Los Angeles. They bought a small house in Pico Rivera, had another son and named him after actor Eric Estrada. Then came another son and they saw the pattern, so they just made up a name, Esly. When a daughter was born a year after that, they hunted through the Bible and found Emir, and without knowing what it meant, a prince, they gave it to her.

Salvador and Leanor became legal U.S. residents, but worried about crime. They didn’t want their boys in gangs. And so when Emir was only 18 months old, the family traveled back to Tepechitlan. That move began a pattern of moving back and forth between their roots in Mexico and the jobs of California.

Emir began fourth grade in California as the family settled into a rented house in Montebello. She struggled with English and missed her friends. Four years later, when her father announced they were going back, she was happy, remembering the quiet neighborhood and the big family house. This was the last move, they promised.

Her father’s only regret, he joked, was that now Emir could never become Senorita Zacatecas. There was a contest in Mexico too, of course, but it required money, and there, at home, they would always be poor.

With his parking lot savings, Salvador set up a welding business and talked about building a dance salon.

Emir won the eighth-grade English contest. She introduced the idea of a yearbook to her high school, took all the photos and had it printed in the capital. She was voted homecoming queen.

And then one December morning, her father came in from mowing the lawn, took a shower and collapsed. Ten days later, he was dead. All the dreams died with him.

With no means to support themselves in Zacatecas, the family returned to Los Angeles, haunted by his absence. They moved into the Long Beach apartment with nothing but a couple of suitcases, unable even to pay for electricity. So they gathered each night on the living room carpet, mother, daughter and two sons. They covered themselves with blankets, and talked by the beam of a flashlight.

Leanor took a job on a computer assembly line, earning $6.20 an hour. Her youngest son found work with her. The other drove a truck. Emir dreamed of becoming a graphic designer, but chose secretarial classes as more practical.

Months into the contest, however, encouraged by a school counselor, she began to question that reasoning. Why limit herself now? Why not dream? “She said it’s up to me, and she’s right,” Emir said. “I guess because of all this, I have a little more confidence.”

Women tend to be society’s “culture bearers,” said UCLA cultural anthropologist Paula Cruz Takash. For that reason, the pageant is a logical vehicle for passing on the values of old Zacatecas to a young, California-born generation. But there is another, more practical motive: Woman have larger and stronger networks, the better for selling tickets.

Participants must sell at least 10 tickets to each of the three events, which progressively increase in price to $50 for the final evening. Through the entire contest, the federation takes in about $45,000, nearly one-third of it profit.

Filling the ticket commitment accounts for 10 points out of a possible 100. Far more important is the judging: first night, personality (possible 20 points), third night, beauty (possible 30 points). The most weight--40 points--is given to cultural knowledge, judged in the second event.

On a chilly October evening, the contestants huddled behind a screen in a corner of the ballroom as a brass tamborazo band belted out music typical of Zacatecas. Giddy with nerves, they waited for the tables to fill, primping, hugging, helping each other with their lines.

They wore an odd assortment of costumes: folkloric dresses, feathered indigenous headpieces, skirts of bamboo, all somehow representative of Zacatecas culture. For 10 minutes, they were to describe their outfits and their cultural roots, without notes, standing alone before hundreds of guests.

It was a tough crowd. Bored and restless, some had been drinking for hours. Men shouted to their friends and cackled. A baby cried. There was a lot to remember. On stage, Araceli Mota stopped in mid-sentence, mortified. She ran through the speech in her head but couldn’t find her place. Finally, a gentle, encouraging applause broke the silence, and she carried on.

Behind the partition, Emir was a pillar of ice. She stood apart, faced the wall and practiced, over and over. When her turn came, she locked her arm around her escort’s and stared ahead with wide, tearing eyes. Magallanes fussed over her, but in a rare display of temper, Emir snapped and shooed her away. She was too tense. She was bound to freeze.

But no. In fact, she was lovely.

“Mi nombre es Emir Estrada. Tengo 18 anos de edad. Naci en Los Angeles, California. Y mis padres son procedentes Tepechitlan.” My name is Emir Estrada. I am 18 years old. I was born in Los Angeles, California. And my parents come from Tepechitlan.

She spoke eloquently, gesturing with just the right emphasis, about eating cotton candy at the Tepechitlan town fair as a child, about the importance of faith and strong moral character, about holding on to one’s roots. “I want to tell you that, thanks to my mother and my father who is watching from heaven, I have learned to fight hard so that the ambience and customs of this country don’t make me forget my beautiful Zacatecas culture.”

The crowd cheered. Magallanes beamed. Emir had learned well.

The worst was over. One more month and she would know. There were still rehearsals, a brief, final speech to write and memorize. But something significant had changed within Emir, making all of it so much easier, even fun.

She chose a blue sequined gown with a slight train for that last night. She bought a blond wig and cut out chunks of hair, to be woven into her own brown locks for contrast. She thought about options, scholarships, four-year universities. She even caught herself thinking now and then, what if?

Young Women Facing the Crowd

Nov. 13 arrived. Five hundred guests packed the ballroom, seated for dinner. The crowd was dotted with tiaras and crowns: Senorita Jalisco, Miss East Los Angeles, all the past queens of Zacatecas.

Mayor Raul Salcedo of Tepechitlan presided over a table near the stage. “I hear we have a good chance tonight,” he winked. A chemical engineer-turned-businessman, Salcedo remarked how good it was to be here with los ausentes, the absent ones.

Emir and the other contestants shivered on an outdoor patio as Monreal announced the results of this year’s 3-for-1 program, which matches each dollar sent by expatriates with $1 of federal, state and municipal funds. It was a record year, he said: $5 million spent on 93 projects, from irrigation dams to highways. The unspoken plea: Don’t stop giving.

Finally, their moment came. Thirteen young women in evening gowns filed out, one at a time, for a final brief address. They were all so poised, so self-possessed, that it was difficult to recall the shy and awkward girls some had been at that first rehearsal. “They’ve matured,” observed Coronado, no longer the stern taskmaster. “They always do.”

In his day job, Coronado teaches cultural arts at Franklin and Lincoln high schools. He does the pageants for fun. Now his work was done. After all those months, there would soon be one Senorita Zacatecas-Los Angeles. Only one.

The young women stood in a semicircle, smiling, hands at their sides, just as they had practiced. Seated at her table, Leanor leaned forward, hands clasped at her forehead. She did not watch her daughter.

“Segunda princesa,” the announcer called out, naming the second runner-up. “Beatriz Avila!” Emotions washed over their faces-- anxiety, relief, disappointment--much as they tried to hide them. For Emir and 11 others, there was still hope.

And then: “Primera princesa--Emir Estrada!”

She smiled gamely, taking her second-place roses, bowing for the tiara to be fixed on her head. Her mother’s face went blank. The table of cousins and family friends fell silent, stunned. They did not hear: “Senorita Zacatecas--Jannette Romo!” They did not see Romo’s cheering, grinning friends and family rush to the floor, so proud of the tall, dark-eyed beauty they could burst.

A few days later, Emir’s voice didn’t give anything away. “I’m comfortable with it,” she said. “It was definitely worth the effort. The best part was the support of all the other girls.”

They will join again at a final meeting in early December, when Emir will receive her $500 First Princess prize. The money will repay some of her costs and finance a trip to Zacatecas in early January, when her brother plans to marry a hometown girl. Emir will take along her sash and crown. In Tepechitlan, she still is, and always will be, a queen.