Los Angeles – Puerto Rican communications student Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza won the 55th Miss Universe beauty pageant here Sunday night.
There were five Latin American lovelies – including Rivera – among the 10 finalists.
Rivera, born 18 years ago in the southern Puerto Rican town of Salinas and an aspiring actress, beat out Japanese runner-up Kurara Chibana, 24, for the crown.
The brown-eyed, brunette Rivera, who stands 1.75 meters (5 feet 9 inches) tall, recovered the universal beauty title for Latin America. The last time a contestant from the region won the crown was in 2003, when Dominican Amelia Vega – who was one of the judges this year – triumphed.
With Rivera’s selection, Puerto Rico now has won the contest five times, more than any other Latin American location, topping Venezuela with four crowns, Brazil with two, and Peru, Colombia, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Chile, each with one.
Among the 10 finalists for this year’s pageant, which was held in Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium, were also Mexico’s Priscila Perales, Colombia’s Valerie Domingues, Bolivia’s Desiree Duran and Paraguay’s Lourdes Arevalos.
Rivers – who fainted briefly at a post-pageant press conference but afterward was pronounced in good health – will now move to New York for a year, where she will carry out her assorted duties as Miss Universe. Over the past 12 months, Canada’s Natalie Glebova, Miss Universe 2005, has attended to those activities.
Estimates are that more than 600 million people in 180 countries watched the contest on live television, broadcast in English by NBC and in Spanish by Telemundo.
The pageant was first held in California in 1952.
A quiet Sunday night in San Juan heated up when Puerto Ricans learned of Rivera’s victory and poured into the streets to party and cruise around town in caravans honking their horns.
The U.S. commonwealth’s Senate chief, Kenneth McClintock, said that Puerto Ricans were celebrating “with immense pride the triumph of another daughter of this land.”
“Zuleyka has become an emblem of Puerto Rican youth. Not only was beauty crowned in this young woman, but she was selected for the characteristics she displayed which distinguish the great majority of the young people of our homeland: determination, responsibility, sacrifice, values, hard work, willpower and love for their roots,” said McClintock in a communique.
