Just A Girl
Exclusive Interview by Huáscar Robles

Mayra Matos steps out of her navy-blue sedan, revealing long, elegant legs. They're covered in skin-tight jeans and her bell sleeve shirt reveals a hint of her smooth shoulders. She stands about 6 feet tall in high heels. She wears faux Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses and a frown.

“Do I give this to you?” she asks and hands me the valet parking ticket from El Convento Hotel.

We walk over the cobblestoned street toward the hotel lobby. I later found out that she had been driving for a while looking for parking space, and that she has been making public appearances nonstop since the pageant in October. She looks tired.

Matos soldiers on for an entire day of photographic shooting. No complaints. Then we sat down for an interview in an inside patio bathed in afternoon sunlight. She sits and leans forward, with her hands under her thighs, as if ready to reveal a precious secret. Her blithe eyes widen, arching with the delicate contours of her fine, brown eyebrows. Her smile is also wide and sensuous; her hair is a honey brown hue that looks natural.

She's got the looks, but by traditional pageant standards she's not a queen. She lacks poise, she is fidgety, and unlike other beauty queens, does not try to appear eloquent, stumbling over her words constantly. She has not undergone cosmetic surgery and her breasts are full and natural. And that's perhaps what the local franchise needs: a fresh, innocent face to clean up the tarnished image of Miss Puerto Rico Universe, Inc. After the alleged pepper spray attack on former Miss Puerto Rico 2008 Ingrid Rivera and a bitter dispute with former public relations official Harold Rosario, the franchise has been under constant public scrutiny.

That natural appearance and transparent behavior is what captured the attention of judges of the Miss Puerto Rico Universe pageant on Oct. 22.

When it was her turn for the final question, she took the stage with long, assertive strides that caused her Carlos Alberto gown to ebb majestically. Host Braulio Castillo presented Matos with a small crystal vase. Matos selected a paper containing the now famous question: “If you had the chance to meet a famous person who would it be and why?”

Matos didn't dawdle. Her answer was Ricky Martin, because he advocates for abused children. She also lauded Miss Río Piedras, who has publicly spoken about overcoming child abuse, and quoted the phrase from late Puerto Rican intellectual Eugenio María de Hostos, “Teach the children of today and you won't punish the adults of tomorrow,” which elicited nods of approval from the judges and a cacophonous cheer from the crowd. It was the perfect answer.

“I have internalized and analyzed my answer,” she says with chuckle. “My promoter gave me a list of 500 questions to answer. I had responded to all of them, except this one. That question came to me at the moment…and then I thought Ricky Martin, and I thought to myself, ‘if you say Ricky Martin, people are going to laugh,' but I kept thinking and nothing else came to mind… but something told me to say Ricky, then I thought of my mom who works at the Department of the Family, and I have seen the importance of social work.”

Matos says the pageant was an eye-opening experience and that the camaraderie between contestants was her best memento. But in the cutthroat world of beauty queens, such tales are hard to swallow. When confronted with the experience of a pageant employee who witnessed someone looking through her belongings, she said that perhaps it was “because it was a reality show and they made us move a lot.”

The reality show was another strenuous factor in this year's competition. After the contestants had been selected by their municipalities, they participated in the reality show “Por la corona” broadcast by WAPA TV (Channel 4). The show presented the contestants undergoing several challenges and answering questions from a group of celebrity judges. The show was meant to test their qualifications, but no one was voted out.

During the show, it became evident that many of the young ladies weren't prepared intellectually for the contest. Questions such as “Who is the president of the Senate?” and “What are some of Latin America 's political problems?” unnerved the contestants. On one occasion Miss Humacao, Zugeily Rivera, couldn't answer correctly what global warming was, and judges Sully Díaz, an actress, gossip reporter Leo Fernández and entertainment reporter Omar Matos shook their heads in disapproval. The video clip was streamed online and broadcast on the SuperXclusivo gossip show, where the host, the puppet doll La Comay, poked fun at her mercilessly. [On a later clip, La Comay pointed out that Miss Cataño Agnes Benítez answered that Puerto Rico was discovered on Oct. 12, but the judges failed to correct her; [ Puerto Rico was discovered on Nov. 19, 1493].

Fear of public humiliation surely put extra pressure on contestants, pressure past beauty queens did not have to endure during their training. “There's a phrase that says that the strongest one survives,” she says. “I don't mean who has more character, but someone who is brave.”

Matos adds that the pressure of being filmed prepped her for the pageant's transmission.

Despite these and past controversies, Matos believes in the Miss Puerto Rico Universe franchise. When she entered the competition, the franchise was just recovering from the allegations made by the pageant's former PR agent Harold Rosario that franchise owner Magali Febles owed $80,000 of the $100, 000 the franchise had to pay the Miss Universe Corporation for Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Rivera to compete. Rosario said that luckily Rivera was allowed to compete, but couldn't advance to the finals.

Matos considered the rumors, but understood that the participation of Miss Universe 2009 Dayana Mendoza and Miss USA Crystle Stewart in the Miss Puerto Rico pageant last October meant that the relationship between Febles and the Miss Universe Organization was excellent.

“What happens is that everyone wants that franchise,” says Matos. “Everyone, even the same promoters, dream of owning the franchise. Everyone is going to want to harm the person in charge of it at any cost. Second, in terms of the relationship Magali [Febles] has with the Miss Universe Corporation, it seems to be excellent. They brought Dayana Mendoza and they had to have paid, I don't know how many thousands of dollars, over $15,000. Obviously, if they paid to fly Dayana Mendoza, they had to have paid the franchise. [The Miss Universe Corporation] wouldn't help the Puerto Rico franchise if they had such a large debt.”

Dancing, Reading , Pageanting

Matos is the fifth of six siblings. They grew up in a modest home that faced Ramón Emeterio Betances square in downtown Cabo Rojo. Her father is the public relations director for the Cabo Rojo municipality and her mom is a pension specialist with the Department of the Family. The 20-year-old describes her upbringing as normal.

“We were a close family,” she says. “We had our fights, because we were so many.”

They were a middle class family who lived well; Matos attended public school. She showed interest in dancing at the age of eight. She began with folkloric dance in Cabo Rojo's Ballet Guanine Company and later moved to contemporary and modern dance.

She got into pageants with the Miss Cabo Rojo Fiestas Tradicionales pageant, but it wasn't until she was 16 and won the Miss Teenage International, an international pageant that took place in Costa Rica , that she saw the possibility of trying out for Miss Universe.

“That's when I said, ‘wait, I want to compete for Miss Puerto Rico. I won't miss this chance.' That's when I decided to compete in 2009. I wanted to be Miss Puerto Rico.”

But she kept her dream on the back burner in order to complete or at least begin college and study literature.

From toddlerhood, she has had an affinity for books. Inspired by her father who, she remembers, read constantly, she would crawl into bed at nights with the book “The Princess and the Pea” by Hans Christian Andersen. The story about a princess, who is forced to prove her royalty, would ironically foreshadow her future as a beauty queen.

“I loved opening them, and reading them,” she recalls. “I'd play with my dolls. I would read to them and teach them.”

The college sophomore plans on becoming a professor and refers to her passion for literature with a mix of enthusiasm and naiveté.

“[In high school] I read the assigned books, but I started to read popular literature like Paulo Coelho, Gabriel García Marquez, Isabel Allende,” she says and her eyes look up as if searching for names of authors in the sky. “Later in college I started reading authors with more depth, like the antique literature of Octavio Paz.”

Matos adds that she has developed a taste for the modern philosophy of Lou Marinoff and indentifies with Lazarillo de Tormes, from the eponymous Spanish book of the16th century.

“I like Lazarillo de Tormes because he had to move many times and, even though it is not the same story, because he was poor, just like him I relocated a lot, experienced difficult circumstances and met a lot of people who have taught me to be independent,” says Matos.

When asked about issues affecting the Department of Education such as the Teacher's Federation strike or the federal funds stolen from the DE's Integral Community Services, she answers that the DE's problems are a lack of such resources as food and materials. “[The DE] has to realize and take these children into consideration,” says Matos. “These kids get frustrated because they lack resources and materials, or the best teachers for their disciplines, in the case of learning.”

She adds that the education system needs to be reformed to provide, “an education in which students can learn and reach conclusions, and not just believe what books say.”

That's the kind of knowledge that Matos plans to display at the Miss Universe pageant next summer. She believes that her reading habits will keep her abreast of current events, and she also plans to work hard on her physical image.

After the required training, Matos will be ready to act, speak and behave like a queen, but her curious, outspoken persona should shine through, a persona that is more Miley Cyrus than Hannah Montana. She's no rock star. And perchance that's what the franchise needs, a girl not a supermodel, a person not a puppet of the pageant.

“I'm disciplined,” says Matos. “I feel that studying literature will help me, because I would be reading and I'd be in touch with what is happening with the Miss Universe pageant…and obviously I will prepare my body, and I will arrive flawless.”

—Huáscar Robles