I found this to be a fairly compelling article on the nature of beauty or lack there of it, as it were:

Is Miss Bolivia Racist?
A Latin American variant of the National Question erupted recently in—can you believe it?—the Miss Universe competition in Quito, Ecuador.

In case you didn’t know, the Miss Universe title was awarded June 1st, 2004, to Miss Australia. Congrats to our readers down under!

But the assembled misses were in Quito for a spell before the final competition. They were preparing for the pageant and doing interviews. And that’s when the controversy occurred.

Gabriela Oviedo, this year’s Miss Bolivia, got herself into some unexpected hot water, when she responded to a seemingly innocuous question:

“What is one of the biggest misconceptions about your country?”

Apparently, Miss Bolivia had not previously been equipped with a politically-correct response. She just blurted this out:

"Um... unfortunately, people that don't know Bolivia very much think that we are all just Indian people from the west side of the country, it's La Paz all the image that we reflect, is that poor people and very short people and Indian people ... I'm from the other side of the country, the east side and it's not cold, it's very hot and we are tall and we are white people and we know English so all that misconception that Bolivia is only an "Andean" country, it's wrong, Bolivia has a lot to offer and that's my job as an ambassador of my country to let people know much diversity we have." [Transcript Video]

Well, that was enough to ignite a firestorm. Miss Bolivia’s comments were on the front pages of papers in Bolivia. She was called a “racist” and her resignation as Miss Bolivia was even called for (though never by the pageant itself).

Even Maria Alvarez Plata, Bolivian Vice-Minister of Culture, weighed in on the question. She called Senorita Oviedo’s statements “lamentable” and declared that “No person who represents us has the right to have such a racist outlook…”

The Vice-Minister of Culture practiced a bit of psychoanalysis, stating that Miss Bolivia has difficulty recognizing “the cultural diversity that we have in our country.” [Indignación por declaraciones racistas de Miss Bolivia en Ecuador LA PAZ, May 27 (AFP)]

Wait a second! It seems to me that Miss Bolivia does recognize the “cultural diversity” in Bolivia. In fact, she got into trouble for recognizing and publicly pointing out—to foreigners! — Bolivia’s diversity.

You know the deal. Diversity is a Great Thing. It should be celebrated. But if you really talk about it, you’re branded a racist.

Let’s take an objective look at Bolivia and see what the fuss is about.

Bolivia’s population is 55% Indian, 30% mestizo and 15% white.

Western Bolivia, the Andean region including La Paz, is principally inhabited by the indigenous Quechua and Aymara, descendents of the Inca. They are generally shorter in stature than those of European ancestry. And yes, they tend to be poorer as well.

The lowlands of Eastern Bolivia, including Santa Cruz, from which Senorita Oviedo hails, is generally inhabited more by mestizos and whites. And they do tend to be taller. Gabriela Oviedo herself is six feet tall. [Vdare.com note: see The Last Days of Bolivia? By Mark Falcoff, for a full rundown on Bolivia's problems.]

In other words, what Miss Bolivia said about her country’s regions and ethnicities is true.

Why was it offensive?

Was it the way she said it? Or the tone of her voice?

Was it the fact that by beginning with “unfortunately” she cast her discourse in a negative light?

Was she really putting down the western residents of her nation who differ from her racially?

Since the interview was in English, Miss Bolivia claimed she had been misinterpreted. But she didn’t drop out of the pageant.

Whatever Miss Bolivia’s motives, I would venture to say that her comments stirred up such a fuss because they touch a raw nerve in Latin America, a taboo topic, a reality you’re not supposed to notice—the Great Latin American Racial Divide.

What racial divide? Latin Americans aren’t like those racist Anglo-Saxons up north, are they? Aren’t Latin Americans people who don’t notice skin color? Isn’t Latin America a happy melting pot of the races, where race doesn’t matter?

That’s the PC view, propagated by, among others, Huntington-critic and Reconquista Booster Carlos Fuentes.

Certainly, Latin America contains an astonishing mosaic of racial and ethnic groups, including racial mixtures of various kinds.

But generally speaking, wherever you go, white Latin Americans are at the top of the totem pole!

You need look no further than the Latin American contestants in the Miss Universe competition.

Venezuela is 67% mestizo. But look at Miss Venezuela—she’s blonde!

El Salvador is 90% mestizo. But look at Miss El Salvador!

Does she resemble the average 19-year old woman from her country?

Colombia is 58% mestizo and 20% white. But look at Miss Colombia!

Ecuador, the host of the pageant, is 65% mestizo. Look at Miss Ecuador.

Panama is 70% mestizo and 10% white. But look at Miss Panama.

(And her mother’s maiden name was Clark!)

Paraguay is 95% mestizo. But look at Miss Paraguay.

The Dominican Republic is 73% mulatto and 16% white, and look at Miss Dominican Republic.

Mexico is considered by the CIA World Factbook to be 60% mestizo and 30% Indian. But look at Miss Mexico.

Nicaragua is 69% mestizo. But look at Miss Nicaragua.

Peru is 45% Indian, 37% mestizo and 15% white, but look at Miss Peru.

Do you see the pattern here? None of these countries has a white majority. But all their Miss Universe contestants (with one exception) are white—or at least from the white end of the mestizo spectrum.

The only exception: Miss Guatemala, a mulatto with an English surname, who hails from the country’s small Caribbean coast.

Don’t get me wrong.

Far be it from me to tell Latin American countries who they should pick for their Miss Universe representatives.

But please, Latin Americans, don’t tell us how racist we are—and how color blind you are!

We may be foolish. But we’re not blind.

Good for her. I like a chick with some some ballsy honesty. Political correctness be damned.

Beauty is a mix of objectiveness and subjectiveness. No one wants to look at native Americans or negroes for a reason.



...

Good for her. I like a chick with some some ballsy honesty. Political correctness be damned.

Yes, me too. Apparently, Boliva is a powder-keg ready to blow. Ahh, the joys of diversity:

Last October Bolivia experienced a social and political upheaval that forced the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and shook the capital, La Paz, to its very foundations.[1] The headquarters of all the political parties supporting the government were burned to the ground; toll booths and other symbols of government authority were destroyed or disabled; even the Ministry of Sustainable Development--a magnificent Art Deco building that once housed the business offices of the Patiño tin empire--was gutted. Although a measure of normality has been restored since then, there is no certainty that stability is here to stay. As recently as late April, the lobby and lower floors of the congressional office building were demolished by a suicide bomber, and the successor regime--led by Sánchez de Lozada’s former vice president Carlos Mesa--is attempting to buttress its shaky legitimacy through a series of tawdry gimmicks. These include attempts to govern without parties; denying natural gas to Chile, Bolivia’s hated neighbor; threatening to overturn long-standing contracts with international energy companies; and brandishing a plebiscite which may well take the country--or at least an important part of it--outside the world economy. Republics do not normally commit suicide, but Bolivia may be an exception. If current trends continue, we may witness the first major alteration of the South American political map in more than a hundred years.

A Political System in Crisis

Although Bolivia recently celebrated more than two decades of constitutional democracy--the longest such continuous period in its entire history--its political system today appears to be in a state of terminal disintegration. Elections have reflected--but not resolved--deep, perhaps irreconcilable, divisions within the country. With one exception, no political party since 1982 has won a clear mandate to govern, and almost every president has assumed office with only slightly more than 20 percent of the popular vote. Indeed, the major political event in Bolivia every five years has been not elections themselves but the horse-trading afterwards among three or four leading contenders in the subsequent congressional runoff. The outcome has therefore been determined not by the particular position of candidates on the real problems of the country--education, communications, health services, job creation, and the like--but by the candidates’ skill at manipulating other members of the political class after the ballots have been counted. The process itself is evidently an open invitation to corruption and has encouraged a radical disconnect--perhaps the most yawning in South America--between the political class and the electorate.

Bolivia has long been South America’s poorest country. But a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and the threat of impending political chaos has made things even worse. The deficit of the public sector has almost doubled since 2000, foreign direct investment has fallen from $647 million in 2002 to a mere $160 million in 2003, and unemployment is steadily rising (5.7 percent in 2000, 6.8 percent in 2001, 7.0 percent in 2002). While the rates of economic growth and population increase have operated pretty much in tandem over the past fifty years, this is no longer the case; every year the country now produces a deficit of 70,000 jobs.
A case in point is El Alto, an Indian slum in the high Andean plateau immediately above La Paz; there a population of 800,000 lives from moment to moment.

The subject of El Alto immediately calls to mind a fundamental fact about Bolivia, namely, that it is a society divided along two major fault lines--race and geography. The republic has two distinct regions: the high Andean plateau (departments of Potosí, La Paz, Cochabamba, and Oruro) and a crescent of departments lying at lower, tropical, or semi-tropical elevations (Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, and Tarija).

The inhabitants of the highlands are largely Indian--Quechua and Aymara--while lowland Bolivia is principally mestizo, culturally if not always racially. The latter, referred to colloquially as the “half-moon” (media luna) has an impressively diverse economy, including not only oil and gas but also forest products and commercial agriculture. From the point of view of economic and cultural geography, one might regard the lowland departments, particularly Santa Cruz, eastern Chuquisaca, and Tarija, as extensions of the Argentine north, and in fact their living standard is slightly above the South American average. They have every reason to regard normal trade with the outside world as the key to prosperity.

A very different picture exists on the high Andean plateau. There the basic industry has been mining, first silver in the colonial period and then tin and other industrial metals in more recent centuries. Those Indians who did not work the mines labored on the great haciendas. The revolution of 1952 nationalized the mines, expropriated the great estates, and divided the land into family-sized parcels. These reforms, quite radical for their day, have run their course. A lack of capital to develop exhausted veins forced successive governments to conclude service contracts with foreign companies and put them into perpetual conflict with the miners’ unions. Meanwhile, the limits of agriculture on handkerchief-sized plots has forced many off the land and into the cities or encouraged them to engage in the cultivation of the coca leaf, the basis for, among other things, cocaine. Quite apart from the fact that coca has an international demand that brings in a price many times that of conventional crops, it has the additional charm of being something that can be produced on a relatively small land surface. Moreover, unlike potatoes, wheat, or corn, the farmer can hope to produce four full harvests in a single year, and with a minimum of agricultural labor.

The decision of the Bolivian government to suppress or limit the production of this crop (together with the support of the U.S. government in its war on drugs) has produced an enormous backlash in the Indian communities of the highlands. Moreover, it has brought forth a major political personality, Evo Morales, leader of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS). He and other indigenous leaders have discovered a volatile mixture of identity politics and economic self-interest, and their followers provided the shock troops for the riots that brought down President Sánchez de Lozada last October, egged on and to some extent financed by Scandinavian NGOs, local Trotskyites, and agents of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

The most radical of these groups favor renationalizing all of the state companies that have been turned into joint ventures in recent years and turning Bolivia (according to Morales) into “another Cuba” (whatever that may mean). More important still, are the links to what might be called Inca nationalism, a movement to repeal four hundred years of Bolivian history. In the new dispensation, Indian languages are to be given official status; the curriculum of schools is to be altered to provide indigenous content (to the point that the medical schools are to include native healing arts); even the name of the country is to be changed to Kollasuyo. While the Indians can rightly claim that they have received far less than their fair share of the nation’s wealth and services over many centuries, they are hardly likely to improve their lot by turning their backs on modernity altogether.

The characteristic forms of political expression of these communities are the riot (or the demonstration that turns into one--there were more than a thousand of these in La Paz alone in 2002) and setting up roadblocks to cripple the nation’s transportation network. Paradoxically these roadblocks hurt the poor Bolivians the Indian radicals purport to benefit. Thanks to them, market women cannot get to town to sell their wares; farmers’ produce rots in trucks or in the fields; and Bolivian agricultural suppliers--for both raw and processed foods--lose orders overseas because delivery contracts are not fulfilled on schedule....


http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.20580,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

She told the truth.

Conclusion: She is a racist :rolleyes:

Miss Bolivia

http://www.missuniverse.com/delegates/2004/images/portrait/BO.jpg


Strangely In don't I feel a sense of kinship between me and this "tall White woman".