Financial 'angel' saves Miss Venezuela's Universe title hopes

<a href=www.newindpress.com>Agencies Thursday May 29 2003 12:57 IST

VENEZUELA: A Venezuelan currency crisis almost dashed the Miss Universe '03 title hopes of Miss Venezuela ’03 Mariangel Ruiz. But intervention by a media company in the South American country will allow her to participate in the June 4 Miss Universe competition after all. The trouble erupted earlier this week, when Miss Venezuela pageant organizers had announced a cancellation of Mariangel’s trip to Panama, explaining that the $80,000 needed to pay her way could not be raised due to Venezuela’s recent restrictions on converting its bolivars into American dollars, which grew out of panic buying of the dollar in Venezuela earlier this year. At one point this week, Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso personally made pleas to Venezuelan officials to resolve the foreign-exchange snafu to allow Miss Venezuela to compete. Today, the 23-year-old Mariangel Ruiz is heading to the Miss Universe Pageant, thanks to the financing help of the Venezuelan media company with the pageant’s broadcast rights. The president of the Cisneros media group, Gustavo Cisneros, whose television channel Venevision transmits the national contest, will pay for the Venezuelan winner to take part. Based on the current exchange rate of 1,600 bolivars per dollar, the $80,000 American dollars Cisneros is putting up to make Miss Ruiz’s trip to Panama a reality amounts to a cool 128 million bolivars. The financing bailout averted what might have been a deep national embarrassment in Venezuela, which considers itself the beauty capital of the world. Beauty pageants are a matter of national passion and pride in Venezuela; the country’s contestants hold the record for winning the most titles — 12 of them — in the Miss Universe and Miss World competitions. In the U.S., NBC’s telecast of the 52nd Miss Universe competition airs live