Guest Judge for the Miss Texas Latina 2014 Pageant

Estela Trevizo
Jul 10, 2014
4 min read

MISS TEXAS LATINA is the Official State Preliminary Pageant for the national MISS US LATINA™ competition established since 1983 to the International MISS LATIN AMERICA® OF THE WORLD pageant. The Winner of the MISS TEXAS LATINA will continue on to participate in the National MISS US LATINA 2014. This Pageant intends to promote the ideas, culture, interests and aspirations of this country's most powerful emerging market. Today's young Latina women are leading the way. Their desires for achievement, recognition and the betterment of themselves and their families are shaping the future economy and culture of this country, driving it into the next century. The current Miss Texas Latina pageant is held under the directorship of Juan Arturo Ramirez, who has grown and made the organization even bigger in Dallas/Texas than ever before!

This year, the pageant was held in Dallas, Tx at the Lakewood Theatre and what an honor it was to be asked not only to Sponsor the event with Bella Modeling School and Herbalife but also to judge for this years Miss Texas Latina and Miss Teen Texas Latina Pageant as the former 2011 Queen myself! Let me tell you, Texas has so many beautiful latinas, and this year, the competition was extremely fierce and very difficult to judge for. Even the teens carried themselves in such a fashion that you would not guess the youngest one was 13!!

Many people believe beauty pageants are all about looks and choosing the prettiest one. There is more to it than that! They had pre-interviews during a dinner where I along with the rest of the judges ate dinner with them and got to know them on a not so "intense" setting. They also had preliminaries prior to the event so we could score their evening gowns/walk, fashion wear/walk, cultural outfits, and for the Misses, Bikini wear. Now that takes a lot of courage to walk out in and strut your stuff. Just to clarify, it was not just based on fitness, but also the confidence they had when walking out like that. I know all the guy judges loved this part. ;) They also had an intense panel interview before the pageant where based on their answers were able to earn points as well. Even when this part was all said and done, it was already looking very close with some of the contestants as far as how close they were in points.

The top 10 (in the Miss there were 11) were already chosen at this point. For the Miss group we had: Miss El Paso Latina, Miss Houston Latina, Miss Pasadena Latina, Miss Amarillo Latina, Miss Dallas Latina, Miss Tarrant Latina, Miss Ft. Worth Latina, Miss Nacogdoches Latina, Miss San Antonio Latina, Miss Dumas Latina, and Miss McAllen Latina.

The top 10 for the teens were: Teen Amarillo Latina, Teen Hereford Latina, Teen Dumas Latina, Teen Laredo Latina, Teen Lubbock Latina, Teen Dallas Latina, Teen San Antonio Latina, Teen McAllen Latina, Teen Crane Latina, Teen Austin Latina, and Teen Houston Latina.

The day of the pageant, lakewood theatre was packed with supporters! There were backdrops to take pictures, lots of media, and interviews going on when you first walked in and throughout the event. The competition was just getting started! The top ten still had to compete and earn points for top 5, and eventually to win the crown as our new queen.

The final way for the top 10 contestants to earn additional points were their stage presence and questions asked on stage. With a panel of 8 judges, we still had a difficult time choosing the top 5 and the overall winner. The host for the event, Miss US Latina 2012, Sasha Zacarias, did a great job on stage especially when we had to keep going back and judging on additional questions since they kept tying!

Eventually, the points added up to our winner Natalia Castillo! An energetic, fierce, humble, hard working Latina from Houston, TX. She definitely caught the judges eyes since day 1.

You can follow her journey as the new queen through her Facebook page: Miss Texas Latina. She will be traveling to the Mexico to compete for the Miss US Latina 2014 crown. Texas took the US crown last year, will we take it again? We have a very good chance!

Our teen winner was Mitzy Belen Gonzales of Amarillo, TX. Very well poised and elegant for her age. Her elegant demeanor caught our eyes since the beginning as well.

She will be supporting & joining her pageant sister in Mexico!

Overall this event was filled with excitement, talented Latinas, and an amazing show. If you missed it, you can now order the video of the event, or even if you just want to re-live the excitement on MissTexasLatina.com. I even invited some friends that had never seen a pageant, and they had a blast!

Above are our beautiful queens pictured with the state pageant director Juan Arturo Ramirez.

As a former queen, I know that pageants help with confidence, poise, and open up so many opportunities for all of the girls involved. The friendships you build, the people you meet, and what you can accomplish in your city/state with your crown for the Latino community is amazing.