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Miss Long Island 2011 Discusses Her Cuban and Puerto Rican Heritage

Posted August 24, 2010 by Ted Hesson

One common stereotype about beauty pageants, according to Marina Montes, who was crowned Miss Long Island 2011 in Patchogue earlier this month, is that victory hinges on the physical aspects of the competition: strutting your stuff in an evening gown or flashing your curves in a two-piece bathing suit.

To a degree, that’s true: A hot body, however proportioned, is more or less a prerequisite. If you don’t believe me, click here.

But as much as judges might appreciate well-defined abs and pinpoint makeup application, those attributes don’t leave a lasting impression, according to Montes.

“The interview, that’s the part where the judges are really going to get the opportunity to know you,” she says. “It’s your way to distinguish yourself.”

Montes waves to the audience after being crowned Miss Long Island at the Patchogue Theater for the Performing Arts on August 15.

For Montes, that means highlighting her Cuban and Puerto Rican ancestry, and the culture and traditions that come along with it.

There’s plenty to talk about:

A bilingual kid snacking on guava pastries at her grandparents’ Cuban bakery in downtown Brooklyn, which they opened in 1964 after fleeing the Castro regime. Dancing to her father’s salsa records and in-house conga drumming. And her lifelong struggle to perfect her grandmother’s recipe for picadillo, the Sloppy Joe-style Puerto Rican dish that Montes can’t describe without growing audibly excited.

Montes (center) with her grandparents on her college graduation day in 2007, left to right: step-grandfather Gilberto Santiago, maternal grandmother Dora Alieda Santiago, paternal grandmother Merenciana Montes, and paternal grandfather Octavio Montes.

If Miss Long Island’s immigrant and Latino background is a big part of her pageantry success, it’s also a big part of her life, in general.

The 25-year-old Montes, currently in her third year of law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, treasures the cultural traditions passed down to her by her grandparents. In equal measure, she’s grateful that her parents embraced their Latino roots while raising her in Setauket, where Hispanics were a noticeable minority.

“In high school, I had a quinceañera,” Montes says. “I was the only one that had a ‘Sweet 15’ and not a ‘Sweet 16’…We were very proud to be Puerto Rican and Cuban. It was something that people knew about us, and we would never hide it.”

Montes’ maternal grandfather Arnaldo Hernandez and mother Patricia Montes at the family’s Brooklyn bakery, circa October 1978.

Montes says that her high school friends loved learning about Latino culture (especially the food part). But over the years, she’s also witnessed anti-immigrant sentiment in Suffolk County.

Two years ago, she remembers driving through Farmingville when she saw someone in a nearby car hurl a glass bottle at a group of day laborers gathered on a corner.

“I don’t know if someone was just chucking the bottle out of their car, but to me it looked like a projectile object going to a very specific group of people,” Montes says. “That’s not the way you deal with illegal immigration. Doing something like that is beyond juvenile, and it’s very disrespectful to another human being…To see the stuff that goes on in our very own community on Long Island is really shameful.”

Reading about similar incidents on Long Island frustrates Montes. As a self-professed “product of immigration,” she has firm opinions about immigration policy.

“I strongly believe that if you’re coming to this country illegally, there should be consequences,” she says. “What should those consequences be? They shouldn’t be getting ostracized in your community; it shouldn’t be violence; it shouldn’t be Arizona’s law.”

Immigrants who have come to the US for the right reasons – to work, raise a family, escape persecution – should be given a pathway to citizenship, she says. “But, like anything, it all needs to be done legally.”

As evidenced, Montes’ immigrant heritage is a strong asset in pageants, setting her apart from the collection of accomplished and beautiful women alongside her onstage. And her background will likely come into play again next year, when she competes in the Miss New York USA competition.

But culture has caused some snags along the way, she says, specifically with her father, Jimmy Montes.

When she first started competing, Montes says, her father’s own upbringing – he was raised by newly migrated Puerto Rican Catholic parents – made him question some elements of pageantry.

“It’s the whole bathing suit thing,” Montes says. “He’ll say, ‘I just don’t get it’…I’ll tell him, ‘Dad, it’s about being fit.’”

But after seeing his daughter compete and win thousands of dollars in scholarship money, he’s more accepting, Montes says. “Now, my father is a huge supporter.”

For more information about the Miss Long Island pageant, click here. For info about the Miss USA pageant, click here.