Is Lupita Jones Being Replaced As Head of Miss Universe Mexico?

Lupita Jones and her days at the helm of Miss Universe Mexico might be numbered according to La Prensa Honduras and rumors circulating online. 

The former Miss Universe, the first Mexican woman to ever win the crown in 1991, has been in charge of the organization tasked with choosing the Mexican representative for the pageant for thirty years. But if the rumors are to be believed, she will now leave the national director post to a new generation.

Jones didn’t have much to say when questioned by reporters, only responding in Spanish that “there was no news,” because “Miss Universe had not yet defined anything.”

It’s unclear who will take her place at the helm of Mexicana Universal, the national beauty pageant in Mexico. But one of the names being mentioned to replace her is that of Cynthia Duque, who was Miss Mexico 2012 and represented the country in the Miss Universe pageant for 2013.

Duque, for her part, told reporters in Spanish that “every year there are a lot of reports, but that she couldn’t say anything.” When pressed, however, she did add that it is good that beauty pageants are now “more open to diversity.”

Jones has been at the center of many controversies, including one with Duque herself – which some reports said could be traced back to Duque’s weight gain before the Miss Universe pageant. Apparently, Jones wasn’t pleased about it. This is more or less the same thing that happened to Cynthia de la Vega, the 2010 Nuestra Belleza Mundo México titleholder, who was nominally stripped of her crown for “discipline” reasons. But claims were made that it was due to her weight. 

It doesn’t stop there for Jones, who was also very vocally anti trans-women in Miss Mexico, despite the fact that multiple trans women have competed in the Miss Universe pageant before. She even went as far as to say that there are pageants for trans women, so Miss Mexico should remain for “biological women only.”

Considered separately, these issues weren’t enough to force Lupita Jones out when they happened. But they paint a clear picture of a woman who is stuck in the past and who cannot really understand, much less help guide the organization that selects women to represent Mexico into a new era. If this finally added up to the point that she is out and a new face is in at Mexicana Universal, that honestly feels like progress.