SANTA BARBARA, Honduras (AP) – Maria Jose Alvarado expected some difficult questions about her country at the Miss World pageant in London, so the 19-year-old beauty queen enlisted a teacher to help her prepare.
They reviewed the history of Honduras, including the military-backed coup in 2009 that sent the president into exile. They went through the daily newspapers to discuss politics and the gang and drug violence that makes this small Central American republic one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
The odds of winning the Miss World crown were long, Alvarado knew, but she practiced her English in the weeks ahead of the pageant, just in case she needed an acceptance speech, said Jose Eudaldo Diaz, the philosophy professor who was coaching her.
“She knew that the questions would be about the insecurity and violence because that is what the world knows about Honduras,” Diaz said. “Her goal was to explain that she wanted to contribute to a Honduras in which children could walk the streets without fear of being murdered.”
No one ever got to hear Alvarado’s speech, and she didn’t get to the pageant. She was shot to death along with a sister, their bodies discarded on a riverbank. They were laid to rest in a rain-soaked cemetery Thursday.