American Beauty

In Lima last week two ministers, three charges d'affaires, and the ambassadors of Brazil, Spain, France, Ecuador, Colombia and Great Britain had met in solemn conclave. Before the dark backdrop of the tiny Association of Amateur Artists theater, dapper, grey-haired Brazilian Ambassador Luis Pereira Ferreira de Faro announced to a hushed audience the result of their deliberations. The diplomats, aided by local intellectuals and journalists, had selected luscious Peruvian Ana Maria Alvarez Calderon as Beauty Queen of All the Americas.

The international contest at which their excellencies assisted was a sparkling new feature of Peru's annual Feria Nacional, which included such other attractions as bullfights and a country fair.

At one point a rumor spread that the learned judges were thinking of ordering a bathing-suit parade for their own eyes alone. Following the maxim expressed by one woman, "Never trust old gentlemen who are not too old," several mothers of contestants turned to Juan Gualberto Cardinal Guevara for advice. The cardinal gravely informed the tribunal that a bathing-suit parade, public or private, would be contrary to religion and modesty. The girls appeared fully clothed.

The flashing-eyed, 20-year-old queen of the Western Hemisphere is 5 ft. 5 in. tall, weighs 120 Ibs. and has black hair, sweeping black lashes and a mouth compared by one inspired limeno to the ace of hearts. She also is heiress to a fortune of 500 million soles (more than $32 million at the free exchange rate). Her maternal grandfather, Eulogio Fernandini, had a finger in almost every financial pie in the country and was known to his contemporaries as an ardent collector--of gold coins. After his death in 1947, tax assessors laboriously counted their way through two large antique coffers full of gold pounds and two-sol quintos, reckoned the total at 30 million soles (nearly $2,000,000).

Ana Maria is fond of lilies and orchids, which she grows, and wild about bullfighting. Having studied in the U.S. for a year at San Francisco's Sacred Heart School, she would like to travel more, hopes to take up social work as a career.

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