PLANT CITY, Fla. -- Arm in arm, the Strawberry Festival queen and court marched toward their palace, about to enter for the first time. Inside, gifts, robes and makeup mirrors awaited them.
Outside, they jumped up and down, giddy with excitement.
"This is like Christmas morning," one girl said.
Ilene Chavez, 18, shivered from the cold and her nerves. Most of her life, she had dreamed of a place in the queen's court.
Some discouraged her. They said the court and crown were for 6-foot tall girls with blond hair and blue eyes - not a Mexican-American girl.
In its 71 years of celebrating country music, farming and Southern living, the Florida Strawberry Festival had never put the daughter of Mexican-American strawberry workers on the queen's court. To many in the farm worker community, the beauty pageant was only for the daughters of Plant City's white elite.
But the face of Plant City has changed. Mexican farm families don't move around as much as they once did. And as the families settle down, they are becoming part of institutions like the Strawberry Festival, which opened its 11-day run Thursday.
For Chavez, born and raised here, it felt perfectly natural to enter the pageant.
"Go, go, go," she prodded the girls in front of her when the palace door opened earlier this week.
And just like that, she was inside.
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Elementary school teachers planted a dream in the head of the little girl with long black hair: You're going to be the first Mexican queen at the Strawberry Festival.
Chavez held onto the fairy tale, while her family followed its own dreams.
Her father, Felipe, had dropped out of middle school to help his parents pick strawberries. He worked his way up to crew leader and now runs his own strawberry farm. Her mother, Inez, born in Texas, is a teacher's aide at Bryan Elementary.
On weekends and vacations, Chavez and her siblings helped her father, picking cantaloupes and strawberries. The Strawberry Festival pageant lingered in the back of her mind.
That's going to be me someday, she thought.
She joined everything she could, knowing it might help her. She signed up for chorus, crossing guard, the Future Business Leaders of America.
But living between two worlds got harder as she got older.
In junior high, Hispanic friends ridiculed her.
"You hang out with white girls, you want to be white," they said.
When her white friends found out she worked on a strawberry farm, they were shocked.
"You do that?"
Chavez never hid her background, like some kids did to avoid being teased.
She invited white students to an uncle's barn to build a school parade float. Chavez went to her Hispanic friends' quinceneras, or 15th birthday parties, and invited them to hers.
The balancing act got easier in high school, where classes were more mixed. Chavez was equally adept at Spanish and English.
But when talk turned to the festival pageant, some in the Mexican community - including her own aunt - said it was for white girls.
"I never told her not to do it, but they are aware of my thoughts," said Guadalupe "Lupe" Lamas.
Chavez looks up to Lamas and hopes to help people the way her aunt does. Lamas, with a master's degree in nursing management, works for St. Joseph's Hospital at a mission in Dover for migrant workers.
Lamas doesn't like beauty pageants. She assumed Strawberry Festival judges would want white Southern belles. She worried Chavez would try too hard to fit in.
"I told her not to be ashamed," Lamas said.
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When Chavez entered the 2005 pageant, her parents had other concerns, like how they would afford gowns. Money got tighter as Chavez's father lost acreage to development on the farm land he rents.
Plus, neither parent had much time or experience with pageants. Chavez's mom worked full time and took classes at night.
"Why are you supporting this?" Chavez's father asked her mother. "You are setting her up to get her heart broken."
"I'm not going to tell her no," her mom remembers saying.
One of Chavez's former elementary teachers stepped forward. She and her husband, an attorney, offered to sponsor Chavez in the pageant, a donation of hundreds of dollars.
Chavez hired a pageant adviser for guidance.
The night the 2005 court was announced, Chavez's name was not called. She was crushed, but her family noticed a change. She seemed more confident. More determined to win.
For the 2006 pageant, Chavez had a new adviser and more time to prepare. She had graduated from Plant City High, was taking classes at Hillsborough Community College on scholarships and working as a secretary at Millennium Homes.
Her boss, Joe Rodrigues, was moved by her determination. He thought it would be nice to see a member of the Mexican community win.
He has paid at least $3,000 in expenses, he said.
Pageant coordinator Stephanie Shuff urges girls to borrow dresses or get them at Goodwill.
"We don't want the dress," she said. "The girl is the one going to represent us the whole year."
But many girls spend thousands.
Chavez took no chances. A boutique owner flew her to Atlanta, where she bought a new gown and bathing suit.
She thinks she can be both a fashion nut and the daughter of a farm worker. After all, she already drives farm equipment in high heels.
She added blond highlights to her hair, displeasing her aunt.
At an orientation session in November, directors told contestants what was expected of them: good morals, no pregnancies, a 2.5 GPA, plus knowledge of the strawberry industry.
Chavez knew all about it.
She thought, "This is my year."
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That night in early February, Chavez stood onstage in her gold gown, her heart pounding.
She had made it this far.
Judges had culled 25 girls to 10, before naming the five girls who would form the Strawberry Festival court. A step away from naming the queen, the judges named the First Maid, the girl who would take over if the queen could not fulfill her duties.
First maid: Ilene Chavez.
Chavez felt a tug of disappointment but maintained her smile as the crown was placed on the head of Hannah Hodge.
In the days to come, the disappointment was replaced with pride as Mexican residents stopped her on the street to congratulate her.
She had opened the door for others, they said.
Her aunts nagged her not to forget her heritage.
She nags them, too. She pushed them to enter their girls in the Strawberry Festival's baby beauty contest. Last year, one of her tiny cousins won first place and another won second.
When the time comes, Chavez plans to back them for festival queen, convinced that her beloved aunt was wrong about one thing.
The queen's court is not just for rich, white girls. |
