The embattled Miss Cuba is responding to allegations that she doesn’t speak Spanish and conned her way into winning the crown in a poorly edited video.
Since winning the pageant title on July 8, Lina Luaces’s reign has been marked by controversy.
Critics immediately blasted the Florida-born beauty as a ‘nepo baby’- accusing her of beating out more qualified contestants who were born in Cuba due to her famous family ties.
Her aunt is singer Gloria Estefan, who is married to Miami music producer and businessman Emilio Estefan.
Luaces’s mother, Lili Estefan, is also a well-known Univision host with an estimated net worth of $500 million.
The Miss Cuba title not only positions Luaces to represent Cuba, but also to compete for the Miss Universe crown in November in Thailand.
The new Cuban queen took to Instagram Thursday to say she was ‘breaking her silence’ in a five-minute video recorded in Spanish.
‘It’s been a long month filled with chaos, growth, and nonstop work,’ the model wrote.
Miss Cuba Lina Luaces awkwardly looks off camera during a five-minute video in which she addressed critics who have branded her as not Cuban enough to hold her crown
Miss Universe Cuba Lina Luaces, representing Santiago de Cuba, walked the stage as she competed in the Miss Universe Cuba 2025 beauty pageant at Milander Park in Hialeah, Florida on Tuesday, July 8
In the highly rehearsed and edited clip in Spanish, the 22-year-old acknowledged that English is her first language, as she was born in Miami.
‘In Cuba [people are] starving without electricity or transportation, and [they’re represented by a girl who lives with all comforts in Miami,’ an online critic said of Luaces.
In her post, she thanked her haters for helping her ‘realize that the things you criticized- like my accent, the fact that I wasn’t born in Cuba but in Miami due to the exile, and not speaking perfect Spanish weren’t my weaknesses, but my greatest strengths.’
At one point, Luaces could be seen looking away from the camera at someone or something off to the side.
Yet she still made several grammatical errors, mispronounced words like ‘access’, and conjugated words incorrectly.
‘I represent a generation born in Cuban exile,’ Miss Cuba stated in the footage.
‘What many see as a weakness, that Spanish is not our first language, I see as one of our biggest strength.’
Her speech seemed to be written in English and translated, as she used American phrases or sayings that don’t make sense in Spanish.
‘When you cut us open, we all bleed the same,’ Luaces said in Spanish.
In a five-minute Instagram video, Miss Cuba defended herself after an outpouring of criticism, saying she represents a generation of Cubans born in exile
Online critics slammed Miss Universe Cuba as rigged. The Miami-born winner Lina Luaces is related to singer Gloria Estefan
Lina Luaces and her mother Lili Estefan attend the 25th Latin GRAMMY Awards at Kaseya Center on November 14, 2024 in Miami, Florida
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 15: (L-R) Lili Estefan, Sasha Estefan-Coppola, Gloria Estefan, Emilio Estefan, Lina Luaces, and Lorenzo Luaces attend the 2023 Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Gala at the New York Marriott Marquis on June 15, 2023 in New York City
While a common phrase in the US, Spanish speakers wouldn’t use that phrase to try to explain that we’re all the same at our core.
Neither Luaces or the Miss Universe organization responded to Daily Mail’s request for comment.
However, competition rules do allow both contestants born in Cuba and the children of exiled Cubans to participate Miss Cuba, according to the Miami New Times.
The two most recent Cuban crown-holders have been under the microscope, as Cuba had not participated in pageants since 1967 due to the island’s communist rule.
In the days after her win, her famous mom interviewed her daughter on the Spanish-speaking network.
Estefan shared how her daughter had spent the two months prior to the pageant taking a crash course in Spanish.
‘Lina, I’m listening to you in Spanish, and I don’t recognize you,’ the bewildered mom said of hearing her daughter hold a conversation in Castilian.
‘I always speak to her in Spanish (at home,) and she responds in English, and I’m like, “Oh my God.”‘
Marianela Ancheta, right, embraces Lina Luaces after winning the Miss Universe Cuba 2025 beauty pageant at Milander Park on Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Hialeah, Florida
Despite her video justification, Luaces’ critics were not silenced. Instagram user @glavine1969 wrote, ‘Her speech, written by someone else, is faker than a wooden coin. How many days did she have to memorize it? I keep asking, who had heard or seen this child speak of the dictatorship in Cuba before? Who heard or saw her helping Cubans on the island? If she loves Cuba so much, why didn’t she learn Spanish the right way? Or is it that she’s an opportunist who needed to give an image of loving Cuba in order to satisfy a whim?’
‘How many hours of Spanish…how did you achieve this,’ the mom asked, adding there are other girls who would want the same crown but don’t speak the language.
’24 hours a day– when I would wake up with you, you would say, ‘I don’t understand you. I don’t speak Spanish,’ the daughter replied.
‘With my friends, many of them don’t speak (Spanish,) and I said to them, ‘Sorry but for these two months, I need be away.
‘I can only be with Spanish-speakers who can help me, correct me when I don’t say something correctly.’
While some in the Cuban community congratulated her for her improved speech, others saw her learning Spanish as a calculated means to an end.
‘If she loves Cuba so much, why didn’t she learn Spanish the right way,’ asked IG user @glavine1969. ‘Or is it that she’s an opportunist who needed to give an image of loving Cuba so she can satisfy a whim?’
