To Anistacia Aragon, competing in pageants has been a dream since she was a child.

“Honestly, just watching the Miss America pageant on TV, or the Miss Universe pageant on TV, that was something I really enjoyed watching,” Aragon said. “I was like ‘I’m going to do that when I get older.’”

Now, the Los Lunas resident holds the title of Miss Teen Latina New Mexico. She competed in the Miss Teen Latina pageant in August 2021 as Miss Teen Los Lunas, and plans to compete for the national title in August of this year in Washington state.

After the Miss Teen U.S. Latina pageant later this year, Aragon also set her sights on eventually competing for Miss America.

Previous to her current title, she also earned the title of Enchanting Miss New Mexico, a smaller pageant.

Since taking on the title, Aragon has also taken on a lot of community service work both within and beyond her platform. While she competed on a platform bringing awareness to teen suicide, she said her favorite part is visiting younger children while at school.

“I met a lot of little kids and they thought it was so cool,” she said. “One even told me ‘happy birthday’ because I had my crown on. It’s just really awesome seeing the kids, talking to them and meeting each of them.”

While at the schools, Aragon feels it’s important to discuss the power of representation of people of color in media, especially for young girls.

While competing, during the interview portion, Aragon was asked about her favorite Disney princess to which she answered, Tiana. She said the first Black princess represents the values POC girls should look up to.

“First there was Pocahontas, but she was shown as someone who needed a man to help her out, but Tiana was more like, ‘I’m an independent woman,’” Aragon said. “I feel like girls that are my age now didn’t really feel representation in the media.”

She added that in the past few years, it has changed with the inclusion of more big box office movies telling POC stories, such as “Encanto.” Still, Aragon feels talking at the schools about minority female representation makes a big difference for young girls.

“I feel that’s made a big impact because a lot of the cases, they are like, ‘I didn’t really notice that we didn’t have representation,” Aragon said. “So, they are now also putting their part in to fight for more representation. Hopefully, in the future, there will be a lot more (POC) representation (in media).”

Aragon also delivered toys to children residing in area hospitals, homeless shelters and domestic violence shelters around the state. She also organized a Barbie drive for New Mexican children.

Although Aragon put in work in many different areas, she holds her main platform of bringing awareness to teen suicide close to her heart since one of her close friends died by suicide two years ago.

“Just talking about it. That’s one of the biggest ways you can bring awareness to something because I feel like a lot of times people dismiss children’s feelings. They are like, ‘Oh, they are too little to feel sad,’ or stuff like that,” Aragon said. “A lot of times, talking to people and being like, ‘Your child’s feelings are valid and you need to listen to them.’”

The 17 year old currently a junior at Menaul School in Albuquerque, and plans to pursue a college degree in biomedical engineering either at New Mexico Tech or at an out-of-state university in Texas. After college, she wants to spend some time in the Peace Corps before moving into a career.

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Makayla Grijalva was born and raised in Las Cruces. She is a 2020 graduate of The University of New Mexico, where she studied multimedia journalism, political science and history.