SINCE BEING CROWNED
MISS UNIVERSE, ALICIA MACHADO HAS
TAKEN LATIN AMERICA BY STORM
When you step into Alicia Machado's Mexico City home, you quicklv learn what kind of man you are. A pet panther named Chuy slides over and sniffs you. The wildcat's eyes size you up. Maybe you see the sparkle of saliva on his fang. Don't let him smell (ear or you will disappoint the lady of the house. Suffice it to say, Alicia Machado defines exotic in more ways than one. The former Miss Universe (the first Miss Universe ever to appear in the pages of i'layboy) is a 29-year-old celebrity in Uatin America. Turn on the TV and you may see her smiling face. Turn on the radio and you may hear her singing. She first posed for the Mexican edition of iil.\vbo\ in 2006 and got rave reviews; hers became the best-selling issue of Mexican playboy in history
at the time. Then she appeared in our Venezuelan edition to even greater acclaim. Now, in the magazine you hold in your hand, she arrives in America. She admits that her nude photos took many of her fans by surprise at first. "They never saw me like this," Alicia says, "but this is the real me. the real Alicia. This is who I am." Yoseph Alicia Machado Kajardo was born in Venezuela in 1977 to a Cuban mother and Spanish father. She won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996 at the age of 19. "I was a little kid," she says. But she didn't look like anv little kid. Statuesque and elegant, her amber skin so radiant it glowed, she was easily chosen as the judges' winner. She was crowned in a televised ceremony at the Aladdin Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. Since then Alicia has become an actress and a model. She landed a part on a Mexican soap opera, and she recorded an eponymous pop album in 2004. Currently she appears on the TV show El Pantera, a popular crime drama that airs on Monday nights in Mexico. She has a major role in / Love Miami, a film about Cubans living in the U.S., which came out last year. Her second CD hit stores in August. She's working so much, she says, she barelv has time to spend at home with her panther and her horse. La Negra. She's not married, but she has "a partner who is very important to me. I believe in love and relationships." Marriage? "I don't know. Maybe," she says. "Sometimes I believe in marriage, and sometimes I feel different."
For this shoot, we chose a locale nearly as exotic and beautiful as our model. On a Pacific beach in Oaxaca. in the southern reaches of Mexico, Alicia came alive. "Oaxaca is where the most important Indians in Mexico come from," she says. "It's a magical place. Everything there is so mystical." We couldn't agree more.
