Maita Gomez, former 60s beauty queen and leftist activist, dead at 65
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Former Filipina beauty queen and political activist, Maita Gomez died in her sleep at her Quezon City home Thursday, her son Antares Gomez Bartolome said she was supposed to wake up for lunch but was found lifeless in her room at past two in the afternoon.
Gomez, 65, who represented the country in the Miss World contest in 1967, shocked the country when she went underground to join the communist guerrilla movement to fight the Marcos dictatorship.
Gomez was studying medicine at the University of the Philippines and was a model for top designer Pitoy Moreno before she became a beauty queen.
She was once married to folk singer Heber Bartolome, with whom she had two children.
Mourning the death of Gomez included progressive and leftist groups in the Philippines- Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela, Kabataan, COURAGE, Migrante, ACT Teachers and Katribu expressed their sadness over Gomez’s death, remembering her as a woman who “never failed to speak out on the issues being discussed and her points were always well-taken–reflective of her intellectual acumen and wisdom, built up from a multifaceted life and deep involvement in our people’s struggle” according to a Philippine Inquirer report.
After the EDSA revolution in 1986, she became a political, economic, and women’s rights advocate who founded Kaiba, a women’s political party and ran for senator in the 1987 national elections under the leftist alliance, Partido ng Bayan (Nation’s Party).
