Queenpins of the Drug Cartels

Photo of Sandra Avila Beltran by Newscom As President Obama heads for Mexico today, he will find a country wracked not just by drug kingpins—but by a group of smart, ruthless women who have cracked the grass ceiling of the country's deadly narcotics ring.

“In this country,” said Scarface, “you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, you get the women.”

Al Pacino’s character was talking about organized crime in the United States. But in Mexico City, where President Obama will travel today to confront a horrific cycle of narcotics-spurred violence, gender roles aren’t nearly as clear cut. In a culture known for its machismo, women command a startling degree of authority over the Mexican drug mafia. They run its finances, major smuggling operations, even run entire cartels.

The laundering operations run by these women don’t take place in smoke-filled billiard rooms—they manage boutiques, hotels, and beauty parlors, profitable fronts for their even more profitable illegal activities.

“I wouldn’t say that cartels are equal-opportunity employers,” says Dr. David Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego, “but evidence does suggest that there are spaces in cartels for women who are able to assert themselves and show their talents and abilities as operators within the cartels.”

The powerful women of the narco world are even achieving immortality in corridos—Mexican folk ballads that tell the stories of the country’s greatest heroes and most infamous villains. “All the guests arrived at the mountain party in private helicopters,” sing Los Tucanes de Tijuana. “Suddenly they heard a buzzing sound, and saw a chopper landing. The boss ordered everyone to hold their fire. Out came a beautiful lady, dressed in camo and donning a cuerno (AK-47). Everyone knew immediately who she was. She was the famous Queen of the Pacific and Its Shores, the strong lady of the business, a true heavyweight.”

The song celebrates the pouty-lipped cartel monarch Sandra Ávila Beltrán, aka “La Reina del Pacífico”—the Queen of the Pacific. Living up to her royal moniker, Beltrán maintained a high-profile presence in the posh Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco, often seen dining at upscale restaurant Chez Wok and getting her hair blown out at celebrity-frequented salons. The striking brunette is the niece of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the godfather of Mexican organized crime in the 1970s and ‘80s, whose arrest in 1989 led to the hydra of feuding cartels that are ravaging Mexico today. After her uncle was locked up, Beltrán seized the chance to become a major player in her family’s criminal aristocracy, craving power to complement her luxury lifestyle.

With her famed beauty, she seduced the drug trafficking business’ most powerful men. The mistress of such heavyweights as Colombian mobster Diego “El Tigre” Espinoza and Mexican kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, her sex appeal helped get her in the door. But it was her shrewd business acumen that allowed her to gain control of one the most coveted smuggling routes in the business: the Colombia-U.S. Pacific corridor.

Beltrán was a tabloid darling in Mexico until September 2007, when her black BMW was pulled over and she was arrested as part of President Felipe Calderón’s escalating war on drugs. She now sits in a women’s detention facility in Mexico City pending extradition to the United States. Life behind bars has not been easy for the woman accustomed to mansions and private helicopters—the former millionaire filed a complaint with the Mexican Commission on Human Rights a month after her arrest, citing bedbugs and other “noxious fauna” in her cell.

Beltrán’s capture has made her the most talked-about queenpin. Her life inspired a novel by Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte, titled “The Queen of the South,” which is being made into a movie starring Eva Mendes, Josh Hartnett, and Ben Kingsley. But she is hardly the only woman who wields influence on the cartel circuit.