‘Queen of the Pacific’ arrested as drug boss

MEXICO CITY – Blessed with charm and good looks, Sandra Avila Beltran is enthralling Mexico. Not as a beauty queen, but as an alleged drug lord, and the story of her arrest and possible extradition to the U.S. is being followed more closely than a telenovela.

Police say the 46-year-old spent more than a decade working her way to the top echelons of Mexico’s male-dominated drug trade, uniting Colombian and Mexican gangs, and seducing several notorious kingpins.

Dubbed the “Queen of the Pacific,” she even has her own song – a “narcocorrido” folk ballad about drug traffickers by Los Tucanes de Tijuana that pays homage to her as “a top lady who is a key part of the business.”

Since her arrest last week, the song has been playing often on Mexican radio, and television stations are repeatedly broadcasting a video showing her coyly telling police that she is just a housewife and businesswoman. The clip had been seen 40,000 times on YouTube as of Thursday.

Avila Beltran lived largely unnoticed in the northern cities of Guadalajara and Hermosillo until 2001. That’s when police found more than nine tons of cocaine on a ship in the Pacific port of Manzanillo and tracked the shipment to her and her 39-year-old lover, Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez – known as “the Tiger” and also wanted by U.S. authorities.

It was her romance with Espinoza Ramirez that brought together two powerful cocaine organizations, Mexico’s Sinaloa gang and Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel, prosecutors say.

Officials say Avila Beltran was head of “public relations” for the Sinaloa cartel, an unprecedented role for a woman, and as such helped move cocaine from Colombia.

Her success was likely aided by an influential family. She is the niece of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, “the godfather” of Mexican drug smuggling, who is serving a 40-year sentence in Mexico for drug smuggling and the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico’s western Jalisco state.

Mexican media have said Avila Beltran had love affairs with other drug lords as well, which helped catapult her into the elite of drug trafficking.

She managed to stay behind the scenes until 2001. A few months after the cocaine seizure, her teenage son was kidnapped in Guadalajara and she contacted authorities for help. The size of the ransom demanded, which police said was $5 million, raised more suspicion among authorities.

Avila Beltran ended up saying she would handle the kidnapping negotiations herself.

Both U.S. and Mexican authorities took a closer look and began building a case against Avila Beltran.

More than 30 federal agents arrested her Sept. 28 as she drank a cup of coffee at a diner, but she didn’t lose her poise. She charmed investigators into letting her apply makeup before police videotaped her transfer to a women’s jail.

In the footage, Avila Beltran, wearing spiked heels and skintight jeans, tosses her hair and smiles to the camera while walking downstairs on the arm of a federal agent. She then laughingly makes small talk with two female guards handcuffing her.

Hours later, police also caught up with Espinoza Ramirez. He, too, smiles broadly in his mug shot.