DRUG CARTELS NO LONGER STRICTLY A MAN'S WORLD

In Mexico, Women Are Moving into Positions of Power in the Drug
Underworld, but They Are Also Being Gruesomely Killed in Turf Wars

TIJUANA, Mexico - Challenging the stereotype of macho Mexico, women
are moving into positions of power in male-dominated drug cartels but
in the process they are suffering gruesome deaths in turf wars among
traffickers.

At least 20 women drug smugglers have been killed by rival gangs so
far this year, many of them suffocated with tape, compared to about 15
for all last year, police say.

The highest-profile woman is Enedina Arellano Felix, who now jointly
runs the Tijuana cartel based across the border from California after
one of her brothers, top trafficker Francisco Javier, was captured in
August.

"This is a new phenomenon we are only just becoming aware of," said a
senior federal police officer who declined to be named.

"We are seeing it in the Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels, possibly even in
the Juarez and Gulf gangs," he added, referring to Mexico's main
trafficking organizations.

U.S. law enforcement officials say Ms. Arellano, a 46-year-old
accountant, works alongside her brother Eduardo in leading the cartel,
using the pseudonym Maria Cecilia Felix.

Ironically, female traffickers often get their start in the police,
before moving to the drug gangs for better money.

Corrupt female police officers have proved adept at recruiting teams
of attractive, well-dressed women to smuggle drugs past border guards
in the face of increased security, winning the respect of cartel leaders.

Women are unlikely to be searched during drug raids
because

Mexican police and army units rarely include a female team member,
police say.

"Many women are also good business managers. We believe Enedina
Arellano has a pharmacy and construction business," said a former
Mexican police intelligence officer who declined to be named.

About 700 people have been killed so far in 2007 in fierce battles for
control of smuggling routes that have prompted Felipe Calderon, the
Mexican President, to send thousands of troops to troubled areas.

Women are less likely to become caught up in the violence, but they
are not immune to dying brutally. They are often killed
execution-style, shot with their hands and feet tied behind their
backs, or suffocated with duct tape.

Monica Ramirez, a senior Tijuana policewoman once considered one of
the most promising female officers on the northern border, was killed
in February by Tijuana cartel hit men after being jailed for running a
smuggling cell linked to the group.

Police sources say she was shot dead in a prison hospital to keep her
from informing.

Women in Mexico have long taken second place in public life but their
presence has grown in recent decades in areas ranging from jobs in
assembly plants to government positions as they challenge workplace
sexism. About a fifth of the country's federal lawmakers are women.

In a case of life imitating art, Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte
presaged the trend in the drug trade in his 2002 bestseller Queen of
the South, a meticulously researched novel about a fictional Mexican
drug magnate named Teresa Mendoza.

Partly set in the Pacific state of Sinaloa, today the base of No. 1
trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the formidable heroine rises out
of poverty as a gang moll to become a tough, tequiladrinking drug
kingpin in her own right, selling Colombian cocaine to a Russian crime
gang.

"The book was prophetic," said Victor Clark, a drug trade expert at
San Diego State University.

"The more active role of women is going to give a new twist to drug
trafficking. It may become less violent, more businesslike."

Poverty and a lack of well-paid jobs in Mexico appear to be the main
causes of the increasing female involvement in trafficking, with many
women eager to swap their tin-roof shacks for a proper house and to
educate their children.

"Drug trafficking brings status and excitement. It is a route out of
hardship," said Jose Maria Ramos, a security expert at the
Tijuana-based research institute Colegio de la Frontera Norte.