HIGH-RISK RICHES FOR 'NARCO WIVES'

From Pageant Winner To Murder Victim

Teenage girls in northwest Mexico are dazzled by the glamourous "narco
wives" who laze in beauty salons, draped in designer gear, getting
Swarovski crystals glued onto their fingernails.

Each year, dozens compete in beauty pageants in the sun-baked hills of
Sinaloa state where their legendary good looks draw wealthy drug
traffickers who will sometimes pluck one out and spirit her off to a
mountain hide-out.

Career prospects are few for Sinaloan girls, and landing a prominent drug
trafficker means entering a world of untold riches -- luxury mansions,
SUVs, endless spa sessions and a closet full of the priciest labels on the
planet.

The dangers of getting sucked into the gangland world have jumped,
however, as an army crackdown by President Felipe Calderon has sparked new
turf wars and hitmen ignore old codes against slaying their enemies'
wives, girlfriends or children.

In a sobering reminder of the risks they run, the reigning Miss Sinaloa
was arrested last month with her smuggler boyfriend in a truck full of
guns and cash.

"It's dangerous to get involved with these people. The risk is there for
any pretty girl," said model agency director Juan Manuel Alvarado in his
office, crammed with trophies and photos in fake leopard-fur frames, in
the state capital Culiacan.

Sinaloans say their striking looks come from tall indigenous ancestors who
mixed with French, German and Greek settlers, and the state is rich with
swashbuckling tales of drug lords whisking girls from villages, luring
them to parties at ranches or even kidnapping them at gunpoint.

What is new is that more and more women are being murdered in a war that
killed around 5,700 people nationwide last year.

"I never let them go to private events or ranches, or give their phone
numbers. I don't let them out of my sight," said Alvarado, glancing
protectively at three of his models.

Outside, the cartels' presence is obvious, from gleaming SUVs with tinted
windows but no plates to the safe houses dotted about and the businesses
like plastic surgery clinics and fancy boutiques that locals say are used
to launder money.

Most ostentatious are the domed mausoleums erected in cemeteries for drug
war victims.

For Miss Sinaloa, or Laura Zuniga, a leggy 23-year-old with piercing dark
eyes, eye-popping curves and long black hair, a pair of glittering Chanel
earrings were visible as she posed forlornly for her police mug shot.

Nestled between the Pacific ocean and the western Sierra Madre mountains,
Sinaloa's fertile plains teem with tomatoes and beans, and the hills where
marijuana and poppies have thrived for decades spawned Mexico's first drug
barons.

As U.S. demand for cocaine exploded in the 1980s, top trafficker Miguel
Angel "The Godfather" Felix Gallardo moulded cartel leaders like Guzman,
who ran Sinaloan smuggling routes from his ranch in the hills and got into
throwing lavish parties decked with pretty girls.

Then chills rippled through the state when the raven-haired wife,
Guadalupe, of Guzman's ally Hector "El Guero" Palma, was seduced away and
decapitated in 1989 by a Venezuelan on the payroll of a rival drug
faction.

Her killer also pushed her two children off a bridge to their death and
sent Guadalupe's head back in a box to Culiacan, where a morbid portrait
of the three now adorns their tomb.

"They are revenge killings. They settle scores. One way to hurt a rival is
to kill the woman he loves most," said

Ricardo Ravelo, a veteran drug reporter at Mexico's hard-hitting news
magazine Proceso.

Such high-profile murders did not deter 18-year-old beauty pageant winner
Emma Coronel from marrying top drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who is
three times her age, in a lavish secret ceremony in 2007, not long after
he escaped from the prison where he and Hernandez were lovers.

Culiacan residents say they sometimes spot Coronel at the salons that do
eyelash implants and decorate false nails with garish designs or photos of
loved ones. Local reporters say her parents feel like they've won the
lottery.

Yet Coronel is tracked by security wherever she goes, and while capos like
Guzman are said to have many lovers, she may never be free to leave him or
his clan.

"They fall for the idea that having a narco means a life of luxury," said
Martin Meza, mayor of the town of Badiraguato where Guzman was born. "They
give them the life of a queen. But afterward these women become
untouchable."

Stories abound of men shot for flirting with a trafficker's girlfriend and
schoolgirls terrified by the delivery of dangerously expensive bouquets to
their classrooms.

"It's hard to say 'No' nicely so that they get the message without getting
angry. It's very scary," Sinaloa beauty queen Rosa Maria Ojeda, who was
pestered by a capo for months after she won a 2006 pageant, told the daily
Reforma.