WHY MEXICANS GET A KICK FROM THE COCAINE QUEEN

A WOMAN who succeeds in a field dominated by men is always intriguing
to the public, but when that field happens to be big-time cocaine
trafficking, and the woman is graced with both charm and beauty, a
criminal celebrity is born.

Ever since her arrest last month, Sandra Avila Beltran, better known
as the Queen of the Pacific, has been receiving the kind of press that
would have made Jesse James envious. Mexicans are closely following
the case against her and the efforts to extradite her to the US, where
she is wanted in Florida.

Prosecutors say Avila Beltran, a shapely 46-year-old with a taste for
high fashion, has played an important role in forging a federation of
drug traffickers in western Sinaloa State as well as creating an
alliance between them and Colombian suppliers.

Along the way, she seduced many drug kingpins and upper-echelon police
officers, becoming a powerful force in the cocaine world through a
combination of ruthless business sense, a mobster's wiles and her sex
appeal, prosecutors say.

It is a measure of her importance in the Mexican underworld that some
musicians have written a song in her honour. This "narcocorrido"
extols her virtues as "a top lady who is a key part of the business."
It is being played repeatedly on radio stations.

The police say Avila Beltran was born into the trade. She is the niece
of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, a trafficker from Guadalajara jailed
for smuggling and the murder of an American drug-enforcement agent,
Enrique Camarena. Her list of conquests, the police say, includes
important members of the Sinaloa cartel such as Ismael Zambada and
Ignacio Coronel. Both remain powerful leaders.

Her lovers have fared better than her husbands. She was at one time
married to Jose Luis Fuentes, the commander of the federal police in
Sinaloa, who was executed gangland style. Later she married Rodolfo
Lopez Amavizca, the commander of the now defunct National Institute
for the Combat against Drugs. He was also murdered in 2000 by a gunman
in a hotel.

Of all her love affairs, however, it was her long-time union with a
reputed Colombian trafficker, Juan Diego Espinosa, that cemented her
position in the upper echelons of the Mexican underworld.

Together, they forged deals between Mexican and Colombian traffickers
in the 1990s and in 2000. She took control of shipping cocaine from
the North Valley Cartel in Colombia to ports in western Mexico,
earning her name the Queen of the Pacific.

At the same time, she established several legitimate businesses that
investigators suspect were used to launder money.

But her luck began to run out in December 2001 when the authorities
seized a tuna boat, the Macel, in the port of Manzanillo and found
more than nine tons of cocaine aboard, worth $80m.

Six months later, her teenage son was kidnapped in Guadalajara, and
she slipped up. She asked the police to stay out of the way, handled
the negotiations with the kidnappers herself and got her son back
after 17 days. But prosecutors say the $5m ransom request raised their
suspicions about her income. They started investigating her, and by
July 2002 they had found evidence linking her to the tuna boat
shipment. They also linked her to other members of Espinosa's family.

Avila Beltran eluded arrest and went underground. She lived in Mexico
City with Espinosa in a middle-class neighbourhood and went by the
name of Daniela Garcia Chavez.

She did not drop her taste for luxury. She was fond of dining at Chez
Wok, an expensive Thai restaurant. She drove a BMW and frequented hair
salons favoured by celebrities.

In March 2004, she was indicted on separate drug smuggling charges in
Miami along with several members of the Espinosa family. But US agents
made no headway with her arrest, even though she was living a
high-profile lifestyle in Mexico City. Eventually, last year, a US
judge ordered that the arrest warrants for two other defendants be
quashed in an effort to get them to cooperate and help locate Avila
Beltran.

On September 28, more than 30 Mexican federal agents swarmed into a
restaurant and arrested her. She coolly asked the agents to let her
freshen her make-up before the police filmed her transfer to jail.

Her life behind bars at the Santa Martha Acatitla women's prison in
the capital has apparently not been to her liking. She filed a
complaint with a Mexico City human rights commission, saying her cell
was infested with insects. She also said the ban on bringing in food
from restaurants violated her rights.