The present murder of the beauty pageant manager in Mexico attracts awareness of the long reputation for star-crossed intimate pairings involving two forms of people Latin America is fabled for: medication traffickers and beauty queens.
Media outlets often call these ladies “trophy wives” or state they’ve been “seduced” by the appeal of income and popularity that is included with medication trafficking. But in some instances, that narrative may be too simplistic. Since there is truly no denying that Latin US drug trafficking is high in “machismo” tradition, it’s additionally well well worth noting that some beauty queens became significant underworld numbers in their own personal right.
Martha Lucia Echeverry (Colombia)
Echeverry won Colombia’s nationwide Beauty Queen competition in 1974, representing the Valle del Cauca department. It wasn’t until 1980, however, that she’d fulfill Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela, mind regarding the Cali that is powerful Cartel. Based on Semana, the two came across whenever Echeverry began involved in pr for Cali’s soccer that is professional, of which Rodriguez Orejuela had been a major shareholder at that time. Their relationship only finished whenever Rodriguez Orejuela had been extradited to your united states of america in 2005.
Aura Rocio Restrepo (Colombia)
Like their cousin, Miguel, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela ran the Cali Cartel and had a intimate partner that won honors on her behalf beauty. Rocio Restrepo had been a 20-year-old scholar whenever she first came across Rodriguez Orejuela in 1987. The year that is following she represented Valle del Cauca in the nationwide Tourism Queen contest. Rocio Restrepo later on composed a novel en titled she spent with Rodriguez Orejuela prior to his capture in 1995“ I don’t Want To Be Quiet Any Longer” (Ya no quiero callar) detailing the eight tumultuous years.
Maria Susana “Suzy” Flores (Mexico)
Flores became a beauty queen in 2012 whenever she had been voted the lady of Sinaloa. She nevertheless held that crown whenever she ended up being killed within a weapon battle between soldiers and a medication gang that November. One of several users of the gang had been apparently Flores’s boyfriend, plus some federal federal federal government officials have said Flores also took part in the shootout.
Liliana Lozano (Colombia)
Lozana won the Valle del Cauca beauty pageant in 1996 in the chronilogical age of 17 and would later turn into jordanian girls dating a tv actress. Her boyfriend, Leonidas Vargas, had been an understood drug trafficker in the region. In January 2009, simply times after Vargas had been murdered in Spain, she ended up being discovered dead alongside her boyfriend’s bro at a nation home in Valle del Cauca.
Emma Coronel (Mexico)
The 3rd spouse of Mexico’s many drug that is infamous, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Coronel won a beauty competition in 2006 within the state of Durango whenever she had been simply 17 years old. Chapo courted Coronel while away from home from the legislation as well as on her 18 birthday that is th the two married; he was 50 years old at that time. Coronel, that is A us resident, reportedly crossed in to the united states of america in 2011 to provide birth to double girls.
Maria Jose Alvarado Munoz (Honduras)
Alvarado Munoz ended up being crowned Miss Honduras in April 2014, and ended up being preparing to compete when you look at the Miss World competition later on that year in London. She along with her sis went lacking in November, nevertheless, and their health had been discovered close to a river a few times later on. The boyfriend of Alvarado Munoz’s sibling confessed towards the criminal activity briefly thereafter. Authorities state the guy had links to medication trafficking, nevertheless the murders were inspired with a personal dispute.
Laura Elena Zuniga Huizar (Mexico)
Zuniga Huizar ended up being crowned the Hispanoamerican Queen in November 2007, and Miss Sinaloa listed here July. But she along with her boyfriend, a so-called frontrunner for the Juarez Cartel, had been arrested by Mexican authorities just months later when they had been discovered holding high-powered tools and 1000s of dollars in money. Zuniga Huizar ended up being stripped of her games after her arrest.
Angie Sanclemente Valencia (Colombia)
Referred to as “narco-model, ” in 2010 authorities that are argentine Sanclemente Valencia to six years and eight thirty days in jail for wanting to smuggle 55 kilos of cocaine into European countries. Before her job in medication trafficking, Sanclemente Valencia had been Colombia’s “Coffee Queen” before becoming a model in Mexico. While here, she apparently came across a drug that is colombian nicknamed “The Monster” and later began dating a other model. The few traveled to Argentina, where these people were both sooner or later arrested for medication trafficking.
Juliana Sossa Toro (Colombia)
Sossa Toro won the skip Tourism beauty pageant for the division of Antioquia in 2008, and has also been a model for more than 150 clothes lines. She later traveled to Mexico, where she became intimate lovers with a medication trafficker referred to as “JJ. ” Authorities monitored the pair down in 2011 after Sossa Toro reportedly revealed on Facebook where they were staying january. JJ was arrested in link with the 2010 shooting of the Paraguayan soccer celebrity in Mexico City; Sossa Toro was launched in 2011 april.
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Tough Love for Latin America’s Drug Barons and Beauty Queens