Busted! Taking Down Miss Hispanic America
In October, Laura Zuniga, athletic and 5' 7" tall, posed sleekly for the paparazzi. She wore an alluring pink dress and, more importantly, the coveted crown of Miss Hispanic America. Just before Christmas, she again stood before a scrum of Mexican photographers, but this time holding her head low and wearing a pair of handcuffs while police showed off the 9 mm pistols, semi-automatic rifles and $53,000 in cash she had allegedly been caught with. Her problems only deepened on Friday, when a judge ordered her and a man described as her boyfriend, along with six others found with the stash, to be further detained for 40 days pending charges on racketeering, drug trafficking, guns and money laundering.
The arrest of the 23-year old Zuniga — who was also the reigning beauty queen in her native state of Sinaloa — provided some variety in the news for a nation weary of piles of corpses and vicious firefights in its relentless drug war. Newspapers plastered their front pages with images of Zuniga in bikinis and high heels. All seemed to be competing for the wittiest headlines. "Miss Narco," blared the tabloid El Metro. "Miss Sinaloa and the Seven Narcos," said the normally high brow El Universal. She was compared to the heroine of Queen of the South, a fictional work about a beautiful drug trafficker currently being made into a Hollywood movie with celebrated Latina actress Eva Mendes. (See here for photos of the center of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry.)
Following Zuniga's detention, there were new calls to investigate modeling agencies and pageant organizers for dirty dollars. "We need to follow the money in these organizations to wherever it takes us," said Rep. Francisco Rivera, president of the security committee in the lower house of Congress. "And if we find anything illicit then punishments must be handed out." In reaction, several companies who had worked with Zuniga ran for cover, denying any knowledge of her actions. She was also stripped of her titles. "This organization separates itself from any activities, situations or personal relations that Laura Zuniga had outside of her participation in Miss Sinaloa," said a statement from Lupita Jones, director of Nuestra Belleza Mexico, which crowned Zuniga in her home state and planned to take her to various international contests in 2009. "We are a serious, respectable organization, whose interest has been to heighten the beauty, capacity and values of the Mexican woman."
Sinaloa is home to some of Mexico's most powerful crime families. A "narco culture" of bulletproof trucks, lavish clothes and gold-plated guns dominates its streets. In this environment, the girlfriends of gangsters have become a named subculture — buchonas — identified by diamond-studded fingerbling, fake breasts and expensive dresses by foreign designers. "What a shame that there are ladies who get dazzled by the false shine of that money, who only aspire to be the girl friends or loved ones of these vulgar thugs," wrote a Sinaloan resident identified as Gonzo on a web discussion of Zuniga's arrest by the state's Noroeste newspaper. "These guys have taken a promising future and thrown it into the garbage."
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