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| In this April 26, 2012 photo, Maria Susana Flores Gamez poses for a photo for a story about upcoming representation of Mexico at a beauty pageant in China, in Culiacan, Mexico. Flores, who was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February, was killed in northern Mexico on Nov. 24, 2012 during a running gun battle between soldiers and the gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with. |
CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) -- A 20-year-old state beauty queen died in a gun battle between soldiers and the alleged gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with in a scene befitting the hit movie "Miss Bala," or "Miss Bullet," about Mexico's not uncommon ties between narcos and beautiful young pageant contestants.
The body of Maria
Susana Flores Gamez was found Saturday lying near an assault rifle on a
rural road in a mountainous area of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa,
the chief state prosecutor said Monday. It was unclear if she had used
the weapon.
"She was with the gang of
criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout,"
state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. "That's what we're going to
have to investigate."
The slender brunette
was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February. She
had earlier competed for the more prestigious Miss Sinaloa state beauty
contest, but didn't win.
Higuera said Flores
Gamez was traveling in one of the vehicles that engaged soldiers in an
hours-long chase and gun battle. Besides Flores Gamez, Higuera said two
people were killed and four detained.
The
shootout began when the gunmen opened fire on a Mexican army patrol.
Soldiers gave chase and cornered the gang at a safe house near the town
of Mocorito. They escaped, and the gun battle continued along a nearby
roadway, where the gang's vehicles were eventually stopped. Six
vehicles, drugs and weapons were seized following the confrontation.
It
was at least the third instance in which a beauty queen or pageant
contestants have been linked to Mexico's violent drug gangs, a theme so
common it was the subject of a critically acclaimed 2011 movie.
In
"Miss Bala," Mexico's official submission to the Best Foreign Language
Film category of this year's Academy Awards, a young woman competing for
Miss Baja California becomes an unwilling participant in a drug-running
ring, finally getting arrested for deeds she was forced into
performing.
In real life, former Miss Sinaloa
Laura Zuniga was stripped of her 2008 crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen
pageant after she was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons
violations. She was later released without charges.
Zuniga
was detained in western Mexico in late 2010 along with seven men, some
of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of
weapons, ammunition and $53,300 with them inside a vehicle.
In
2011, a Colombian former model and pageant contestant was detained
along with Jose Jorge Balderas, an accused drug trafficker and suspect
in the 2010 bar shooting of Salvador Cabanas, a former star for
Paraguay's national football team and Mexico's Club America. She was
also later released.
Higuera said Flores Gamez's body has been turned over to relatives for burial.
"This
is a sad situation," Higuera told a local radio station. She had been
enrolled in media courses at a local university, and had been modeling
and pageants since at least 2009.
Javier
Valdez, the author of a 2009 book about narco ties to beauty pageants
entitled "Miss Narco," said "this is a recurrent story."
"There
is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between
organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry
itself," Valdez said.
"It is a question of
privilege, power, money, but also a question of need," said Valdez. "For
a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized
crime, in a country that doesn't offer many opportunities for young
people."
Sometimes drug traffickers seek out beauty queens, but sometimes the models themselves look for narco boyfriends, Valdez said.
"I
once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco
boyfriend," he said. "She practically took out a classified ad saying
`Looking for a Narco'."
The stories seldom end
well. In the best of cases, a beautiful woman with a tear-stained face
is marched before the press in handcuffs. In the worst of cases, they
simply disappear.
"They are disposable
objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the
young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed
away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed."
