Queen of the Pacific Has Mexico Hooked As She Faces Drug Charges

They call her the Queen of the Pacific, and the Mexican media can't get enough of her good looks, charm, and pouting poise. Not that this is an ordinary case of fascination with celebrity. Sandra Avila Beltran faces allegations that she is one of Latin America's most successful cocaine smugglers.

The 45-year-old was arrested a week ago and now faces several charges of drug trafficking at home, as well as possible extradition to the United States. But her self-assurance under the pressure has the nation enthralled. "Oh, please don't read me those charges again," she reportedly told a court official during a hearing in the prison courthouse on Wednesday. "I already know them by heart."

In a video of her transfer to another jail this week, Ms Avila Beltran flips her hair and smiles as she is led handcuffed down a corridor to a police van. Wearing skin-tight jeans and a figure-hugging sweater, she makes smalltalk about a minor ankle injury with the officers accompanying her.

Since being locked up, Mexico's highest profile female trafficker has reportedly asked for extra soap from guards, extra make-up from her lawyers, and extra time to put it on before facing any cameras.

The Pacific Queen's touch of glamor adds a new element to the myths surrounding drug trafficking which are more commonly focused on daring escapes and shootouts. But she is no outsider; Ms Avila Beltran comes from a notorious family of smugglers in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, known as the godfather of Mexican drug smuggling, is her uncle, and she has reportedly had affairs with several well-known drug barons in her youth.

According to the El Universal newspaper she has married twice, both times to police-commanders-turned-traffickers. Both husbands were later executed.

But the police attribute her rise primarily to her most recent romance with Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez, alias the Tiger, said to be an important figure in the Colombian Norte del Valle cartel.

Ms Avila Beltran reportedly so charmed and impressed her boyfriend's family and business associates when he first took her to Colombia that she became a key link between the Sinaloa cartel and the providers to the south. Police now call her the "head of public relations" for Sinaloa drug baron Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who some local media say is a former lover.

The regal epithet first appeared after she was associated with nine tonnes of cocaine seized in a tuna fishing boat off the Mexican Pacific coast in 2001.

Her reputation was given an additional boost by a song about a drug baron's birthday party composed in 2004 by the group Tucanes de Tijuana. It includes a verse about the "beautiful Queen of the Pacific" arriving by helicopter - "a key figure in the business. A very tough lady".

Ms Avila Beltran certainly did not seem to be suffering from nerves as she looked straight at the camera during her initial police interrogation hours after her arrest outside a Mexico City restaurant on September 28. With one eyebrow raised and an ironic smile, she said she was just a housewife who made money on the side selling clothes and renting houses.

Some drug experts have criticized the hype around the idea of a female trafficker, insisting her real importance in the Mexican trafficking scene has been exaggerated. Still, as far as the public is concerned, no kingpin can touch her. At Wednesday's hearing she reportedly told the judge: "It's nice to be called a queen."