ZAPOPAN - “Miss Sinaloa and the Seven Narcos,” ran the headline in Mexican-daily El Universal.
The capture was a joint operation between the army and the state police, after an anonymous tip-off that members of the Juarez cartel were in the Guadalajara area. Police decided to move those arrested to higher-security prisons in Mexico City and have detained all suspects for the permitted 40 days to attempt to gather the necessary evidence to prosecute.
The group was arrested in Colonia Poniente, Zapopan, where Zuñiga told her father she was attending a Christmas party. The Sinaloa native then told police she was going with her boyfriend, Angel Orlando Garcia Urquiza, on a shopping trip to Bolivia and Colombia. The couple’s luxury truck contained 53,000 dollars in cash, 9 mm pistols and semi-automatic rifles.
“She’s a good daughter,” said Jesus Esteban Zuñiga about her daughter. “She’s always focused on her work and she’s had a spotless reputation ... until now.”
Her boyfriend’s family, on the other hand, cannot be said to have an unblemished name. Orlando Garcia Urquiza is considered to be a high-ranking leader of the Juarez cartel, which controls drug-smuggling into West Texas. His brother, Ricardo, was identified as the operational leader of the cartel before his arrest in November, 2005. The captuyre of Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, known as “the doctor,” was seen as an important victory by the Mexican government against the drug traffickers.
Following the arrest, the future looks somewhat bleak for former preschool teacher Zuñiga. When she won Miss Sinaloa last July, she gave an impassioned speech about how society should be appreciative of mothers. She was named queen at the Hispanoamerica beauty contest in October and placed third in the Miss Mexico contest, which qualified her to compete for Miss International 2009. However, those plans have been scrapped as she was stripped last Saturday of her Miss Hispanic America title for “failure to comply with the regulations of the titles she represents,” according to the Bolivia-based pageant organizing committee, Gloria Promociones. Zuñiga has also been stripped of the Miss Sinaloa title.
Pageant organizers may have fast-tracked Zuñiga to victory in the competition, reports allege. Rumors have surfaced that she may have had plastic surgery (banned under competition rules), didn’t complete the full casting and didn’t even perform very well in the Miss Sinaloa competition itself.
Federal representatives of the PRI, PRD and PAN have demanded an investigation of the company that runs the Miss Sinaloa competition, “regardless of the consequences.” They have also asked that the promoters of the beauty competition completely remove any links that they may have with narco-traffickers.
In an interview with national daily Milenio, the tourism minister of Sinaloa, Antonio Ibarra, demanded that the office Mexico’s attorney general (PGR) investigate Grupo Pacifico, the organizers of the Miss Sinaloa competition. He also asserted that the state government was involved only in the promotion of Miss Sinaloa and had nothing to do with picking the participants or the winners.
“The state government, I repeat, doesn’t select, help, judge nor decide who wins or loses the contest. It is exclusively the work of a private enterprise.”
Ibarra went on to say that he believes a full investigation should be launched into the allegations of corruption surrounding the competition.
“They (Grupo Pacifico) should be investigated ... (the girl) didn’t even complete the full casting,” added the Sinaloa tourism secretary.
The companies that worked with Zuñiga have denied any knowledge of her links with alleged narco-traffickers. “This organization separates itself from any activities, situations or personal relations that Laura Zuñiga had outside her participation in Miss Sinaloa,” said former Miss Universe Lupita Jones, director of Nuestra Belleza Mexico, which organizes the state beauty contests. “We are a serious, respectable organization, whose interest has been to heighten the beauty, capacity and values of the Mexican woman.”
Grupo Pacifico also released a statement on their website on December 27. They maintain that Zuñiga did indeed complete the full casting. They also took the opportunity to distance themselves from the private life of the former Miss Hispanic America.
In the national media, Zuñiga has been labeled the ultimate buchona – a word used to describe decorative girls who ride in bulletproof trucks with narcos, wear expensive clothes, shiny jewelry and, stereotypically, have fake breasts (the word itself is an informal way to refer to a woman’s bustline).
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