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.” (AP)



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미인대회 출신 20대女, 차안에서 참변


멕시코 한 미인대회에서 우승했던 미모의 여성이 군과 범죄조직 간 총격과정에서 희생됐다.

올해 멕시코 ’미스 시날로아‘에 선발됐던 마리아 수산나 플로레스(22)가 24일(현지시간) 멕시코 북서부 시날로아주(州) 모코리토에서 있었던 군과 무장괴한 간 교전 과정에서 목숨을 잃었다고 26일 AFP통신이 전했다.

현지 검찰은 플로레스가 남자 친구 등과 함께 차량을 타고 가다 총격을 받아 숨졌다고 밝혔다.

함께 타고있던 남자 친구를 포함해 당시 총격전으로 모두 6명이 숨졌다.

플로레스는 올해 2월 미스 시날로아에 선발됐으며 2009년에는 올해의 모델로 선정된 바 있다.

시날로아 미인대회 조직위원회는 이날 페이스북에 플로레스의 죽음에 깊은 애도를 표한다며 위로의 말을 올렸다.