Holy "Miss Bala"!

The story linked to and excerpted below speaks for itself. It's of interest how often this sort of thing is happening, as the report details, but it is not exactly surprising. Criminals have always sought trophy girlfriends as one more evidence of their dominance, and the young women themselves use their "erotic capital" (to use sociologist Catherine Hakim's phrase) in order to gain status. This process has never been without risks, and it abounds in them today. Hakim has written a whole book about how she is actually in favor of young people using their erotic capital to get ahead, but although this is inevitable (one certainly sees it in the gay community, too), I'm not sure it's always wise. It's not just that taking this approach can bring one into conflict with the law, although there is that. It also frequently brings one into contact with, on the one hand, gangsters and sex traders, on the other, megalomaniac CEOs, professional athletes, media types, etc. (See Max Ophuls's 1949 film Caught for a great dramatization of this.) You're right, I'm not making much of a distinction between those two groups. In either case, if you use your erotic capital successfully, you become a possession - and as the article points out, possessions are disposable.

http://www.bradenton.com/2012/11/26/4293624/mexican-beauty-queen-killed-in.html

Mexican beauty queen killed in shootout

Published: November 26, 2012

By MARTIN DURAN — Associated Press

CULIACAN, MEXICO — 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 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, 5-foot-7-inch brunette was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February... 

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...

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."