| | |  Entertainment | Books | September 2008 
Book Details Life of Alleged Mexican Drug Queen
 E. Eduardo Castillo - Associated Press
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| | Sandra Avila Beltran was arrested nearly a year ago in Mexico City and charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. | | |
Mexico City – A woman touted by authorities as Mexico's most infamous female drug trafficker says in a new book that she grew up around smugglers, but she doesn't admit to using or trafficking drugs.
The book, titled "The Queen of the Pacific: Time to Talk" is based by a series of prison interviews with Sandra Avila Beltran by Mexican journalist Julio Scherer. It went on sale recently across Mexico.
Avila, 44, says in the book that she is against the rising violence caused by drug trafficking, but she defends the money the illicit industry has brought to Mexico.
"Reality is what it is," she says. "Drug trafficking creates jobs, and thousands have used it to overcome the desperation of unemployment."
Avila was arrested nearly a year ago in Mexico City and charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. A pending U.S. request to extradite her on drug and organized crime charges alleges she was a senior decision-maker for the Sinaloa cartel.
Her imprisoned uncle, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, is considered "the godfather" of Mexican drug smuggling, but she has said she made her money selling clothes and renting houses.
In the book, Avila says she studied journalism in Guadalajara but never finished because she was kidnapped by her jealous boyfriend, the nephew of drug lord Ernesto Fonseca. Fonseca has spent the past two decades in a Mexican jail for killing a U.S. drug enforcement agent in the 1980s. Avila says her father persuaded Fonseca's family to release her.
Avila acknowledges meeting many alleged drug lords, including Amado Carrillo, the leader of the Juarez cartel who died in 1997; Tijuana's Arellano Felix brothers; Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael Zambada, and Joaquin Guzman, one of Mexico's most wanted drug bosses.
She met Zambada at her son's baptism and sat next to Guzman at a party, she says. She described Guzman, wanted by the U.S. government, as "serious, watchful. He barely talks."
She has no idea how drug trafficking works, she says, and accuses the Mexican government of building a case based on the people she knows.
"They can't convict me for my personal relationships," she said, adding, "I can't deny that I belong to that world. I was born there. I grew up there."
In an interview published in January in El Universal newspaper, Avila claimed she was framed by Mexican authorities eager to please the U.S. government. She also said prosecutors unfairly linked her to the drug trade based on her alleged romantic involvement with suspected Colombian trafficker Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez. |
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