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Female death squads known as 'The Skinny Girls' who use their good looks to get close to rivals then kill have become the most effective secret weapons for Mexico's drug cartels.
Oct 26, 2021 · By Deborah Bonello. October 26, 2021, 7:00am. CULIACAN, Mexico — Emma Coronel first learned to fire a gun when her husband, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was extradited from Mexico to face drug...
Nov 14, 2023 · Cano has interviewed dozens of notorious figures from Mexico’s criminal underworld, both male and female. She profiled El Chapo after his final capture in Mexico and before he was extradited to...
Dec 1, 2023 · An increasing number of women are becoming part of Mexico’s cartels and criminal groups, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group, bolstering the violent hold organized crime...
- Overview
- Operating 'from the shadows'
- Violent and brutal — with lasting repercussions
Earlier this month, Colombian authorities arrested Venezuelan national Wanda del Valle Bermúdez Viera, better known as "the little baby of crime," who was wanted by Interpol, the FBI and police departments across Latin America.
She was wanted for charges related to sexual exploitation, to extortion, distribution of firearms, contract killings and human trafficking, for which she collected of up to $7 million a month.
The story of Bermúdez Viera, who in 2019 allegedly created the group "Los Llaneros de Sangre Fría" in Peru — a faction of the Venezuelan criminal megagang known as El Tren de Aragua — has been widely disseminated by the Spanish-speaking media, which pointed to her social media presence showing her life of luxury and excess.
Bermúdez Viera is only one example of a much larger phenomenon: the rise of women in the most violent and dangerous structures of organized crime in Latin America.
A recent study by the International Crisis Group, an independent organization devoted to the analysis of security issues, found that the number of women charged with an offense related to organized crime grew from 5.4% in 2017 to 7.5% in 2021.
“While many of the women accused of belonging to criminal groups may be innocent, the ethnographic data collected by Crisis Group for this report and other expert analysis support the thesis that women are increasingly involved in these groups,” researchers stated in "Partners in Crime: The Rise of Women in Mexican Illegal Groups."
Bonello’s research concurs with Crisis Group’s findings about the important role that many women currently play in complex criminal structures such as drug cartels.
Although there are famous precedents for women’s incursions into these activities — such as the late Colombian Griselda Blanco and Chilean Yolanda Sarmiento — Bonello’s book depicts the rise and fall of other women who don't fit the scandalous stereotypes forged by notorious criminals such as Pablo Escobar, the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán.
“I feel that the cartels are not ideological organizations, but business organizations. And when they see that women can kill, launder money, transport merchandise, then they use their capabilities. They do not exclude them because they are women, it is a matter of money, of profits,” Bonello said.
In "Narcas," Bonello tells the story of a number of women, including Mexican Guadalupe Fernández Valencia, who was the right hand of Chapo Guzmán; Sebastiana Cottón Vásquez, a Guatemalan peasant who rose to power within a male mafia; and Marllory Chacón Rossell, Cottón’s collaborator who, according to the DEA, ended up becoming one of the most prolific drug traffickers in Latin America.
It also examines the life of Digna Valle, a criminal matriarch from Honduras who was the female face of the brutal Valle cartel, as well as the Lemus sisters, who grew up in rural Guatemala and built up a brutal force that influenced the politics of their region.
According to the author, one thing that all these women share is their desire to exercise power from the shadows.
In most of the cases that Bonello included in her book, women have grown up in violent circumstances and often also carry out violent strategies in order to establish themselves in criminal circles. When participating in drug trafficking, if they are not the ones who kill, they have others who do it for them and generally enjoy the power and adrenaline that characterizes many of the operational actions.
"For example, Digna [Valle] operated in a brutal way when it came to protecting her family and the business. If that meant killing or letting her brothers rape the women of the town, she did it because she understood that is part of preserving power and are strategies to impose terror and control the local population," Bonello said. "In the sense of managing violence, perhaps women do not do it so much with their own hands, but it's not that they don't know how to handle that because they can be very, very violent."
In Mexico, where femicides and gender violence are an ongoing issue, the incursion and rise of women in organized crime is a reality that raises alarms.
"It is a general security problem. All the women I investigated brought their children into the business, as do men, because all organized crime in Latin America has to do with the family. So protecting the business is the same as protecting the family and defending oneself with one’s life, if necessary," Bonello said. "I also believe that the figure of the wife, the girlfriend, the victim is so strong that Colombians and Mexicans find it difficult to believe that women have this capacity of being criminals.”
In "Narcas," one of Bonello’s accomplishments is that she manages to dissect the stories of these women and analyze the effects of their crimes without glorifying them. The illegal nature of their activities and the profound repercussions on the countries they operate are present throughout the chapters.
“Organized crime is the greatest threat to public safety in this entire region because it affects the system of government and the laws, which is why my intention was never to celebrate them or exalt their criminal achievements," Bonello said. "Rather, I feel that policies must be created to prevent women and men from getting into this business because, the truth is, it's not convenient for them. Nobody survives."
Nov 14, 2023 · In her new book, “Narcas: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America’s Cartels,” journalist Deborah Bonello introduces readers to the powerful women who run some of the region’s most violent...
Oct 26, 2021 · Las Patronas: The Secret History of Latin America’s Female Cartel Bosses. By Deborah Bonello. October 26, 2021, 8:02am. Share: Tagged: Cartel Chronicles Cocaine digna valle Drugs guadalupe ...
