A police checkpoint on a Mexican highway. Two black SUVs are searched. The police get something of a shock; inside the two SUVs are 2 AR-15 assault rifles, three pistols, nine ammunition clips, more than 600 rounds of ammunition of different calibers, 16 cell phones and about $5,000 in cash. Oh, and Laura Elena Zuñiga Huizar, a Mexican beauty queen who has been crowned Miss Sinaloa, Miss Hispanoamericana and came third in a Miss Mexico contest. Miss Huizar explains to officers she planned to go “shopping”. The set up to the latest Robert Rodriguez film, surely? The deluded fantasy of one bored Mexican cop maybe? The starting point for a bizarre Mexican soap opera perhaps? Mexico wishes. This is no Antonio Banderasor or Salma Hayek romp. In the country’s war against drugs, anything is possible.
Laura Huizar is just one of countless Mexicans to be caught up in the countries drug trade. She has now lost her Miss Hispanoamericana crown and there is an investigation into whether her drug-lord boyfriend influenced her winning the Miss Sinaloa contest. This is hardly the biggest shock for the people of the state of Sinaloa; 3,000 people have been killed due to drug related violence this year; there are three drug related murders a day.
Despite the violence, drug dealers continue to inspire respect through fear and their indifference to the law. One drug-lord, know as El Chapo, is reported to have publicly married a beauty queen named Emma, 35 years his junior. Rumours abound that even the government dare not touch him. There is even a genre of popular songs, known as narcocorridos, which glorify the feats of the great drug lord and his rivals.
The government appears to be powerless to stop the violence. This year, the ex-head of Mexico’s anti-organised crime agency was arrested for allegedly accepting £304,000 from drug cartels. When Mexico sent hundred of police officers to the border town of Tijuana, operations did not go according to plan; within days videos emerged of officers taking bribes and extorting US and Mexican tourists. “There is barely a Mexican police officer along the U.S. border who isn't involved in the drug trade. Even if you try to resist, your superiors pressure you into it or sideline you," a former mid-level Tijuana policeman told The Boston Globe. Even a presidential guard was charged with taking bribes from a drug cartel, it emerged earlier this month. And even the independent experts are being outclassed by the cartels; Felix Batista, an anti-kidnapping expert, was kidnapped just before he was about to give a talk on anti-kidnapping techniques. Corporate security experts estimate that drug gangs are now responsible for 30 to 50 kidnappings a day.
With the government unable to contain the situation, the public are left to condemn crime in their own way. In August of this year, more than 150,000 marched throughout Mexico and kept a candle-lit vigil to protest against rising crime. “The most frustrating thing has been the indolence of many of the authorities, their insensitivity", one protester told the BBC. People are increasingly worried vigilantism could sweep the country, causing riots like those seen in 2004, when two undercover police offers were mistaken for kidnappers and burned alive by a mob.
Chaos is becoming routine. Drive-bys, in broad daylight, are common; earlier this year, a man who was killed in his car in front of a busy mall, before his assailants doubled back through traffic to shoot his pregnant wife in the head at point blank range. Four days before Christmas, nine men were found decapitated, their heads displayed outside a shopping mall. With such violence, it is little wonder a Mexican beauty queen needs a small armoury to go shopping.