On October 16, 1960 there was a little girl born in Baja California to María Luisa Beltrán Félix and Alfonso Ávila Quintero. Her name was Sandra ávila beltrán. Her father’s relation to the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel meant that she grew up in tremendous wealth, literally surrounded by piles of cash.
Young Sandra actually spent so much time counting her family’s money when she was a child that, as an adult, she could tell exactly how much a wad of bills was worth just by holding it. However, she has a narco lifestyle from a very young age, she also saw its dangers by witnessing her first shootout at the age just 13 with her boyfriend. She was going for breakfast one morning with Joel ( her boyfriend) when suddenly a car pulled in front of them blocking the way.
Two armed men got out, stood in front of the car and began shooting at them. An armed man was chasing her and he tried to get away when the police came, but he was caught and that’s how she was saved and she managed to see Joel laid out in the street, dead.
Sandra initially had no intention of going into the family business. She instead chose to study communications at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. Her dreams of a future career as a journalist were abruptly shattered when she was kidnapped by a jealous boyfriend (who also had close ties to the cartels) when she was about 21. Why exactly he kidnapped her and how long he held her remains unclear, but it certainly seems as though the event changed the trajectory of her life. Maybe Sandra’s kidnapping opened her eyes to the true power that the cartels could wield over almost anyone in Mexico who can be a leader of a drug dealer, because she soon ended her studies and entered the drugs business herself, quickly rising through the ranks and straight to the top.
The business of drug trafficking in Mexico and motel places is dominated by men but Sandra is one of the very few women who made it to the top. Most of the women leaders who saw what went down went behind closed doors with the most powerful cartel leaders that had one specific purpose, the leaders would keeped harming the women like abusing, discard as they pleased, treating the woman more like disposable than actual people.
In 2016 Sandra told the Guardian, do women look like objects to be abused, disposable and do whatever you want with them.Sandra stode up and diffented the women rights. It was a rare exception but Sandra had to work harder to earn the respect of the cartels leaders that started in the 1980s.She was very careful to never use the cocaine she peddled herself and used her good looks and charms as well as her excellent driving and sharpshooting skills to help establish herself among the powerful men at the highest levels of Mexico’s drugs underworld including her boyfriend, trafficker Juan Diego Espinoza Ramírez, later in her career.
Sandra became a legend in the Mexican drug world and that’s when people started to call her “La Reina del Sur”. She was careful to never leave a trace of herself so that the policies to find her, and she was reportedly a key link between cartel leaders in Colombia and Mexico who organized shipments of tons of cocaine hidden in tuna boats from Mexico to the United States for years. She then fully embraced the decadent lifestyle of a cartel leader.
She raked in untold millions and used some of it to do things like assemble a fleet of 30 cars and buy herself a gold Tutankhamun pendant with 83 rubies, 228 diamonds, and 189 sapphires. Los Tigres del Norte even made a song about her, a top lady who is a key part of the business” arriving to a mountaintop party by helicopter and clutching an AK-47.
For all of the power and glamor that come with life as a powerful cartel leader, so too come danger and violence. Both of Sandra’s husbands were murdered and her brother was tortured to death. She herself was nearly killed in a street ambush executed by rivals, and her eventual downfall began when her son was kidnapped in 2002 by who remains unclear and police became suspicious after she quickly paid the $5 million ransom.
Knowing that she had so much cash on hand, Mexican police then started taking a closer look at Sandra and her illegal dealings so much so that she soon found herself on authorities’ most-wanted lists and was forced to live largely on the run.She spent five years as a fugitive. While she described those years as “very tiring,” she also remembered the thrill of the experience as well as Adrenaline is a drug, an addiction. There are people who like to feel adrenaline, some with heights, others with guns, and women who feel adrenaline when they cheat on their husbands. That is adrenaline, the sin, that maybe she will get caught.
In 2007, Sandra did get caught. On Sept. 28, Mexican federal officers arrested her and Juan Diego Espinoza Ramírez in Mexico City. After the exhaustion of trying to stay one step ahead of the police and changing her location, identity, and even hair color, Sandra described her arrest as “a relief.” The Mexican government could not pin any drug charges on Sandra , so she was charged with money laundering and soon convicted.
When Sandra was in prison time for a wealthy cartel leader in Mexico is slightly different than it is for the average inmate. As Sandra put it, “money buys everything in Mexico.” Thanks to the infamously corrupt system, Avila welcomed visitors while decked out in high heels, jewelry, and designer clothes. She even had three maids with her to serve alcohol and food. She was released in 2015, after having spent just seven years behind bars.Since then, she and her lawyers have fought to try to recover the dozens of cars, homes, and jewels she’d amassed as “La Reina Del Sur.”