Thread: BEAUTY CONTEST WINNER FOUND WITH GUNS AND CASH

Laura Elena Zuniga Huiza: Our Beauty in Scandal

(Translated)

Laura Elena Zuniga Huizar, elected 2008 Nuestra Belleza Sinaloa, was found in the city of Guadalajara with weapons and thousands of dollars in cash.
Laura Zúñiga won this year's beauty contest in the town of Sinaloa, caused controversy since then. According to the newspaper Noroeste, the culiacanense for 23 years went from being the favorite to least apaludible that night.

During the show was the least that shined and gave the correct answer to respond less to be valued more housewives when asked what he would propose to achieve equal rights for women and men.

The model was also pre-school teacher, was found along with seven men at a roadblock in the city of Guadalajara National Army with high-caliber weapons and thousands of dollars in cash.

The director of Public Security of the state, Francisco Alejandro Solorio, told the media that eight people, with the winner of Nuestra Belleza Sinaloa included, were arrested and found the research process.

So far we know that eight people were planning to go shopping to Bolivia and Colombia, but has not specified what type of items purchased.

The model Laura Zuniga had already traveled to Bolivia as part of the contest and won Queen Hipanoamericana held in November.

Next year, the model involved in our International Beauty 2009.



Nuestra Belleza Sinaloa 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUAmR7K4 ... of-border/



(Notice handcuffs)

http://mundo52.com/ocio/2008/12/23/5076 ... a-belleza/

These would be model citizens under an Obama administration who immediately would reward amnesty and instant citizenship to them and illegal alien murderers, rapists, child molesters, identity thieves, drunk drivers, MS-13 gangsters and other illegal alien criminals while telling those who respected our laws by legally applying to come here to go to the back of the line. Unbelievable what this corrupt government will do for cheap labor and illegal votes........

Mexican beauty queen arrested in gun-filled truck

By ARTURO PEREZ, The Associated Press 8:10 p.m. December 23, 2008



The 2008 beauty queen of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, Laura Zuniga, center, is shown to the press with other unidentified suspects after she was detained with guns and large amounts of cash in the city of Zapopan, Mexico, Tuesday Dec. 23, 2008. Zuniga has been arrested after she was found riding with suspected gang members in a truck filled with weapons and and some $53,300 in U.S. currency.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — A reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled guns and ammunition, police said Tuesday.
Miss Sinaloa 2008 Laura Zuniga stared at the ground, with her flowing dark hair concealing her face, as she stood squeezed between seven alleged gunmen lined up before journalists. Soldiers wearing ski masks guarded the 23-year-old model and the suspects.

Zuniga was arrested shortly before midnight on Monday at a military checkpoint in Zapopan, just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara, said Jalisco state police director, Francisco Alejandro Solorio.

Zuniga was riding in one of two trucks, where soldiers found a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in U.S. currency, Solorio said.

State police identified one of the men caught with her as the brother of an alleged drug trafficker from Ciudad Juarez, a city on the U.S. border, and said the man appeared to have been her boyfriend.

Zuniga told police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia with the men to go shopping, Solorio said.

When the former preschool teacher won Miss Sinaloa in July she gave an impassioned speech about how society should value women more, especially mothers. In October, she won the Hispanoamerican Queen beauty contest in October against competitors from across Latin America.

She placed third in the Nuestra Belleza Mexico pageant in Monterrey in September. That pageant sends its winner to the Miss Universe contest. For placing third, she was expected to represent Mexico in the 2009 Miss International contest.

Zuniga is from the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, the home of the powerful cartel of the same name. It was not immediately known whether Zuniga and the men were being investigated for drug ties.
Lupita Jones, the national director of Nuestra Belleza Mexico, released a statement distancing the organization from Zuniga. Jones also said Nuestra Belleza knew nothing about "any illicit activity in which she could be involved."

The organization also says it will await the results of the investigation before making any decision about whether to strip Zuniga of her crown.

"Since 1994, Nuestra Belleza has been a serious, honest and transparent organization dedicated exclusively to preparing Mexican women to successfully represent our country en various contests and whose object is to show the beauty, value and intelligence of each one of them," Jones said.

Tatiana Limpias of Gloria promotions, which organizes the Hispanoamerican contest in Bolivia, told The Associated Press that their lawyers were also looking into the matter before making a decision about her crown.

About 90 percent of the cocaine entering the United States passes through Mexico, earning its powerful and vicious cartels billions of dollars a year and allowing them to corrupt the segments of society ranging from the police and army to musical groups.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... ndex=27070

Mexico beauty linked to alleged mobsters arrested

Pageant winner was found traveling with suspected drug gangsters

By DUDLEY ALTHAUS

2008 Houston Chronicle
Dec. 23, 2008, 10:47PM

MEXICO CITY — Will her beauty fade in an orange prison jumpsuit?The question now hangs over Laura Zuniga, 23, who emerged this summer as the reigning beauty queen of Sinaloa, the Mexican Pacific Coast state known for its stunning women and vicious gangsters.

She won Miss Hispanic America 2008 in a November pageant in Bolivia, placed third in the Miss Mexico contest and was heading to a global competition in Asia next year.

But Zuniga is ending the year in police custody after being arrested late Monday traveling with seven alleged mobsters, including a boyfriend identified by federal police as a top member of the so-called Juarez Cartel.

Soldiers acting on a tip detained Zuniga and the seven men at a checkpoint as they cruised a Guadalajara suburb in two weapons-packed trucks.

Her father told reporters in Culiacan, the Sinaloa state capital, that Zuniga told him she was going to a Christmas party.

The jailed beauty queen told police the group was heading for Colombia and Bolivia on "a shopping trip."

Most cocaine smuggled through Mexico to U.S. consumers comes from Bolivia or Colombia.

Arrested along with Zuniga was Orlando Garcia Urquiza, whom Mexican federal police identified Tuesday as a top operator for the Carrillo Fuentes smuggling organization based in Ciudad Juarez, which borders El Paso.

"It seems this young woman was the gentleman's love interest," police commander Luis Carlos Najera told reporters in Guadalajara.

The soldiers seized two AR-15 assault rifles, .38-caliber specials, 9 mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in U.S. currency, authorities said.

Garcia's brother, Ricardo, was identified as the Juarez Cartel's acting boss when he was arrested three years ago. Police said Ricardo Garcia, a former medical school student nicknamed "the Doctor," was responsible for smuggling up to 20 percent of the cocaine reaching the United States when arrested.

The Carrillo Fuentes organization, named after the family that has controlled it for nearly two decades, is now locked into a turf war in Juarez with Sinaloan gangsters led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The fighting has claimed nearly 1,400 lives in the city of 1.3 million people this year.

Jose Cruz Carrillo, the youngest brother of the family, went missing and is presumed dead after being arrested by Mexican soldiers, or men disguised as them, at his home outside Culiacan in October. Another brother was shot and killed in Culiacan in 2005.

Nuestra Belleza Mexico, the organization that conducts the beauty pageants that Zuniga won, said in a statement that it had no knowledge of her alleged gangland ties.

The organization said it would decide pending an investigation whether to let Zuniga keep her crown.

"Nuestra Belleza has been a serious, honest and transparent organization," the group's president, Lupita Jones, said in the statement sent to the media.

Police did not immediately disclose the charges Zuniga would face.

Whatever the circumstances and consequences of her arrest, Zuniga's latest challenge underscores the extent to which gangster culture has entered the mainstream of Sinaloa and other states where drug smuggling has become a way of life.

"This is a clear example of how organized crime has gotten into the very marrow of society in the whole country," wrote one of more than 200 anonymous commentators responding to Zuniga's arrest online in a Culiacan newspaper.

So many young women in Culiacan, Zuniga's hometown, have taken up with gangsters that they have become an instantly recognizable subculture at local shopping malls and fancy restaurants.

A recent article in Eme-Equis, a Mexico City magazine, snidely described the typical Sinaloa gangster consort — called a "buchona" in local slang — as a striking young woman who is overly coiffed and, overly dressed.

"Once seen, she is impossible to forget," the article said. "It is said she belongs to a (gangster) who pays for her every whim. She is part of his luggage, fulfills his erotic fantasies, is used by him to show off."

dudley.althaus@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hot ... 79771.html

I lay you 10 to 1 odds she won't last more than a week in a Mexican prison......

Are these the good family Values Bush keeps referring to?

Police say beauty queen's bo powerful trafficker

By ARTURO PEREZ, The Associated Press 3:05 p.m. December 24, 2008

Laura Zuniga is crowned Miss Sinaloa 2008 at the Pacific resort city Mazatlan, Mexico, July 2, 2008. Zuniga, a 23-year-old model, has been arrested at a military checkpoint, just outside the city of Guadalajara, after she was found riding with suspected gang members in a truck filled with weapons and cash.



(AP Photo) - APGUADALAJARA, Mexico — A Mexican beauty queen arrested in a truck filled with weapons was dating a suspected leader in the powerful Juarez drug cartel, police said Wednesday.

The boyfriend of Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga is Angel Orlando Garcia Urquiza, a top operative in the Ciudad Juarez-based cartel, which at one point was considered Mexico's largest drug ring, said Jalisco Public Security Secretary Luis Carlos Najera.

The couple was traveling with six alleged bodyguards in Zapopan, outside the colonial city of Guadalajara, when soldiers stopped their two trucks at a military checkpoint on Monday, police said.
Inside, authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $53,300 in U.S. currency.

The alleged relationship between Garcia and Mexico's well-known reigning beauty queen shows how deep powerful drug gangs have penetrated society, stretching well beyond bribing police and officials.
Mexican media report that traffickers with their visible wealth often have their pick of women in states like Sinaloa, where Zuniga is from and the home of the cartel of the same name. The popular musical genre "Narco-corridos" glorifies traffickers' exploits and gangs often have prefered bands who play their private parties. A number of Mexican musicians linked to cartels have been murdered in recent years.

Zuniga won the Miss Sinaloa pageant this year. She placed third in the Miss Mexico contest, whose winner competes for the Miss Universe title, and was crowned Miss HispanoAmericana, beating out contestants across Latin America.

She was expected to represent Mexico in an international contest in January.

Pageant organizers say they are awaiting the results of the investigation before deciding whether to strip her of her crowns.

Garcia's brother, Ricardo, was arrested in 2005 and police said he was responsible for 20 percent of Mexican narcotics sold on U.S. streets at the time. He reportedly earned nearly $1 billion a month smuggling Colombian cocaine and marijuana into the United states through corridors near Ciudad Juarez, which lies across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The Juarez Cartel was considered the country's largest drug ring under the leadership of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as "Lord of the Skies" because the gang flew planes packed with cocaine directly into U.S. territory.

Carrillo died in 1997 from botched plastic surgery to alter his appearance and investigators say control of the cartel fell to his brother, Vicente.

The gang split in 2004 after other powerful smugglers tried to move in on its trade, and Vicente, fearing for his life, went into hiding.
In his absence, according to federal prosecutors, Ricardo Garcia Urquiza took control of a faction after forging contacts with Colombian drug producers while studying to become a surgeon.

After being arrested, Zuniga told police they were planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia to go shopping.

Zuniga's father, Jesus Esteban Zuniga, said her daughter had told him she was going to a Christmas party in Guadalajara. He told The Associated Press that he does not believe his daughter is involved in drug trafficking.

"She's a good daughter," he said. "She's always focused on her work and she's had a spotless reputation ... until now."

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... ndex=27551

Busted: Mexico's Miss Sinaloa and the 7 Narcos


By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 25, 2008; Page A12


(Associated Press)
Enlarge Photo

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 24 Mexicans awoke this holiday morn to see the reigning Miss Sinaloa 2008 on the front page of almost every newspaper in the country. But it wasn't the cheesecake photo of the beauty queen Laura Elena Zúñiga in a red bikini that was so startling on Christmas Eve. It was the photograph that ran beside it: Miss Sinaloa was busted.

Zúñiga was arrested with a group of seven suspected gunmen and cartel associates, who were riding in a couple of trucks that got stopped at a military checkpoint around midnight Monday just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara. The headline in El Universal almost translates itself: "Detienen a Miss Sinaloa y 7 narcos."

In the Toyota Land Cruiser and the Chevy pickup truck, soldiers found Miss Sinaloa and a cache of weapons, including AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, 633 cartridges, and $53,300 in cash, in U.S. dollar bills. Plus: 16 cellphones.

The news accounts, on television and in print, all featured images of Zúñiga in what is the classic Mexican perp pose. After her arrest, the 23-year-old former preschool teacher was paraded in front of cameras, then forced front and center before a table piled with guns and cash. And there Zúñiga stood, her head lowered in embarrassment or shame, in a pair of skinny jeans and a cardigan sweater, her wrists shackled in handcuffs, sandwiched between two tough-looking guys straight out of central casting.

The television news flashed back and forth between a beaming Miss Sinaloa clasping a bouquet of red roses and accepting her crown, and images of cartel violence, which has left more than 5,300 people dead this year. Zúñiga was born in Culiacan in Sinaloa on the west coast of Mexico, a drug-trafficking hot zone. When she won Miss Sinaloa in July, she gave an impassioned speech about how society should be appreciative of mothers. She was named queen at the Hispanoamerica beauty contest in May in Bolivia, and she placed third in another contest, which would allow her to compete for Miss International.

The newspapers had more details. Zúñiga was arrested with her boyfriend, Angel Orlando GarcÃ*a, a top capo in the Juarez drug cartel, according to police. He is the brother of a former leader of the Juarez drug cartel, Ricardo GarcÃ*a, known as "El Doctor," who was jailed in 2005.


The Jalisco state police director, Francisco Alejandro Solorio, said Zúñiga told authorities that she and her companions were en route to Bolivia and Colombia "to go shopping."

The newspaper Reforma tracked down her mother, who said she was surprised by her daughter's detention and didn't know what she was doing riding around in trucks with guns. "I pray to God that everything ends well," she said, describing her daughter as "a woman who has dedicated her entire life to fighting and getting ahead."

In an earlier interview, Miss Sinaloa said she struggled with stage fright and speaking well, especially in the intense atmosphere of a beauty pageant.

On the front page, Reforma also included a short news item next to its Miss Sinaloa piece. It reported that the former girlfriend of the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, was found dead stuffed in a car trunk. Her assailants had carved the letter "Z" on her body.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

Lawmakers want probe of Mexico's beauty pageants
Photos & images All Slideshows »
The Associated Press/Mexico's Attorney General's Office

Laura Zuniga (left), the 2008 beauty queen of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, and one of the alleged leaders of the powerful Juarez drug cartel, and Angel Orlando Garcia, stand during their arraignment on Wednesday in Mexico City. A judge has ordered Zuniga, Garcia and six other men who were arrested Monday while driving in a truck filled with weapons and large amounts of cash, to be held for 40 days while police decide whether to charge them, the federal Attorney General's Office said.

December 26, 2008, 9:09 p.m.
The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - Mexican congressmen called for a federal investigation of potential drug cartel ties to the nation's beauty pageants Friday after a 23-year-old beauty queen was arrested on suspicion of drug and weapons violations.

Congressional leaders warned that cartels may have infiltrated contests to launder money and said a full investigation was needed.

To many, former preschool teacher Laura Zuniga, named Miss Sinaloa in the drug-plagued northern state's annual beauty contest, symbolizes declining ethics in Mexico.

"It is very sad. What we are seeing is a loss of values among young people," said Rep. Juan Francisco Rivera, who heads the congressional public safety committee. "There should be an investigation to get to the bottom of this, and make sure (the pageant) is not linked to some type of crime."

Northern Mexico's entertainment industry - including concerts, contests and musical groups - has been dogged by reports that powerful drug cartels have "adopted" performers or played a role in laundering drug money through ticket offices.

"There are certainly links to things like money laundering, because of the large amounts of money that are spent on producing these types of contests," said Rep. Armando Barreiro.

A Sinaloa state official suggested that pageant organizers may have put Zuniga on a fast track to win the contest, though he did not say why she might have been selected, local media reported. Investigators have said her boyfriend is a cartel leader.

Zuniga was arrested Monday while riding in a truck filled with weapons. She and seven men arrested with her will be held for 40 days while police decide whether to charge them, the federal Attorney General's Office said in a statement.

Prosecutors on Friday said she will be held under house arrest pending an investigation into possible drug trafficking and gun charges.

Investigators say Zuniga was dating one of the detained men, Angel Orlando Garcia, alleged to be one of the leaders of the powerful Juarez drug cartel.

The couple was traveling with six alleged bodyguards in Zapopan, outside Guadalajara, when soldiers stopped their two trucks at a military checkpoint. Inside, authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $53,300 in U.S. currency.

Zuniga told police they were planning to travel to Bolivia and Colombia to go shopping.

Zuniga's father, Jesus Esteban Zuniga, said his daughter had told him she was going to a Christmas party in Guadalajara. He told The Associated Press he does not believe his daughter is involved in drug trafficking.

Zuniga won the Miss Sinaloa title in July. She placed third in the Miss Mexico contest, whose winner competes for the Miss Universe title. As third-runner up, she was expected to represent Mexico in the 2009 Miss International contest.

Pageant organizers say they are awaiting the results of the investigation before deciding whether to strip her of her crown.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/nationworld/106186.php

She was expected to represent Mexico in an international contest in January.

Well, I think, knowing what everyone knows about mexico, she's actually a perfect represtentative of that stink hole. She represents everything criminal and corrupt...same as mexico. Vote for whats-her-name!