Mexican Drug Lords Importing Beauty Queens

MEXICO CITY -- Social networks being used to tip off authorities about criminals' whereabouts are again in the news as a former Colombian beauty pageant winner's Facebook page directed Mexican police to the whereabouts of her boyfriend, an accused Mexican drug lord.

Juliana Sossa, 25, was arrested Tuesday alongside Jorge Balderas Garza (a.k.a. "El J.J.") after she posted the location of her Mexico City neighborhood on her Facebook page.

Police knew Sossa was the girlfriend of Garza, who is not only accused of drug trafficking but also of shooting a Paraguayan soccer star in the head last year at a Mexico City nightclub.

Sossa, winner of a 2008 Colombian beauty pageant, wrote online that she likes modeling. A YouTube video of her posing for a photographer seems to corroborate that.

In reporting the arrest, Tim Johnson of McClatchy Newspapers notes that this is not the first time beauty queens have been swept up in the trials and tribulations of drug lords - and if anything, anecdotal evidence suggests that Mexico's drug figures are importing more than just cocaine.

They're importing beauty queens.

Johnson notes that in November, Mexican police arrested Colombian model Juliana Lopez Aguirre along with Harold Mauricio Poveda, who police say was a go-between for Colombian narcotics traffickers.

Last May Argentine authorities arrested Colombian Angie Sanclemente (Coffee Queen 2000), who prosecutors say married the Mexican drug lord "El Monstruo" ("The Monster"), and then moved to Argentina to manage young women serving as drug mules.

And in 2009, Mexican model Laura Elena Zuniga (Miss Hispanic America 2008) was released from jail after claiming she had been kidnapped by her boyfriend, Angel Orlando Garcia Urquiza, and that she did not know he was head of a Ciudad Juarez-based cartel.