POUTING into the camera with her perfect makeup, suspiciously plumped lips and carefully manicured brows, La Chucky looked like any other aspiring content creator.
But this was no ordinary influencer. A social media star by day and hitwoman by night, La Chucky was in fact a Cartel Queen – one of the latest breed of South American gangsters’ molls willing to risk dying young for a taste of the high life.
Earlier this month, La Chucky was one of five gangsters killed during a gunfight with police on the US-Mexico border.
Thought to have been a member of the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest crime syndicates, the twenty-something had frequently boasted about her large gun collection on social media and is believed to have been in a relationship with a senior gang boss.
Back in 2019, the pouting selfie queen was rumoured to have faked her own death after a cartel shakeup saw scores of its members wiped out.
The Gulf Cartel has long been associated with unspeakable acts of extreme and brutal violence.
In 2012, the group’s notorious enforcement arm Los Zetas claimed responsibility for killing the 43 men and six women found dumped on an isolated highway close to the US-Mexico border, with their heads, hands and feet cut off.
Chilling testimonies suggest male victims are forced to fight each other to the death in twisted ‘gladiator battles’, with the survivors made to join the organisation as assassins.
While most criminals want to keep their nefarious activities on the down-low for obvious reasons, modern-day cartel queens like La Chucky – who loved to share images showing off luxury vehicles and AK-47 rifles – have no such reservations.
“What we are dealing with specifically now is a glamorisation of an involvement in a cartel, which is not the reality,” says David Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Criminology.
“The reality of an involvement in a cartel is that you will lose your life early or you’ll spend your life in prison.
“The ones who are flaunting it seem to not have the same longevity.”
Bloodthirsty female assassins find it easy to attract likes on social media because they are seen as “doubly deviant”, he says.
“Femininity is supposedly about empathy, having a capacity to raise and nurture a family – to give life, not about taking lives,” explains Prof Wilson, a leading expert on serial homicide.
“We expect men to use lethal violence, not women, so if a woman does behave in this way we become fascinated by them because they are unusual.”
The Catrina
Like La Chucky, Cartel Queen La Catrina was was killed in a shootout with law enforcement in the city of Aguililla, in west-central Mexico, in January 2020.
Just 21 and born María Guadalupe López Esquivel, she was a high-ranking female boss in the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known as the CJNG.
Her route into gang life had been falling in love with a narco known as M2, real name Miguel Fernandez.
Named after a distinctive tattoo portraying a female version of the Grim Reaper on her thigh which she showed off in sexy social media snaps, La Catrina was known to have arranged extortions and murders, with her team of assassins carrying out a massacre of 13 police officers in the mountain town of El Aguaje in October 2019.
And, just like La Chucky, this designer-clothes-loving crime boss was eager to show off her array of weapons online, including a rather eye-catching golden gun.
But her death was markedly less glamorous than her social media feed – footage taken by the authorities showed the fallen gang leader gasping for air, bloodied and covered in dirt, after she was shot in the neck.
Formed in 2009, La Catrina’s fearsome CJNG syndicate has been known to rip out victims’ hearts, dissolve their bodies in barrels of acid and even target pregnant women in their fight for supremacy in Mexico’s billion-dollar drugs trade.
The syndicate’s main rival is the Sinaloa Cartel, which is widely considered to be the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organisation in the Western Hemisphere.
Notorious for dismembering and decapitating victims and hanging their bodies from bridges to send a terrifying message to their opponents, it spawned a subculture called Buchona back in the 2000s.
Originating with the wives and girlfriends of the cartel’s drug loads, the Buchona aesthetic was characterised by extreme displays of wealth and luxury coupled with a particular kind of surgically-enhanced appearance.
The Narco Princess
Known as the Narco Princess, Cartel Queen Emma Coronel Aispuro embodied the trend and is said to have inspired girls across Mexico to hold ‘Buchona parties’.
An American teenage beauty queen turned billionaire wife of drug kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, Emma became a social media star when she shared her life of private jets, luxury ski trips and high-end restaurant visits, all funded by the cocaine trade, with hundreds of thousands of online followers.
She launched her own clothing line and appeared on VH1 reality show Cartel Crew in 2019 but in 2021, she was jailed for three years for drug trafficking.
“Serial murderers, for example, have become aspirational characters,” explains Prof Wilson of the way women like the Narco Princess are idolised.
“We think of them as clever, alluring, mysterious and sexy and so it is hardly surprising that La Chucky and other female cartel members are cast in the same way.”
Social media is a haven for narcissistic behaviour. It’s a place where everything in a person’s life could be a facade
Psychologist Dannielle Haig
Posing on social media might increase the risk of death in a notoriously risky trade but it seems cartel queens are no different from the countless law-abiding young people living out their lives online.
Dannielle Haig is a psychologist who specialises in a personality theory known as the Dark Triad, which involves traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
“It’s interesting for someone to present their life in a way that showcases criminality while also having a public personality,” she says of the female cartel bosses.
“Social media is a haven for narcissistic behaviour. It’s a place where everything in a person’s life could be a facade.
“For someone to show that off but also be happy to see someone’s life as worthless is an interesting duality of personality types.”
The Doll
Known as La Muñeca or The Doll, 22-year-old Karen Julieth Ojeda Rodríguez is thought to have risen to second-in-command of Colombia’s fearsome Los de la M gang by trading on her femininity.
“There’s an advantage to being a woman, particularly an alluring woman, in a cartel,” says Prof Wilson.
“They will not be seen as immediate suspects in doing the cartel’s business – we tend to trust women more than we would trust men.
“They hide in plain sight, fly beneath the radar.”
Said to dye her hair different colours to avoid capture, The Doll is believed to have coordinated assassinations including the ambush of her ex-boyfriend Deyvy Jesus Garcia Palomino, who was gunned down by two motorcyclists in July of last year.
Following the arrest of the skilled shooter in December at the age of 23, the commander of the Magdalena Medio Police expressed hopes that ‘tranquillity’ would be restored in the region.
When the footage of La Doll’s ‘perp walk’ – which saw the glamorous gangster sport a deadpan expression while wearing a crop top and shorts, went viral – social media users quickly called for a film to be made of her life.
They went as far as suggesting the perfect actress to play the part – White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza, known for her deadpan expressions.
While The Doll doesn’t appear to have courted attention on social media, attention found her nonetheless, for like all rumoured cartel queens she is believed to have chosen a life of ‘glamour’ and violence over an everyday existence.
“They know the chances of them dying early are high but they would prefer to take that chance,” says Prof Wilson.
“Because living a life that is ordinary wouldn’t give the same sense of success, attainment, power and control.”