LETTER FROM MEXICO CITY
Sandra Avila, a former icon of Mexican drug trafficking, spent eight years in prison in Mexico and the United States, and she now accuses Netflix of misusing her image in a series. The Queen of the South is a hit on the streaming platform by recounting the mafia rise of a young and beautiful Mexican woman to take the reins of an international drug cartel. At 62 years old, Mr.me Avila embarks on a battle, legal and media at the same time, which revives the debate on narco-series in a country bruised by the war of the cartels.
The case began this summer, when Mr.me Avila, Israel Razo Reyes, has revealed that his client has hired a ” administrative process “ with the Mexican Institute for the Protection of Industrial Property (IMPI). In an August 28 interview with the Mexican channel Milenio TV, Mr. Razo Reyes announced his intention to “ file a civil complaint “, after the opinion of the IMPI: “My client’s image is directly affected (…) by being presented as a drug trafficker. “According to him, the “compensation” could rise “up to 40% of profits” generated by the series, produced and broadcast from 2011, in a first version, by Telemundo.
The Spanish-speaking American channel is also targeted. At the launch in 2019 of the second season of The Queen of the South, Telemundo would have broadcast images of the arrest of Sandra Avila, twelve years earlier in Mexico City, and her extradition to the United States in 2012. and the adventures of Teresa Mendoza, the heroine of the series played by Mexican actress Kate del Castillo. Originally, The Queen of the South is taken from the eponymous bestseller (Editions du Seuil, 2003, 575 pages) by the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, who denied having been inspired by the life of Mme Avila.
Financial operator of the Sinaloa Cartel
Unlike the heroine of the series, the sexagenarian has never taken the head of the Sinaloa cartel, the most powerful in Mexico. But she was one of the financial operators. This seductress with big black eyes is the niece of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias “El Padrino” (the godfather), the great Mexican drug baron of the 1980s. His good looks and mafia reputation inspired many narcocorridossongs to the glory of drug traffickers.
Justice has never managed to prove her involvement in the management of one of the main cocaine routes from Colombia thanks to the help of her partner, Juan Diego Espinosa, Colombian drug trafficker, arrested like her on February 28 2007. She was convicted in Mexico and the United States only for money laundering and criminal association. The American justice released her in August 2013, after a negotiation remained confidential with the public prosecutor. Back in Mexico, a judge released her in turn, in February 2015, on the grounds that she had already served her sentence for the same crimes. On her release from prison, “the queen of the Pacific” was quickly forgotten.
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