Financial Transparency Coalition

In late November of this year, authorities found the body of Maria, a woman in her early 20s, outside an armored van along a mountainous road in northwestern Mexico. In February, Maria Susana Flores Gámez won the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa beauty pageant. She also became involved with the Sinaloa drug Cartel. Maria died in a shootout between the gang and the police in those mountains with a gun in her hand. She was riddled with bullets because someone had used her body as a human shield. Maria was the fourth known beauty queen to get involved with Mexican drug...