VivirLatino

Yes, Virginia, there are Spanish drug mules

07:33 H | Topics: Justice - Peru - Spain

I'm not sure if this has gone on before, but it seems like every time I read the news these days, another Spaniard has been picked up for trying to sneak drugs from Latin America into Europe. The latest are a couple of women from Spain who were caught in Lima's airport carrying 23 kilos (51 lbs.) of cocaine between the two of them. The women, one aged 26 and the other 30, carried the drugs in hidden compartment in their suitcase and in dehydrated food packets. Both say they were "victims" and that the drugs were planted without them knowing.

Yesterday, another Spaniard was picked up by Peruvian police after they found 9 kilos (nothing in comparison to what the ladies were packing) of cocaine that he was attempting to transport to Madrid. He also denied knowing that there was coke in his bag, though he did say that someone was going to pay him $5000 to bring "whatever it was" into Spain. I mean, really...

I think this is really interesting because the idea that many have (especially here in the U.S.) of a "drug mule" is that of a poor Latin American person, a la Maria Full of Grace. Well, that may be true in many cases, but judging from the sheer number of Spaniards in custody in Peru alone, it looks like Europeans are just as likely to take part in trafficking. Spain is currently in second place in the number of citizens it has in Peruvian prisons, second only to Colombia.

Maybe I am driving the point home a little too much and being annoying, but this reminds me of the case of a Spanish woman who was detained in Cancun last year for allegedly carrying illegal ammunition. It seemed that all of Europe rallied around her as a victim of the cruel, backwater Mexican justice system, with Spanish press calling it basically that. I'm not sure whether she was guilty or innocent (she was later released), but the fact was there was a lot of anti-Latin America rhetoric being thrown about in the context of that case. Like Europeans couldn't be guilty of anything like that. How dare Mexico accuse a Spaniard of such a thing?

The irony isn't lost on me. And in the end, said Spanish woman (who came to be known as "La Gallega de Cancun") ended up milking the situation for all it was worth. What was it worth? A naked centerfold of the victim in Spanish magazine Interviu (NSFW), for which she was paid something in the range of $60 to $70,000. Then she went ahead and did it again (NSFW), for who knows how much. Sure beats drug trafficking!

Via / 20 Minutos

Related

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• Juanes says: "Legalize it!" (Monday, Jun 25 2007)