Women in the Latin American Drug Trade

Women are becoming increasingly involved in the Latin American drug trade.  Narco-wives as they have been dubbed are often the family of male drug dealers that become directly involved in the drug trade themselves.
Narco-wives have gained a strange reputation of being more dangerous than male drug dealers of the past.  The prime example of this is the Colombian drug boss, the Godmother, the Black Widow, Mama Coca, the Cocaine Queen of Miami: Griselda Blanco.  She is said to be responsible for over 200 murders, 3 of which were her husbands.
Although Griselda has served her time, been deported to back to Columbia, and has now gone missing, more women like her have been turning up in her footsteps.

Another repercussion of women becoming involved in the drug trade is that the death rate has gone up.  A large number of women are being used as low priority traffickers or mules.  This means they are viewed as easily disposable and of little value beyond the mule trips.  Because the drug trade has usually been organized and operated by men, traffickers think women are not as obvious of a criminal.

Not surprisingly, the police have already caught on to this and huge numbers of women traffickers have been arrested.