In Mexico's war on drugs, the government faces entrenched support for crime bosses in some poor communities.
In the yard under the midday sun at Santa Marta Acatitla, a women's penitentiary on the outskirts of Mexico City, a prisoner dressed in a stylish beige pantsuit, Jackie O-style sunglasses and heels, heads over to the pay phone in the shaded corner. "Look," says one inmate, her eyes lighting up and her jaw dropping slightly. "La Reina."

La Reina del Pacifico, the Queen of the Pacific, otherwise known as Sandra Avila Beltrán, was taken into custody late last year. The alleged drug queenpin who rose to the top of a male-dominated industry now spends her days here, awaiting trial for charges relating to alleged connections to organized crime. Her cellmates spend much of their days gossiping about her. "She's so cool," says one. She's a "hero" who worked around the system. At this another inmate frowns. "She's just one more here in the prison," she says cynically. "If she's really La Reina, then why is she still here? Why haven't her people come and rescued her yet?"

Such talk is increasingly common throughout Mexico today, from prisons to mountainside towns, as the country wages a ferocious military campaign against powerful drug cartels that make an estimated $13 billion a year and control swaths of national territory. On one side is the president, the military, the law; on the other, the drugs, the violence, but also the stuff of legends—the supposed Robin Hoods who steal from the rich and give to the poor, the bad boys for whom rules don't apply.

By Malcolm Beith | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jun 12, 2008 | Updated: 6:19 p.m. ET Jun 12, 2008

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