The Queen of the South, suspected leader of a gang of pipeline thieves, drug dealers and murderers, was captured this week in Puebla.
Liliana Hernández Carlos has been linked to the gruesome discovery last week of human remains that had been eaten by dogs and the executions of a man and of a 12-year-old girl in the city of Puebla. The girl had been shot five times.
In the case of the first murder, a message was left at the scene: “This is so you learn not to interfere with the Queen of the South.”
Four men who were with Hernández were also arrested.
Hernández’s star rose last year after the death of Jesús Martín “Kalimba” Mirón López in October.
Mirón was wanted by security forces but was killed in an internal Jalisco New Generation Cartel quarrel. At the time of his assassination in Puebla he was recovering from surgery that had altered his face and removed his fingerprints.
The power vacuum was soon filled by Hernández who allegedly took over fuel theft in the municipality of Santa María Xonacatepec.
State authorities said she controlled retail drug sales in the southern part of the city of Puebla, which supposedly led to her adopting her nickname, a reference to the principal character in a book and television crime drama series of the same name.
