As a journalist focusing on organised crime in Mexico, Deborah Bonello noticed that the story was being told through a biased lens. Women were often depicted as victims or, when mentioned in the media, the focus was all too often on their looks.

But surely, woman – just like men – could be bad without being coerced or forced into it? Intrigued by this, Deborah started uncovering the hidden stories of powerful women drug bosses… many of which remained hidden from the world unlike their male counterparts.

“Sometimes I’m really surprised at how surprised people are that women can be bad. I’ve been covering organised crime and women for so long that it doesn’t surprise me anymore. Society doesn’t want to acknowledge that because it’s uncomfortable. Women who kill and are violent are more demonised as silence is expected from women. Women themselves take advantage of these gender traits to go under the radar,” says Deborah.

The story of Deborah’s fascination with the subject goes back to her childhood. She was never the girly girl who liked to wear pretty dresses and get dolled up. Deborah was born in Malta to Maltese parents. Throughout her childhood her family travelled a lot. When she was 17 years old she got the “journalism bug” while in Bristol where she started off as a music journalist before heading to London.

In 2005 she followed her dream to head to Latin America when she went to Argentina, freelancing for the BBC. It was a time when multimedia and smartphones were rising: she went with the idea of creating a one-woman band as a journalist generating video content.

She returned to London for a while and, in her late 20s, she went to Mexico to meet a friend she had met in Argentina. “Mexico was love at first sight. I fell in love with the country. The plan was to stay for three months but I spent 15 years there,” she says adding that she got married and eventually had two children who are now age nine and six.

“I arrived in Mexico at a time when the then president Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa had just launched the drug war - the government crackdown on organised crime and drug trafficking,” she says. At the time Deborah was creating videos for websites like The Guardian, BBC, LA Times and AFP.

“Because of the drug war the collateral damage of organised crime – violence, disappearances, kidnapping, shootouts - were always a part of the general news beat. So right from the beginning, the social impact of the drug trade was always on my radar,” she says.

As time passed she wanted to specialise. While she loved the impact that video could bring, she missed the detail that came with writing stories. She wanted to delve into more detail. So she took a job with Incite Crime, a think tank daily news service that covers developments in organised crime. By now she had become a mother to her first child so she was juggling work and family with the support of her mother-in-law, or abuela.

“I got a good understanding of the way organised crime was structured. It became obvious to me. I started to question: how is it the drug traffickers are male and occasionally you have a handful of women who distinguish themselves in organised crime?”

Deborah started looking into cases involving women. She realised that, in this world, women were often documented as victims – the drug mules. Something was wrong. The picture was skewed.“It’s as though criminal intent is gendered which to me seems ridiculous,” she says. That was when the idea of writing a book started brewing in her mind. Then she got pregnant with her second child and shelved the idea.

But she did not let go of it. She eventually got a book deal after getting a grant from the International Women’s Media fund. Meanwhile, in the beginning of 2019 trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was arrested. His wife, Emma, made the headlines mostly for her looks. This was the time for Deborah to start working on her project.

Meanwhile the coronavirus pandemic hit and Deborah got a job with Vice. This was the perfect platform to start her indepth research into the women. In one of her articles published on Vice she writes: “There are eight names on the charge sheet that helped send Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the world’s most famous drug lord, to prison for life. One of those names is Guadalupe Fernández Valencia, the only woman on the list of otherwise male defendants. Yet if you Google her, you’ll find little more than a few news stories about her guilty plea and subsequent sentencing.”

Deborah started digging. She started by looking at the court transcripts. There was a wealth of information. “I quickly found women embedded in organised crime across Latin America. These women weren’t mere foot soldiers but leaders unto themselves. They were Las Patronas – the female bosses,” she writes.

Through her research Deborah found Sebastiana Cottón Vásquez in Guatemala, a peasant trafficker who rose to power within a male mafia. Marllory Chacón Rossell worked alongside her – one of the most prolific drug traffickers Latin America has ever seen.There was Digna Valle, a criminal matriarch in Honduras who was the female face of the brutal Valle Cartel. The Lemus sisters in rural Guatemala were a formidably violent force to be reckoned with who turned local politics into a combat sport. The list went on.

As part of her research she combed through the endless court transcripts and even spoke to some of the women, visiting them in jail. As she pieced their stories together they were published in Vice. She is now working in finalising her book called Las Patronas: The Rise of Latin Americas Narco Women.

As she spoke to them and unraveled their stories she found that, for many, the drug world was a business opportunity in a world they had to survive in. “What we understand as organised crime has largely been dictated to us by men. Their definition of power is mostly about who is the most violent person. They go in with a lens. The women who attract their attention are the babes. But the more I look, the more I find women in the ranks of organised crime who were not glam girls. A lot were in their 60s. They were grandmothers already. They were ordinary looking.

“You have women who fit into the male stereotype of power. Some manifest power in terms of violence, but the way they use power is less visible and more nuanced. Women tend to be much more strategic about it,” she says with a smile adding that she is intent on deconstructing gendered ideas.

This story was first published in Sunday Circle, a Times of Malta publication.