Action Heats Up South of the Border

The saying goes that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or in the case of Laura Zuniga, the beauty is in a jail cell tonight.

Authorities in Mexico reported the arrest of Zuniga, a current Mexican beauty queen from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, and seven others late Monday evening. The suspected gang members arrested along with Zuniga were in two vehicles loaded with guns, ammunition, and money.

Miss Sinaloa 2008 Zuniga, 23, was nabbed just before midnight on Monday at a military checkpoint in Zapopan, just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara.

Zuniga was a passenger in one of two trucks, where soldiers discovered a large stash of weapons, including a pair of AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in U.S. currency.

Zuniga is from the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, the base of the drug cartel of the same name. It was not reported whether Zuniga and the men were being investigated for drug ties. State police identified one of the men captured with her as the brother of an alleged drug trafficker from Ciudad Juarez, a city on the U.S. border. The man taken into custody was reportedly Zuniga's boyfriend.

According to Zuniga, the occupants of the vehicles were planning to travel to Bolivia and Colombia to go shopping.