Lola la Chata

María Dolores Estévez Zuleta (1906–1959), commonly known as Lola la Chata, was the first major female drug trafficker dealing marijuana, morphine and heroin in Mexico from the 1930s to 1950s.

She sold her merchandise both outside and inside of prison for almost thirty years, contributing to a crisis in relations between the governments of Mexico and the United States.

During her childhood this neighborhood was growing with a large influx of immigrants from various parts of Mexico, which increased the area’s formal and informal commercial activity.

[4] Her network extended from that city into the United States and even into Canada, constructed from family and romantic connections, the only ones available to women of that time period.

[1] The secretary of public health under President Lázaro Cárdenas, Dr. Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, began a campaign in the late 1930s to understand drug use from a medical perspective, especially that of marijuana.

In 1938, he wrote a public letter in which he stated that she was ugly, in contrast to government-promoted stereotypes of females in the drug trade as being sexual seductresses.

However, the same letter also recognized La Chata’s ability to know her clients and their needs, as well as those who she bribed to extend her power up to the highest circles of Mexican society.

[1] She was arrested seven times between 1934 and 1945, imprisoned in Lecumberri, the Women’s Prison in Mexico City and even at Islas Marías in the Pacific Ocean.

Newspaper accounts at the time noted her as “an internationally famous drug trafficker, “ captured with Luis Jaramillo and ten of her “agents.” Her mansion contained 29,000,000 pesos in cash (five million today), along with jewels, rifles and ammunition.

In Cities of the Red Night, Burroughs describes an encounter between the protagonist and La Chata, who provides him with heroin.