Guadalupe Fernández Valencia, known as “La Patrona,” is one of the few women to have reached the pinnacle of drug trafficking in Mexico.
Between 2009 and 2014, she allegedly oversaw the weekly shipment of 30 kilograms of cocaine—along with tons of marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin—from Culiacán to the United States. Her leadership within the “Los Chapitos” network placed her at the helm of illicit financial flows, the coordination of key trafficking routes, and the execution of operations that ultimately brought her to justice on both sides of the border. After being sentenced in Chicago to 10 years in prison in 2021, she regained her freedom in 2023 following her cooperation with U.S. authorities.
The court that convicted her noted that her testimony placed the lives of her five children at risk. Her brother, Manuel Fernández Valencia—who served as her initial link to the Sinaloa Cartel—was sentenced to 27 years in prison and returned to Mexico in 2025 after cooperating in the case against Joaquín Guzmán Loera.
Guadalupe Fernández Valencia’s story begins in Aguililla, Michoacán, where she was born on October 29, 1960. During her youth, she worked in factories; according to testimony presented at her trial, she decided to enter the drug trade after becoming pregnant. She migrated to California in the 1990s, where she was arrested in 1998 for low-level drug dealing. She served a sentence in federal prison and was deported to Mexico in 2007.
