Today in true Mexican crime stories—a country where a drug czar named El Chapo tunneled his way out of maximum security prison—meet La China. The 31-year-old female assassin was the top worker for the Sinaloa cartel until her boyfriend gave her up to the authorities.
Born Melissa Margarita Calderon Ojeda, La China was a successful killer for ten years. She worked her way up to head Las Fuerzas Especiales de los Damas, a crew begun by Damaso Lopez Nunez (EL Licenciado), a leader in El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel who helped the drug czar’s first prison escape.
According to The Daily Beast, La China was stripped of her leadership role and told to give the Damas reigns to a guy named El Grande. El Grande was a cartel heavyweight who’d just gotten out of prison but had also killed La China’s first love, Erick Davalos Von Borstel. Von Borstel had helped La China become a sicaria (killer-for-hire) and she’d tattooed his name on her arm. Instead of working for El Grande, she and her new boyfriend Hector Pedro Camarena Gomez—aka El Chino—started a new outfit with Chino as second in command, launching an internal war with El Grande.