RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil--From the beginning, Gloria Trevi owed her stardom more to her knack for stirring controversy and garnering publicity than to her singing ability.
But the Mexican singer has really outdone herself this time, managing to get pregnant while being held in isolation in a Brazilian jail cell, and complicating efforts to extradite her back to her homeland.
A decade ago, Trevi, nicknamed the Madonna of Mexico, was one of Latin America's biggest pop stars, selling millions of records and racy posters and calendars, and talking of running for president. But her career fell apart when she and her manager, Sergio Andrade, were accused of luring gullible teen-age girls into sexually abusive relationships with Andrade, who is 48.
The pair, charged in Mexico with corrupting the morals of minors, fled to Brazil, where they were arrested early last year in the apartment where they had been hiding out. Since then, both have been jailed in Brasilia, waiting for extradition proceedings to run their course.
Trevi, 31, denies the accusations and is fighting extradition, saying that her life would be endangered if she were turned over to the Mexican authorities. In a letter published on Oct. 25 in several newspapers and on Web sites, she said that she and Andrade, having run afoul of "corrupt and powerful persons in Mexico," were merely "trying to save ourselves from the political and ideological persecution of which we are victims."
Newspapers and magazines throughout Latin America have plunged into a frenzy of speculation as to the motives and means of her strange and unexpected pregnancy. Publications here accuse her of seeking to take advantage of a provision of Brazilian law that in the past has prevented the extradition of foreigners who are the parents of a Brazilian child.
The most celebrated example of that strategy was the train robber Ronnie Biggs, who fled to Brazil in the 1960s after escaping from an English prison. British authorities sought his extradition, but Biggs was able to stave them off for more than 25 years by fathering a son, Michael, with a Brazilian dancer. Biggs returned voluntarily to Britain earlier this year.
"Gloria has an interest in remaining in Brazil and not being deported to Mexico," Francisco de Assis Guimaraes, the police official in charge of the investigation, told reporters last week. "A Brazilian child would help her."
The law has changed since Biggs' day and no longer automatically guarantees residency to the foreign parent of a Brazilian child. But the minister of justice, Jose Gregori, acknowledged this week that Trevi's pregnancy could become a factor "from the emotional point of view" in deciding whether to send her back to Mexico.
The Supreme Court approved Mexico's request for extradition last December, and in March Trevi's initial request for political asylum was rejected. But she has appealed that decision and is awaiting a final verdict from a 12-member government commission that rules on petitions for refugee or asylum status.
Calling the Trevi case a low-quality soap opera, politicians and the press have been mocking the inability of the police to isolate and protect the singer. As a result, the top federal police supervisor in the capital was dismissed last week, and Trevi's jailers are to undergo DNA testing to determine if one of them is responsible for the pregnancy.
Trevi, who says she is five months pregnant, has refused to identify the father of her unborn child or to say how she was impregnated, which has only fueled interest in the case.
Speculation first centered on Fernandinho Beira Mar, the country's most notorious drug trafficker, who was captured early this year in Colombia, where he was hiding out with left-wing guerrillas, and who has been held in the same prison wing for high-profile detainees as Trevi.
But there have also been numerous reports that Trevi was raped as well as conjecture that Andrade is actually the father, but his status as a non-Brazilian means that a child fathered by him would not make her eligible for asylum.
Guimaraes added to the confusion this week when he issued a preliminary report suggesting that Trevi had artificially impregnated herself, which led the singer to issue her scathing letter scorning what she called the "cinematographic conclusions" of the police report.
On top of everything else, there are now indications that Andrade may be trying to follow the same path as his client. A woman hired by Trevi and Andrade to monitor the extradition proceedings says she and Andrade are about to marry, thereby introducing the possibility that the Brazilian authorities may soon be confronting a second legally vexatious pregnancy.
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