Guzman gone, violence remains
Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman Loera was more than just a drug trafficker. He was also a folk hero. His improbable rise from the dusty mountains of Sinaloa in Mexico to the top of the world’s most powerful drug cartel has been recounted in films, TV shows and dozens of brassy ‘‘narcocorido’’ songs.
In a United States federal courtroom in New York yesterday, a jury convicted Guzman of 10 charges, including drug trafficking and murder.
Guzman, who escaped from Mexican prisons twice, will probably spend the rest of his life in a maximum-security prison in the US.
His conviction is a major win for US and Mexican authorities, who have poured billions of dollars into their high-profile fight against Mexican drug cartels, and who have painted Guzman as a key instigator of bloody cartel battles.
But experts in Mexico say Guzman’s conviction is primarily symbolic. It may demonstrate that even the most powerful cartel leaders can’t stay above the law forever, but is unlikely to slow the flow of narcotics to the US or reduce bloodshed in Mexico – and could easily have the opposite effect.
‘‘This is only going to bring more violence,’’ said Eduardo Guerrero, a security consultant in Mexico City.
In the more than two years since Guzman was extradited to the US to face trial, drug production in Mexico has risen and the homicide rate has reached a record high.
The Sinaloa cartel that Guzman created has been weakened by infighting in his absence, opening the way for more violent groups that are pioneering new ways of operating, including diversifying into fuel theft, cargo robbery and extortion.
The emphasis on the Guzman trial showed a misunderstanding of how Mexico’s violence worked, said political analyst Carlos Bravo Regidor, a professor at CIDE, a public research centre in Mexico City.
‘‘We’ve known for a very long time that just trying to capture or kill the leaders of criminal groups doesn’t really end the problem,’’ he said. ‘‘It only turns things more violent.’’
Although Guzman’s trial was big news in the US, many Mexicans tired of cartel violence tuned it out. ‘‘There’s a certain social fatigue with these issues,’’ Bravo said. – LA Times