Cartel kingpin’s capture could stir violence in Mexico
Drug lord’s arrest may spur battles over criminal territory
MCALLEN, TEXAS Drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán presided over an almost unprecedented criminal empire, but his arrest could bring additional problems to violence-plagued Mexico.
An innovator in the underworld and a sort of old-school cartel capo, Guzmán went about building illegal businesses that reached to the point they threatened the state itself and made many parts of Mexico ungovernable.
His arrest Saturday leaves questions about what comes next, especially since the takedown of cartel kingpins in recent years has led to violence as underlings fight over the spoils.
Calls for his extradition to the USA started immediately.
Grand juries in at least seven U.S. federal district courts have indicted Guzmán on charges ranging from smuggling cocaine and heroin to participating in an ongoing criminal enterprise involving murder and racketeering.
Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office, told the
Chicago Sun-Times that he believes federal prosecutors there have the best case against Guzmán in the USA.
“I fully intend for us to have him tried here,” Riley said.
Guzmán also faces federal indictment in California, New York and Texas, among other places.
Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel went from being a mere middleman in the carrying of cocaine from Colombia to the USA to a multibillion-dollar organization that waged wars over drug distribu-
tion routes, paid off senior public officials and even burrowed tunnels under the U.S.-Mexican border to move illegal merchandise. “The tunnels were innovative, and he’s credited with being the first to use that idea,” says Malcolm Beith, author of The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the World’s Most Wanted Drug Lord,
who questions whether Guzmán can be easily replaced atop the Sinaloa cartel — if at all. “I think Chapo, if his mythology is to be believed, is far better than anyone following in his footsteps.”
His capture may also signal the end of an era, security expert Alejandro Hope says, as the cartels — once considered so dangerous that American analysts spoke of Mexico becoming a failed state — are cut down in size or dismantled, leading to fewer kingpins to capture.
“The gangs that (surge) from this probably do not present a threat to the stability … of the
“I think Chapo ... is far better than anyone following in his footsteps.”
Malcolm Beith, author
Mexican state as a whole,” says Hope, who works with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, a think tank in Mexico. “But they certainly pose a major threat to the life, liberty and property of Mexicans” as they focus more on crimes against common people and small-time drug dealing, and less on smuggling cocaine into the USA.
Former president Felipe Calderón cracked down on the cartels soon after taking office in December 2006, leading to a conflict that claimed more than 75,000 lives and left thousands more missing. Many of the deaths resulted from turf wars. But others came from crimes committed by smaller gangs — formed after the killing of a cartel leader — that turned their weapons on ordinary people.
“Calderón once said that he wanted to diminish the threat from the national security sphere to the public safety sphere,” Hope says. “I think that this is a major piece of that transition.”