Mexican leader feels heat over El Chapo
Fugitive drug lord’s meeting with Hollywood actor raises questions about manhunt
MEXICO CITY— Little has gone right for Mexico’s beleaguered president, Enrique Pena Nieto, since he tweeted to the world Friday that his top security forces had recaptured the world’s most-wanted drug lord.
While the arrest has partly helped salvage the embarrassment of July’s humiliating escape, it has raised new questions for a president whose popularity suffered from a succession of scandals and a sputtering economy. On Saturday, just hours after the shootout that led to the arrest of Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, actor Sean Penn said he covertly interviewed the kingpin in a mountain jungle of northern Mexico three months ago, a revelation that raised concerns about the government’s handling of the manhunt.
Mexico on Sunday informed Guzman that it’s taking steps to extradite him to the United States, a move that, while reducing the risk that he escapes for a third time, would also go against their own previous pledges to hold him in Mexico as a matter of national sovereignty. Implicit in that decision is the doubt that they can successfully hold him, says Andrew Selee, executive vice-president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“This is not a ‘mission accomplished,’ ” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, quoting the words that Pena Nieto had used when announcing the news on Friday. “This is just a sliver of the massive problems of criminal violence in Mexico.”
More than 150,000 people have been killed in Mexico since the nation began its war on drug cartels in December 2006, and about 26,000 have gone missing, according to the United Nations.
Felbab-Brown said Penn’s October meeting with Guzman represented a “major problem” if Mexico only found out about it after the actor flew in. Security officials have told the media the encounter helped lead them to a rural part of Durango state in October, where they attacked but failed to capture Guzman.
Local media reports on Monday suggested Mexico’s government at a minimum was aware of Penn’s meeting with Guzman. Newspaper El Universal published 10 photos taken from afar that appear to show Penn and actress Kate del Castillo, who arranged the actor’s meeting with Guzman, arriving at an airport, then a hotel, and later with men who took them to meet Guzman in a Durango jungle. The newspaper said the images were from a government intelligence file that it acquired.
Penn is under investigation for the Rolling Stone magazine interview and del Castillo, the Mexican actress whom Penn says helped arrange the meeting, is also being investigated. Penn spoke with Guzman for seven hours and had followup interviews by phone and video, according to his story published Saturday in Rolling Stone.
Pena Nieto’s approval rating suffered after Guzman escaped from prison for a second time in July and now stands at 46 per cent, according to polling agency GEA-ISA. His image also took a hit in 2014 after the disappearance of 43 teaching students and the emergence of conflictof-interest accusations regarding homes that his wife and his finance minister bought from a government contractor.
In August, the president, his wife and finance minister were cleared of favouritism by the country’s public comptroller.
Mexico’s weak justice system will again be put to the test as the extradition process pledged by the government gets under way, according to Mike Vigil, a retired head of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Guzman’s attorney now has three days to present appeals against extraditing him and 20 days to provide supporting arguments.
The extradition process faces risks including drawn-out legal proceedings in which court injunctions lead to years of delays, Vigil said. Mexican courts may also be vulnerable to intimidation by either Guzman or federal authorities, he said.
Penn wrote that Alfredo Guzman, the kingpin’s son, drove him to see Chapo. Their vehicle passed through a military checkpoint, where two uniformed soldiers appeared to recognize Alfredo and wave them through, after which they drove several more hours to reach the capo’s hideout.
The drug lord told Penn that after escaping in July he saw his mother often, and bragged that he had a fleet of submarines, boats and airplanes he that allowed him to supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anyone else in the world. Penn also wrote that he felt the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mexican government were tracking his movements.
Guzman was first caught in Guatemala in 1993 and extradited to Mexico. After his dramatic capture Friday, he’s been returned to the same prison he escaped from last July — his second escape from Mexican custody.
Guzman’s capture deserves praise, even as the government needs to do far more to improve rule of law, said Andrew Selee.