The Penn is indeed mightier
IF SEAN Penn, Hollywood actor and political agitator, imagined that by heading off to the jungles of Mexico to secretly interview the world’s most infamous – and most wanted – drug lord for Rolling Stone magazine he would create something of a stir, he was not wrong.
His encounter in October was with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who months earlier had escaped from prison, slipping through a hole in his shower floor to a tunnel dug by loyal supporters.
The result of Penn’s secret journalistic enterprise was published on Saturday night, hours after Guzman was caught again and returned to the same prison.
It is not a dull read. Guzman had not given an interview in decades. Moreover, to Penn he made no effort to deny the nature of his business. That is another first. As the two men sipped tequila in the jungle, Guzman conceded: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, aeroplanes, trucks and boats.”
Also on hand was Kate del Castillo, an actress known in Mexico for playing a female cartel boss in a soap opera. It was her contacts with the Guzman camp that helped Penn reach him.
Arguably, the authorities of the US and Mexico have reason to be grateful to the actors. Officials in Mexico have confirmed that they had been aware of them travelling to meet Guzman. Just days after the encounter they launched an operation to seize him. It was a break that led to his capture.
Rolling Stone might face ethical questions. There has been no suggestion that it or the writer tipped off the authorities on either side of the border as to what they were doing. Readers of the article are also informed that Penn gave Guzman the right to approve whatever he wrote before publication, an arrangement that few mainstream media outlets would countenance.
Yet is a gripping read, and not just because of Guzman’s words. Indeed, the formal interview that had been arranged for eight days after the first encounter never happened because of the military assault that followed, scattering Guzman and his protectors. For that part, Penn mostly had to make do with a video of Guzman answering pre-set questions that was later forwarded to him. But that hardly left him short of material. Neither government seemed happy about the interview. Mexican officials indicated that they might open investigations into the contacts Penn and Del Castillo had with Guzman. The White House declared itself “maddened”: “This braggadocious (sic) action about how much heroin he sends around the world, including the US, is maddening,” said Denis McDonough, the chief of staff to President Barack Obama.
Doubtless some of what Guzman says will grate. He recalls fondly the “very humble family, very poor” in which he grew up.
“I remember how my mom made bread to support the family. I would sell it. I sold oranges, I sold soft drinks, I sold candy… We grew corn, beans. I took care of my grandmother’s cattle and chopped wood.” He noted blithely that he entered the drug trade at 15 because there was no other way to live: “The only way to have money to buy food… is to grow poppy, marijuana, and at that age, I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it.”
Guzman’s responses sometimes appear contradictory. He accepts the poison that drugs represent. “Well, it’s a reality that drugs destroy,” he says.
But the man who built the largest-ever cartel, sent narcotics around the world and spawned bloody violence against rival cartels, pushes back when asked if he is not responsible for thousands falling into drug addiction.
“No, that is false, because the day I don’t exist, it’s not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That’s false,” he argues. “Drug trafficking does not depend on just one person. It depends on a lot of people.”
He adds that he hopes to die of “natural causes”. Now that he is back in custody, with Mexico apparently willing for him to be extradited to the US, his chances of achieving that might actually have improved – although it would mostly likely come within the confines of the Florence “supermax” prison on the high plains of Colorado. – The Independent