BY ANGELA DANIELS
After his six months jailbreak from his maximum-security cell in the Mexican city of Antiplano. Joaquin Guzman, the Mexican cartel kingpin faces possible extradition in the process that has begun between the United States and Mexico, a follow up to a request last year to get the drug lord across the border to America.
He had been taken back to prison just months earlier. Nicknamed El Chapo, for his short and stocky stature, Joaquin Guzman Loera, 58, has failed to sustain his third escape, this time, since July 2015. Guzman’s defense have already filed six motions to challenge extradition requests. The process of extradition is anticipated to take some time.
Paraded on television, a Mexican Newscaster declared the arrest as ‘proving once again that there’s no criminal out of the reach of the Mexican state…’ Guzman had escaped through an extraordinary mile-long tunnel – with a waiting motor bike- the tunnel connecting his shower area to a construction site, in a nearby farm field. There was a blind spot in the shower area that the CCTV did not cover. the owner of the land hosting the tunnel was among those arrested. Several top prison officials have also been arrested, raising concerns about the extent of corruption in the prison system. Those indicted included the former head of the Federal prisons, Celina Oseguera Paras and two ex directors of the Antiplano prison, all fired.
The Mexican government put a reward of 3.8 million dollars on Guzman’s head. The US issued 5 million dollars. America’s involvement related to Guzman’s corrosive drug influence in the US, such that he was designated as Chicago’s Public Enemy No.1. Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel was ranked last year as the most powerful and wide-reaching drug trafficking organization in history (TIME, 17 July 2015). When Forbes magazine included Guzman on their list of the world’s most powerful and richest people, the Mexican government was justifiably irate, complaining that Guzman was being glamorized for his crimes. Not surprisingly, his operations were typically through bribery and using assassinations and hit men. He told a journalist last year that he had killed between 2, 000 and 3,000 people. His Empire had rivals, the gangs playing out territorial wars and many people caught in the cross-fire.
According to t.v news, Guzman’s intention during his last escape was to make a biographical or ‘biopic’ film of his life in the fashion of other movies, like the one made on the dead Colombian drug king, Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel, in the Nettfix series, produced by Gaimont International Television, making fodder of the drug trade. Guzman was reaching out to actors and producers, and that triggered the process that helped to find him. Confirming this, the Attorney- General, Arely Gomez indicated that this has made a new line of investigation. Guzman was re-captured by dint of hard-work, a month-long surveillance When the authorities approached his hideout, an hotel, his men fired shots, but were overpowered, after five of the men were killed.
Arrested for the first time in 1993, in Guatemala, the drug lord was extradited to Mexico where he served part his prison sentence- scheduled to last 20 years, but he escaped in a laundry cart in 2001 and eluding re-arrest for more than12 years. Malcolm Beith who wrote the book, Last Narco, said about Guzman in an interview with CNN last year, ‘He’s the epitome of the problem. He was a poor child who had some family connections in the drug trade, no option, no real education – and becomes a big time drug lord…’
Reporting for CNN, Catherine E Shoichet, Don Mevin and Mariano Castillo said Guzman commanded much loyalty and could bribe anyone, and was always tipped off ‘when the heat was close’. He cultivated a Robin Hood image, idolised with all sorts of legendary rumors surrounding him. The CNN trio traced his latest round on the run to 2014 when he was arrested in an hotel in the Pacific beach town of Mazatian, close to his native home of Sinaloa. He then escaped last year. Consequence of his exploits after the 2001 jailbreak was that people immortalized him through lyrics such as the folk songs about him in Mexico. For instance:
All I wanna be is El Chapo
Fully automatic, slice your auto
All I wanna be is El Chapo
Three million dollars in pesos
All I wanna be is El Chapo
And when I meet him, I’ma tell him bravo.
The recent arrest, a rare piece of good news for the authorities has turned out not to be such happy news for Sean Penn, well-known actor, film-maker cum activist, once married to Madonna, the musician, for four years in the 1980s and later, to Robin Wright for nearly fourteen years, until 2010. Sean Penn has provoked wide outrage from the American government and social media for his secret liaison with Guzman, while America and Mexico had rewards worth millions of dollars, on the fugitive drug magnate. Penn sent questions and received video-taped responses from Guzman for the planned biographical film.
Reports have surfaced how Sean Penn tracked down Guzman. Los Angeles Time has published Steve Zeitchik’s report, saying Sean Penn used coded messages via emissaries, made secret plane rides over unknown topography, holding secret conversations at jungle highways, ‘all enhanced by the fact that the man orchestrating it was a famous actor…’. Zeitch has quoted a Whit House spokesman as referring to Penn’s actions as maddening, and Republican Marco Rubio labelling as ‘grotesque’. Said Zeitchik, ‘He seemed to blithely enjoy the access law enforcement craved and that covering journalists, many of whom were intimidated and hurt by cartels cringed it’. Sean Penn, previously associated with making friends with America’s enemies like Cuba’s Raul Castro, Venezuela’s ardent socialist, President Hugo Chavez, Tarik Aziz of Iraq…This time, Sean may be in real hot water. The likelihood that his provision of a line of investigation unearthing more names is sure as daylight.
A critical question is whether Guzman will escape again. This awaits an answered to come when extradition is finally decided. The charges by the US include, the sale of drugs, murder and money laundering. Mexico holds out little hope of keeping the man behind bars as they would wish, not with their embarrassing reputation of corruption. People in the country are even taken in by his ostensible generosity. He knows how to pay for loyalty. He may miss this in America- he only may.
