Arrest of 'El Chapo' Guzman Doesn't End Government Complicity with Criminals Denise Dresser - Reforma
go to original January 12, 2016

Mexico reacts to El Chapo Hollywood dreams: Is this the birth of a movie star? (Zoomin.TV)

"Mission accomplished," says Enrique Peña Nieto while he pats himself on the back. While his government exhales a collective sigh of relief at the good news of El Chapo’s capture. While trying to project a picture of institutional strength against the weaknesses that allowed his second escape. A parenthesis of effectiveness in a long paragraph of incompetence. A correction to one of the many errors that remain. A win, but too small to overcome the image of an administration that doesn’t know how to govern. Because whatever explains el capo’s repeated escapes is still there. Rooted corruption. Widespread complicity. An institutional framework split in pieces.

Job well done by the Navy, the intelligence apparatus, the coordination that eventually took place. But the underlying problems remain, unchanged, misunderstood. The 79th of 102 countries ranking given to the Mexican judicial system by The World Justice Project. The corrosive power of drug trafficking that according to El Chapo himself, as stated in the interview published by Rolling Stone Magazine, will not change with his capture. A second escape that should have never happened and that began taking shape long before Joaquin Guzman was captured a second time. A National Prison System dismantled by the Peña Nieto government, as described by Raymundo Riva Palacio in the book El Chapo’s Second Escape: Chronicle of a Disaster. Alarms that began going off about the failures of the National Security Commission, ignored again and again. Deceit, corruption, evasions that haven’t been fully explained or even faced with El Chapo in prison, once again.

El Chapo’s recapture can’t reverse the debacle of the national security policy. It doesn’t change what has been a vacilating and even contradictory attitude. It doesn’t alter the cartel’s strengthening during this administration or the power vacuums that self-defense groups and organized crime have been filling. It doesn’t change the gray regions of illegality that have mushroomed throughout the country. It doesn’t solve the dismantling of security measures in prisons, nor the cancellation of protocols and procedures that explain his two escapes. It doesn’t answer the basic, unavoidable question: How far did the complicity that caused his second escape reach? To the guards? To the prison directors? To the coordinators of federal prisons? ¿To the intelligence area of the Federal Police? ¿To Cisen?

And until there is a comprehensive and satisfactory answer to that question, Guzman Loera should be extradited as soon as possible. Because those who say that a third escape is unthinkable are wrong. They underestimate el capo’s capacity to infiltrate and corrupt. They overestimate the institutional strength of a State often corroded, often protective of organized crime, too often its accomplice. Read the rest at Mexico Voices Translated by Ruby Izar-Shea

Related: "El Chapo" Guzmán Made Hero by Government Celebration and Sean Penn Interview (Reforma)

Related: Capture of "El Chapo" Guzmán Isn't "Mission Accomplished" (Sinembargo)

Related: Mexico Drug War: Perspectives on El Chapo's Recapture (La Jornada) Mexico Voices is a blogging endeavor aimed at raising the awareness of U.S. citizens regarding the destructive impact of the U.S. economic policy and the War on Drugs on Mexico — on its people, their economic and physical security and their human rights, on the nation’s dysfunctional justice system, and on the rule of law and Mexico’s fragile democracy. Visit the website at MexicoVoices.blogspot.mx

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