One of these should do the job:
Posted on 05/31/2005 8:11:34 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
MEXICO CITY - Mexico's chief drug prosecutor Monday described the country's top fugitive drug lord as a kind of Pablo Escobar figure who - like the deceased Colombian trafficker - is viewed as a hero by many people who protect his mountain hideouts and tip him off when police come looking.
In the most detailed description yet of how Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has managed to avoid capture, Assistant Attorney General Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos called the drug lord "the smartest leader we've come up against."
He said authorities are campaigning to convince people in northern Mexico that the funds Guzman hands out are blood money.
"Part of the problem with the attempts to catch him is caused by the fact that some residents, not all, but some who have benefited from his generosity, inform him immediately about the presence of federal agents," Santiago Vasconcelos told reporters.
"We're never going to catch Chapo in a city," he said. "This guy always lives in the most remote parts of the mountains, protected fundamentally by groups of rural resident who see him as a hero."
"We're trying to make them see that he's not a hero, that this money he is handing out, apparently for them to enjoy, carries the blood and lives of many people," said Santiago Vasconcelos.
While he did not say where Guzman is hiding out, he is native to the northwestern state of Sinaloa.
"They see him as a hero, they cover for him, and when any stranger comes into the communities, they warn him."
Guzman, whose nickname means "Shorty," bribed guards to escape from prison in 2001. He is one of Mexico's most-wanted fugitives.
His modus operandi resembles that of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug chief shot by police in 1993 in the city of Medellin, where he built houses and soccer fields and was considered a hero.
After escaping, Guzman formed an alliance with Ismael "El Mayor" Zambada and the Ciudad Juarez cartel, based on his connections with Colombian traffickers who supply cocaine for shipment to the United States.
"Staring from practically nothing, we have identified him as one of the main leaders," Santiago Vasconcelos said. "He represents a go-between with the Colombian gangs, and has the trust of the Colombians."
A series of arrests of major traffickers from the Gulf and Tijuana cartels had weakened the Mexican gangs' connections with their Colombian suppliers, but Guzman "fixed those problems ... and re-established the connection," Santiago Vasconcelos said.
The leaders of the Gulf and Tijuana cartels are now imprisoned, but have formed an alliance behind bars to fight Guzman, who is working with the Juarez cartel, based across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Santiago Vasconcelos said the Juarez cartel is "trying to expand on both its flanks" to take over lucrative smuggling points along the border to the east - Gulf cartel territory - and on the Tijuana gang's turf in the west.
He said the glory days of the Tijuana cartel - "they said it was their city, and we were outsiders there" - were over. "They no longer travel around in convoys of four or five vehicles."
Following dozens of recent executions and shootouts in northern Mexico, Santiago Vasconcelos acknowledged that "organized crime has had some extremely violent manifestations" and said that was an attempt by traffickers "to intimidate society .... to get us to retreat."
He said such violence was worse in the United States.
"They have more violence in New York, and that's just one city," he said.
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
This situation is no different than what is happening in many ghettos in America, If you pass money around you buy loyalty.
One of these should do the job:
Remember, even Escobar eventually met his fate.
El Chapo is sorta like the Mexican Osama Bin Ladin. Both want to destroy us
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has managed to keep lots of people employed in Mexico and is responsible for billions of dollars to their economy.
I think the article is disinformation.
I know enough about the Mexican Federal Judicial Police to know that nobody does anything in Mexico without their getting a substantial cut.
There is no way the MFJP is going to go after this guy, but they have to pretend, as you say.
Ping
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