The failure of Mexico's kingpin strategy
Notorious Mexican drug lord ‘El Chapo’ faced extradition to the US last January. Why has his removal not improved public safety in Mexico?
The Metropolitan Correctional Centre in Manhattan, often referred to as the ‘Guantánamo of New York’, earlier this year added one more infamous criminal to its ranks: Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo.
Two prison breaks and multiple years on the run have earned the Mexican drug lord a reputation for elusive guile and criminal cunning. For decades, El Chapo has overseen operations of the Sinaloa cartel, once Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking coalition.
The cartel has bankrolled political and economic elites, engaged in bloody turf wars with rival groups and controlled the supply of narcotics to most of the West coast, Midwest and Northeast of the US. Some have lauded Mr. Guzmán as an anti-establishment, Robin Hood-style hero, but many more have condemned him as a violent and destructive criminal.
On the surface, the extradition of El Chapo in January was a major success for the war on drugs and a key victory for Mexico’s unpopular president, Enrique Peña Nieto. However, critics suggest that the government’s actions have done little to weaken the potent criminal networks operating within Mexico. In fact, observers say the extradition may have caused further damage to public security.
At the beginning of his term, President Peña Nieto offered a revised security policy that focused on crime and violence prevention, reforms to the justice system and victims’ rights protection. Mr. Peña Nieto criticised the practice of combatting criminal organisations with violence, claiming such approaches did not contain violence in the long term.
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