Capturing El Chapo

MEXICO CITY — Since the end of last year, the story has been circulating that the governments of Mexico and the United States were close to capturing Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka “El Chapo.” Since then, not a week has passed without further news to that effect.

Catching the chief of the Sinaloa cartel has become not just a matter of combating organized crime but an affair of state, and just in time for elections in which the presidents of both countries are pressing to land a knockout blow to position themselves before the electorate.

But more so than for Obama, who seeks re-election, the pursuit and arrest of El Chapo is a vital and urgent deed for Felipe Calderón, because in doing so he would attempt to justify the failure of his declaration of war against narcotics trafficking, which has grave social costs for the present and the future.

Moreover, this would give a boost to his intended successor, Josefina Vázquez Mota, the National Action Party candidate, who has come across as lackluster during the disastrous beginning of her presidential campaign.

As Colombia’s Pablo Escobar was in his time, Guzmán Loera has been built up by the Americans as the leading Mexican narcotics trafficker and the number one enemy in the worldwide fight against drugs. In the United States, his image has grown so much that — like the Colombian drug lord — he has been placed on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people, increasing his visibility.

Not only this, but he also has been designated as a terrorist, and in this respect is being pursued by U.S. government agents on Mexican soil, with the Calderón administration’s consent.

Capturing El Chapo, then, is a strategic action for Washington, but for the Mexican government it is, as we have said, an operation that is vital to ending the excuse making and propping up Vázquez Mota’s presidential aspirations, as has been noted by some in the U.S. press.

It is evident that the Mexican government either lacks the capacity or is too infiltrated by organized crime to be able to capture Joaquín Guzmán. There have been reports, such as one from a priest in Durango, who said that the chief of the Sinaloa cartel was staying in the mountains of that state.

The most recent report was confirmed by the [Mexican] Office of the General Prosecutor and by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, indicating that El Chapo was in Los Cabos, Baja, Calif., at almost the same time that Hillary Clinton arrived to participate in the G-20 summit.

The Mexican government, however, hasn’t captured the drug lord, eliciting suspicions that he has been protected by National Action Party governments since his 2001 escape, when Vicente Fox’s administration had just begun.

The result is that Barack Obama’s administration is working through its various intelligence agencies, principally the DEA and FBI, taking advantage of the Mexican government’s permissiveness.

However, one must question whether Felipe Calderón’s administration is prepared for the violent actions that would take place on the part of the Sinaloa cartel if its leader were captured, or if it can halt moves other groups would engage in to keep their territory, or if it could endure the changes taking place within the Sinaloan group. That is to say, is it capable of controlling what is known as the “cockroach effect,” which is the proliferation of gangs after the fall of the head of one of the most important cartels in the world?

The danger is this: only thinking of the first step — the knockout blow and the arrest — and not of the effects that it will have. That is, in not having contemplated the disentangling of the whole network of complicity that El Chapo and his cartel have established in Mexico and the United States, where they are laundering millions in earnings, as the DEA has acknowledged.

Nobody is opposed to arresting one of the world’s most important leaders of organized crime, but one hopes that Felipe Calderón’s administration foresees the various scenarios that could transpire after apprehending El Chapo and that it has framed a larger strategy, one that would include casting its net to capture the many others implicated — police officers, municipal, state and federal authorities, as well as military officials — hindering any attempts at destabilization and ensuring that the operation is not merely a media event.

But most of all, it must anticipate that, in the middle of the electoral cycle, any reactions will surely be extremely violent and will have an amplified, destabilizing effect that will undoubtedly influence the course of the campaign, spreading to the rest of society, creating more death and violence in the streets.

And, in dealing with this, [the government] must not submit to the temptation to put more troops from the army, marines or armed forces on the streets, or to deploy more federal police to stop any attempted social disorder — that is, to use violence to combat violence, putting the nation’s immediate future at risk as it is about to elect the next president of Mexico.