"El Chapo" is guilty, but life and death in Mexico will remain the same

José Luis Pardo Veiras is a freelance journalist, co-author of "Narcoamérica: From the Andes to Manhattan, 55,000 km after the Cocaine Road" and founder of Dromómanos, who is currently investigating homicide in Latin America.

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzman Loera ran an organization that smuggled drugs on four continents and, while becoming a millionaire and laundering his money, corrupted, tortured, murdered. This is a summary of the ten counts for which he was sentenced in New York on Tuesday, 12 February.

After three months of trial, 56 witnesses, photographs, recordings and SMS intercepted, The jury did not leave a reasonable doubt that Guzmán Loera was a criminal. I do not know if at this stage anyone doubted it, but the news is that at age 61 – with three arrests, two maximum security prison escapes and one extradition – it seems like the most famous trafficker of the last quarter of a century will die in prison.

This is good news because justice is done – albeit with an inevitable nuance: in the United States, not in Mexico – and to some extent repairs the victims of "Chapo". But their conviction will have no impact on the lives and deaths of Mexicans, as drug trafficking does not result from the ambition of a handful of peasant-businessmen who have divided the country and the cartels have not been either. they are, if ever, organizations dependent on a single capo. Drug trafficking is a phenomenon that includes onset, social rise, identity, millions of dollars, violence, corruption and impunity. "El Chapo" is only the symbol of a cruel and complex reality that has brutally beaten Mexico for decades.

His downfall can send a lukewarm message against impunity – Tibio, because he is a man with a long criminal career who is doomed almost to old age -. What it will not do is reduce drug trafficking in the north, weapons in the south, huge profits from one gram of cocaine and, basically, the violence in Mexico will not diminish., a country with more than 200,000 dead and 40,000 missing in just over a decade. This is not a prediction: it is something we already live.

"El Chapo" was extradited in January 2017 and the last two years have been the most violent in modern Mexican history: 2017 broke the record and 2018 beat him with more than 33,000 homicides. Since then, many places traditionally under the control of the Sinaloa Cartel have been the scene of this increase in violence. Los Cabos, a luxury tourist site, suffered a security crisis between late 2017 and the beginning of last year, and even bodies appeared hanging on a bridge. In Tijuana, a city with a long history of violence, the year 2018 also set a historic record: more than 2,500 homicides, triple the previous record of ten years ago. These are just two examples of a country in which there are more and more red lights.

A recount since 2006, the year of the beginning of the war against drug trafficking by its president, Felipe Calderón, shows that the violence has increased as the enemy of the state was atomized and moved into a sea of names. The cartel of Sinaloa and the cartel of the Gulf were joined by the Zetas, the Michoacana family, the Templarios, Los Ardillos, Los Rojos … or the cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, which launched a video message Sunday – The authorities investigate for to authenticate – to announce their arrival in Mexico City, where homicides increased by 40% over the previous badennium. When the so-called king falls, a great nobility is ready to replace him.

The trial left us an exhaustive profile of Joaquín Guzmán and Sinaloa cartel. "El Chapo" was portrayed as a cold-blooded murderer and even a witness accused him of raping 13-year-old girls. This is important because, although Mexicans living on a territory dominated by drug trafficking are aware of this cruelty, there are still people who retain the romanticized image of this generous entrepreneur who has helped the poor.

The cartel has meticulously described its international relations, its economic capacity, its power. The testimonies of fourteen people who have worked with the organization and the documentary evidence have confirmed with harshness and with a detail never seen the magnitude of the problem represented by this type of criminal organization: With their illicit activities, they have not only eroded public security, but also the state institutions authorized to filter through corruption and complicity.

However, to find possible solutions to the situation in Mexico, we should focus more on the delicate details left by the lawsuit. One of the most important relates to the testimonials hinting at the symbiosis of legal and illegal power, such as that of Álex Cifuentes Villa, who said during the trial that the former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had received a $ 100 million bribe. Chapo Dollars.

The magnifying glbad we had on drug trafficking these three months should be an inducement for the Mexican authorities – especially now, with a government that is waving the flag of the fight against corruption – to investigate these relationships to deliver justice and obtain a complete account of what is happening in Mexico.

If Mexican justice does not take the Chapo Guzmán trial as a starting point to open investigations and investigate once and for all the true dimensions of drug trafficking and its links with the government, it will only be a problem. way to confirm what we knew: Guzmán Loera is a trafficker at the twilight of his career.