Pablo Escobar and "El Chapo" have been forgotten: that's how the new drug leaders

Pablo Escobar and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán are two icons of drug trafficking in Latin America, which has managed to become the most powerful leaders of the two most powerful cartels and that the new generations will not be able to imitate.

The experts said the two bosses have many similarities: They were the most sought after, they escaped from prison and their cartel driving style in a vertical structure, since the new leaders opted for fragmentation.

Juan Carlos Garzón, director of the Conflict Dynamics Zone at the Ideas for Peace Foundation in Colombia, told BBC Mundo: "It's a species in the process of extinction."

In an badysis by the media, they pointed out that strategic calculations and even changes in the market are some of the factors behind the company's profile. "all powerful" narco.

Garzón added that the new the kings of narco they choose to retain a less public identity, unlike the large exhibition of Escobar, who attempted a political career, and El Chapo, who offered an interview for the actor Sean Penn, with the intermediation of the also Mexican artist Kate del Castillo.

"These (criminal) structures are increasingly opting for a low profile, since what they're looking for is to be able to go ahead with your illegal business and to some extent the visibility (They) play against, "he said.

On this, the own Guzmán Loera's lawyer He said his client's media coverage helped Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada go unnoticed. "The world is focusing on this mythical creature of 'El Chapo'; the world does not focus on (Ismael) & # 39; Mayo & # 39; Zambada, "said Jeffrey Lichtman.

Experts have abounded for BBC World that drug trafficking cartels currently bet on fragmentationwith whom they seek to escape justice and governments, who have more information and resources to capture them.

On the basis of the above, it was found that criminal groups had forgotten the vertical and centralized structure built by the big bosses Pablo Escobar and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, which has weakened the drug's marketing chain from its origin to the final sale.

The expert on violence, crime and illicit markets at the University of Mbadachusetts Lowell, Angelica Duran-Martinez, said "the great dilemma of any (criminal) organization, whether drug traffickers or any other, is that if they have centralized get greater control, but this makes them much more vulnerable to state actions"

The expert said that "they could become more regional, less be the type of international boss that would become the image of new TV series, but that does not mean that there is no strong leader at the local level ".

The arrival of synthetic drugs

The arrival of synthetic drugs has also changed the drug trafficking market. The co-director of the Insight Crime organized crime research group, Steven Dudley, wrote last month in the Foreign Affairs newspaper publication that " syntheticthey can be produced cheaply from chemical precursors and are powerful enough to be profitable, even on a small scale, "he added in an article entitled" The end of big posters ".

He explained that before the drug traffic was different. "The Mexican cartels they were built for drug trafficking like cocaine and heroin. These drugs, whose production requires intensive labor and are more cost-effective in the case of large-scale trafficking, tend to favor the emergence of large, centralized criminal groups capable of coordinating large transnational drug trafficking networks. production and distribution.