El Chapo's brazen escape puts Mexico's reputation on the line

[webfact]

WHAT OTHERS SAY
El Chapo's brazen escape puts Mexico's reputation on the line
The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS: -- Barely a day after Mexican Foreign Secretary José Antonio Meade concluded a Dallas visit touting his nation's progress on trade and security, billionaire drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán escaped from his maximum-security prison cell. In a flash, Mexico's public relations efforts to dispel the negative stories and exaggerations about lax security in their country vaporised into the wind.

Guzmán's escape belies the rosier picture of stability that Mexico's leaders present, while bolstering the worst stereotypes of incompetence and corruption. Mexico cannot afford mistakes when its reputation rests on the competent handling of kingpins like Guzmán, especially given how quick Mexico is to cite its sovereignty whenever US law enforcement agencies offer assistance.

Even from prison, Guzmán reportedly continued to play a leading role in operations of his Sinaloa drug cartel, whose trafficking network for cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana exploited the Texas border area to supply a vast US drug market including Dallas and beyond.

Guzmán, 58, had already escaped once from prison, in 2001, and spent 13 years on the run before his recapture last year. US officials sought his extradition, but Mexican authorities insisted that they could handle his imprisonment this time.

We were sceptical, especially since another imprisoned cartel leader, Rafael Caro Quintero, walked free from his prison cell in August 2013. He remains at large, all because a state judge ruled that Caro Quintero had been tried in the wrong court.

Mexico's judiciary and law-enforcement communities are infamous for corruption, and there's little doubt among US law enforcers that personnel inside the maximum-security Almoloya federal prison assisted in this escape. The levels of engineering precision necessary to dig a mile-long tunnel network - connecting a remote house to a vertical shaft right beneath Guzmán's private cell - would have been unlikely without inside assistance and detailed diagrams of the prison layout.

And why was Guzmán allowed a private cell, with a shower conveniently hidden from video monitoring cameras? Such lapses undermine Mexico's law-enforcement credibility. You simply don't treat one of the nation's most dangerous and highly valued prisoners with such laxity.

Mexican officials, including President Enrique Peña Nieto, currently travelling in France, and for whom Guzmàn's capture in February was a crowning achievement, must be spitting angry. Not only do such incidents undermine Mexico's international credibility, they provide easy ammunition to critics such as GOP presidential contender Donald Trump, who cites Mexico's insecurity as reason to build border walls, deploy troops and impugn the character of the Mexican people.

US assistance can help plug some very obvious holes - and tunnels - in Mexico's corruption-plagued law-enforcement, judicial and penal system. Mexico's authorities should swallow their pride and place questions of sovereignty secondary to the top priority of security.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/El-Chapos-brazen-escape-puts-Mexicos-reputation-on-30264502.html


-- The Nation 2015-07-16

[facthailand]

You know...good on him. The drug war has bred monsters. ALL of it should be legal!

[canman]

What reputation!!!

[Usernames]

Exhibit A. Trump is right about Mexico, the narcotrafficantes, and their spread into the US.

[quandow]

El Chapo is really the one running Mexico, just as corporations REALLY run 'Merica. They have a saying in Mexico, "The silver or the lead." You can work with the bad guys and get paid the silver, or work against them and take the bullet.

[Manbing]

You know...good on him. The drug war has bred monsters. ALL of it should be legal!

This argument defies logic- him being one of the alleged 'monsters'

Why would you suggest its a good idea he is free?

[gemguy]

Mexico is a country where the government, if they wanted to, could go berserk on the drug traders and kill them all...if they wanted ......and no one could or would do anything to stop them

Of course the ramifications of such policies would come back to haunt them....but .....they could simply assassinate all the drug lords......each and everyone of them and every time a new one surfaces ...kill them also...... and anyone else that takes up drug dealing.

Eventually drug trading and being a drug lord would not be pursued with such enthusiasm.

Just saying.

Cheers

[sanuk711]

"A top Mexican drug lord has tunnelled his way to freedom from prison," ...........................said a mole close to the source....................