The recent arrest of Ovidio Guzmánson of notorious Mexican drug cartel leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, made international headlines not only because of the suspect's identity but also because of the unprecedented violence his henchmen unleashed in the Mexican state of Sinaloa in the aftermath.
Guzmán was arrested on January 5 near Culiacan, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. The operation planned by Mexican forces for six months reportedly left 29 people dead, including 10 military personnel.
While the captive was quickly transported to Mexico City, his gang — Los Chapitos, possibly a faction of the Sinaloa cartel — set up barricades, burned vehicles and engaged in shootouts with authorities, using machine guns and 50-caliber rifles capable of penetrating armored vehicles. . The violence spread from Culiacán, where Guzmán was born in 1990, to other parts of the state.
“The violence that followed was just a desperate attempt to stop something that had already happened,” says Pablo Calderon Martinez, assistant professor of politics and international relations at Northeastern University-London.
Guzmán was arrested once before in 2019, but authorities had to release him because the cartel threatened public safety.
Guzmán's arrest could mean justice for hundreds of victims of the Sinaloa cartel and families devastated by its drug trade and violence, Calderon Martinez says. But otherwise, it doesn't change Mexico's struggle with drug trafficking and drug cartels.
Geography makes Mexico particularly vulnerable to drug-related activities, Calderon Martinez says.
The Mexico-US border is the busiest border in the world. It is also the tenth longest land border between two countries. Trillions of dollars in goods and services move back and forth, Calderon Martinez says, and the busy, porous borders allow drug trafficking.
Mexican cartels make a lot of money not from producing illegal drugs or selling them, but from transporting drugs to the US — the largest drug market.
“That's why the Mexican drug organizations became more prosperous than the Colombian organizations,” says Calderon Martinez.
They control billions of dollars in capital and cash, he says. This money can buy them weapons, vehicles and soldiers. Cartels command their own armies and pay salaries.
“It's simply impossible to expect local law enforcement to challenge what is basically a well-funded military force,” says Calderon Martinez.
Only the Mexican armed forces and the Mexican Navy could really fight the cartels, he says, but it takes time to mobilize in a specific location across the country.
“The state has to decide how much it spends to fight a drug cartel and a criminal organization and other things that the state has to do,” says Calderon Martinez, meaning, for example, spending on education or health care .
Calderon Martinez believes that it is simply impossible to get rid of drug trafficking organizations. As drug traffickers buy cars, watches, houses and food, drug money becomes an integral part of the Mexican economy, he says, and the realistic best outcome is to pacify these organizations largely so they coexist peacefully.
“Because of the resource issue you can't try to fight them all at once. This is what will lead to massive outbursts of violence, as we have seen [in Sinaloa],” he says. “The population doesn't want to see that.”
Polls conducted after the violence in Sinaloa showed that a significant number of respondents both locally and nationally felt less safe after Ovidio Guzmán's arrest than before, he says. Nikos Passasprofessor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and co-director of the Institute for Security and Public Policy.
“That shows you a level of fear, a level of questioning the authority of the state and [that] The relationship between government and citizens is not optimal,” he says.
Citizens begin to distrust not only the government at the highest level but also local law enforcement agencies and the military.
“This is institutional corruption in the sense that what government is supposed to do is to serve a collective good, the public interest, [but it] he's not able to do his job, either because people are in danger or because they can't,” says Passas.
He points out that when criminal groups act extremely violently like in Sinaloa, it shows that they are disorganized and going through turmoil. There is competition between different players and a struggle for power because there is a lot of money to be made in some illegal product that is in high demand.
There are many tools in a government's toolbox for dealing with complex problems like drug cartels in Mexico, Passas says. The first step is to identify the challenges and costs with each action option and then plan to protect anyone adversely affected by whatever choice is made.
“It's not just bodies behind bars. It's not just money that was seized and confiscated. It's about less sick, less addicts, less dead, less people who are tempted to enter this market either as users or as facilitators for the perpetrators,” he says.
It's important to go after the big culprits like the Guzmáns, because pedestrians can be easily replaced, he says. But the approach must be strategic and holistic.
It should include risk and cost-benefit analysis of different options, consider a public health perspective, a legal perspective, local and national governance issues, a political science perspective, international relations and international cooperation.
The problem with the drug trade is demand and supply, Passas says.
“If you do little about demand, for example, and there's a huge profit to be made, then the cost of doing business goes up, and the incentive to do it in ways that counteract the acts of government controls and international intervention goes up. ” He says.
If priority or more resources are given to addressing the supply side, any enforcement activities lead to indirect costs in the form of collateral damage.
Such costs may include negative effects on the quality of life of people in the area, deaths of ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire, deaths of NGO workers and journalists who were doing their job conscientiously or among their loved ones.
To minimize demand a government can use policy and laws, Passas says.
As for Ovidio Guzmán, Mexico is legally able to extradite him to the US, he says. It can move the headache of dealing with Guzmán to a safer environment and avoid further collateral damage.
The US government is very eager to extradite Guzmán. He issued a warrant for Guzmán's arrest on September 19, 2019, and had offered up to $5 million for information on his whereabouts prior to the recent arrest.
His father, El Chapo, was released in the US in January 2017 after escaping twice from prison in Mexico. He was convicted of 10 counts of participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder and is serving a life sentence plus 30 years in a US prison.
“I guess it's going to be extradited to the US in a few months after some political negotiations,” says Calderon Martinez. “On the one hand, it's good to keep him in Mexico, deport him to Mexico and send him to prison in Mexico.”
Mexican authorities will have to decide what is the best political outcome for them, he says. For now, a federal judge in Mexico City stayed Guzman's extradition to the US on January 6.
“It may seem like a good move to extradite him after due process to show cooperation in the fight against drugs,” he says.
Alena Kuzub is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email her at a.kuzub@northeastern.edu. Follow her on Twitter @AlenaKuzub.
