Organized Crime

What the Trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Revealed About The Inner Workings of the Sinaloa Cartel

Posted on by Ashley Ashley Ahrens-Viquez

 

"El Chapo" at his trial, Courtroom sketch by Christine Cornell

Sketch by Christine Cornell

03/19/19- (written by Aitanna Ferrez) Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán was convicted in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, February 12, 2019 on all counts brought against him for his role in directing the Sinaloa Cartel since roughly the 1980s. The trial revealed significant details about the Sinaloa Cartel, how it works, who is involved and where their business is conducted, providing a greater understanding of how this specific cartel has contributed to corruption and violence in Mexico. In the wake of his arrest and extradition to the United States, business of the cartel seems to be carrying on as usual, there is an ongoing epidemic of U.S. drug overdoses, and violence in Mexico has reached record levels. Understanding the impact of the Sinaloa Cartel and where it may be headed in Guzman’s absence requires a careful review of what we now know about the organization.

Background on the Sinaloa Cartel

According to InSight Crime, the Sinaloa Cartel began as a small group of farming families who switched to drug trafficking in the 1960s and 70s. In the 1980s, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán officially founded the Sinaloa Cartel. Up until his arrest in January 2016, Guzmán served with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia as what has been perceived as head of the drug trafficking organization.

The Sinaloa Cartel achieved success in part because of its relatively decentralized structure, with different geographic divisions of the network working together as “separate but cooperating organizations.” Indeed, though identified as the organization’s formal leaders in principal, InSight Crime reports that both Guzmán and Zambada Garcia historically maintained their own individual organizational structures within the Sinaloa Cartel. Meanwhile, many of the Sinaloa Cartel’s activities and operations in Mexico and internationally were “outsourced” to local suppliers, distributors, and other partners.

According to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, in an interview with ABC News, it was “El Chapo” Guzmán’s ability to “institutionalize power systems and relationships” that largely enabled the cartel to expand. According to Bret Hamilton, assistant special agent for Alabama’s sector of the DEA, the Sinaloa cartel is said to control about one-fourth of the drug traffic within the Mexican Region, with an even larger reach and hold on the United States.”

The effect of the reach of the Sinaloa Cartel and its network of contraband trade has had translates directly into its ability to, as InSight affirms, “successfully [penetrate] government and security forces wherever it operates.” As stated in a June 2018 CRS report, the Sinaloa Cartel has “successfully corrupted public officials from the local to the national level inside Mexico and abroad to operate in some 50 countries,” allowing it to become the top supplier of illicit psychotropic substances in the United States.

What We Learned from the Guzmán Trial

The trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was a lesson in and of itself on how the Sinaloa Cartel’s success has been contingent upon the high level of corruption within the Mexican police, military, and government. Witness testimony during the trial brought to the surface countless allegations against Guzmán and the Sinaloa Cartel, and corruption was arguably the prominent theme that emerged throughout.

As revealed in a VICE News podcast, the corruption of the Sinaloa Cartel is practically embedded in all aspects of life in Mexico. Two testimonies in particular – one delivered by a former government official Lucero Sanchez Lopez, who became a mistress of Guzmán and the other by Alex Cifuentes, a relative of one of Guzmán’s primary cocaine suppliers in Colombia – brought to light the degree of high-level corruption of the Mexican government by the Sinaloa Cartel. In addition, according to the New York Times following the final presentation of evidence, reports delivered the prosecution revealed possibly the most shocking claims against Mr. Guzmán, accusing the crime lord of “routinely rap[ing] girls as young as 13 years old.”

The first witness’ testimony illustrated the way that government officials fell under Guzmán’s sway even as they were sworn to enforce the law. Cifuentes, meanwhile, alleged that the cartel was able to bribe officials even at the highest levels of office, including then-president Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), who allegedly accepted a bribe of $100 million to protect the Sinaloa Cartel from authorities.

Looking Ahead

The Sinaloa Cartel, though constantly challenged within Mexico by other drug trafficking organizations, seems to prosper well due to its significant international network, even after the guilty verdict of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. In an interview with PBS Newshour, Mike Vigil, the former chief of international operations for the DEA, comments that capturing and convicting Guzmán “was a great moral victory for the rule of law, [but] it did very little to have a negative impact on the Sinaloa Cartel.” With the drugs continuing to be shipped, the Mexican government no longer hunting down drug lords, and Guzmán’s fate of little importance, the Sinaloa Cartel seems to continue to persist with business as usual.

 

Sources:

 

Beittel, June. “Mexico: Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Organizations.” Congressional Research Service, 3 July 2018, pp. 1–28. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41576.pdf.

Feuer, Alan. “El Chapo Drugged and Raped 13-Year-Old Girls, Witness Claims.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html.

 

Keneally, Meghan. “How El Chapo’s Sinaloa Drug Cartel Spread Its Reach Across US.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 13 July 2015. www.abcnews.go.com/International/el-chapos-sinaloa-drug-cartel-spread-reach-us/story?id=32421054.

 

Robinson, Carol. “Mexico’s Sinaloa Drug Cartel Leaving Deadly Mark on Alabama.” AL.com, Advance Local Media LLC., 23 July 2018. www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2018/07/what_is_the_sinaloa_mexican_dr.html.

 

“Sinaloa Cartel.” InSight Crime, 30 Jan. 2018. www.insightcrime.org/mexico-organized-crime-news/sinaloa-cartel-profile/.

 

“The Verdict.” Chapo: Kingpin on Trial. VICE News/Spotify. 19 February 2019. https://open.spotify.com/show/3iZGZfoQX9kfzdZtAYi2s2?si=wxEH63CcQD2B50avZt8XJg.

 

Verza, Maria, and Mark Stevenson. “After El Chapo Conviction, Sinaloa Drug Cartel Carries On.” PBS, KPBS, 12 Feb. 2019. www.pbs.org/newshour/world/after-el-chapo-conviction-sinaloa-drug-cartel-carries-on.

 

Verza, Maria, and Mark Stevenson. “Despite ‘El Chapo’ Arrest, Mexico’s Powerful Sinaloa Drug Cartel Still Raking in Cash around the World.” The Japan Times, 13 Feb. 2019. www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/02/13/world/crime-legal-world/despite-el-chapo-arrest-mexicos-powerful-sinaloa-drug-cartel-still-raking-cash-around-world/#.XGxRBc9KigQ.

 

 

 

 

Alleged Mexican Government Corruption Exposed During the El Chapo Trial

Posted on by dshirk
Trial of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Image Source: USA Today.

Trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Source: USA Today.

02/11/19 (written by aferrez) The evidentiary phase of the trial of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the purported leader the of the Sinaloa drug cartel, came to a conclusion on Wednesday, January 30, 2019 after having raised newfound speculation about the extent of the corruption in Mexico.

The trial included testimony from at least 16 of Guzmán’s “underlings and allies, some of whom served as cartel bag men.” Several of these witnesses are among those who made allegations of corruption about Mexican government officials, including members of the current and past Mexican presidential administrations.

According to Alan Feuer of The New York Times, “It is no secret that Mexico’s drug cartels have, for decades, corrupted the authorities with dirty money.” Nonetheless, the testimony of some witnesses brought several shocking allegations. For example, the testimony of Vicente Zambada, son of Ismael Zambada an alleged partner of Guzmán. On the witness stand, Zambada claimed his father had a bribery budget of one million dollars a month, and all of it went to high ranking government officials.

In addition to allegations brought forth by Zambada, another witness named Miguel Angel Martínez brought further allegations against Mexican authorities. According to Martínez’s testimony reported by again by Alan Feuer of The New York Times, the chief of Mexico City’s federal police, Guillermo González Calderoni, was the first official on Guzmán’s payroll in the late 1980s, and has since allegedly provided Guzmán with “secret information on an almost daily basis.” This information included, but was not limited to, the disclosure of a radar system installed on the Yucatán Peninsula by the United States government to track Guzmán’s drug flights from Columbia.

The testimony of such witnesses underscored the fact that major drug trafficking operations necessarily involve some significant level of government complicity. This was point was made especially clear by Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadía, a Columbian supplier of Guzmán, who was quoted by The New York Timesas stating that “It’s impossible to be the leader of a drug cartel in Columbia without having corruption…they go hand in hand.” Abadía testified that in order to traffic drugs internationally, his organization paid off everyone from journalists to tax officials.

As revealing as the trial has been with such examples, some experts think the revelations of corruption only scratch the surface. Feuer notes “the trial is offering a public airing of the crimes of the Sinaloa drug cartel –– but is only revealing ‘what the government would like us to hear.’” Indeed, Judge Brian M. Cogan, who presided over the case, had initially instructed some witnesses that they must refrain from discussing alleged corruption of government officials in Mexico because, “It would needlessly embarrass certain individuals and entities.” Nonetheless, the trial brought forth numerous specific details that suggested high level government involvement in the drug trade.

Perhaps the most shocking allegation of the trial was the claim that Guzmán directed a payment of $100 million dollar to then-sitting president Enrique Peña Nieto. Alex Cifuentes Villa, the Colombian drug lord who delivered the testimony against Peña Nieto, is recorded to have saidthat the Sinaloa cartel was initially contacted by Peña Nieto about the time he was elected president in late 2012, according toAlan Feuer at The New York Times. Feuer also notes that Cifuentes Villa testified that Enrique Peña Nieto asked Guzmán for $250 million in exchange for calling off a nationwide manhunt for himduring the campaign. Both Peña Nieto and the López Obrador government vehemently refuted the allegations brought against them and their administrations on social media and in public statements to the press.

In response to these allegations, the defense counsel representing Guzmán raised questions about the credibility of the witnesses for the prosecution. In a quote for an article produced by BBC News Mundo, lead defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman asserted that those testifying against Guzmán are, for the most part, members of the Sinaloa cartel themselves and their testimony is likely intended to gain them leniency on sentences that they are currently serving. Lichtman believes the level of legitimacy of the witnesses is tainted by the fact that they are “men who have cheated all their lives.” Indeed, several witnesses who testified during the trial reportedly struck deals with the prosecution in an effort to receive reduced sentences or U.S. visas.

The final ruling on Guzmán’s fate remains in the hands of the jury, which at the time of this posting was still deliberating on a verdict.  Regardless of the outcome, some analysts raised questions about whether there would be a reckoning for corrupt officials, given the details that were revealed at trial. In an interview with CBC Radio, Anabel Hernández, author of Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers, stated, “The trial of El Chapo Guzmán is very symbolic…but the problem is that [it] will not resolve all the corruption, all the laundering of money that exists in Mexico, and that helps the Sinaloa Cartel, and also other cartels, to exist.”

Meanwhile, the trafficking of drugs to the United States continues unabated. Guzmán’s alleged partner, Ismael Zambada, remains at large and numerous other drug trafficking organizations continue to thrive in Mexico. Numerous sources reporting on the Guzmán trial note that this drug trafficking activity and the corruption that results is likely to continue as long as there is a voracious appetite for narcotics in the United States.

Sources:

Lissardy, Gerardo. “Juicio a ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán: La Batalla Clave De Los Testigos Comienza Con Relatos Épicos De Envíos De Cocaína, Dinero Sucio y Corrupción – BBC News Mundo.” BBC News, BBC, 15 Nov. 2018.https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-46217746

Feuer, Alan. “El Chapo Trial Shows That Mexico’s Corruption Is Even Worse Than You Think.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Dec. 2018.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html

Tremonti, Anna Maria. “The Current: Trial of El Chapo Won’t Resolve the Corruption That Empowered Him, Says Journalist | CBC Radio.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 7 Jan. 2019.https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-january-7-2019-1.4963706/trial-of-el-chapo-won-t-resolve-the-corruption-that-empowered-him-says-journalist-1.4968242

Feuer, Alan. “Former Mexican President Peña Nieto Took $100 Million Bribe, Witness at El Chapo Trial Says.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Jan. 2019.

 www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html.