"El Chapo" re-arrested in Mexico

CBS/AP: Responding to what was seen as one of the biggest embarrassments of his administration - Guzman's July 11 escape through a tunnel from Mexico's highest-security prison - Pena Nieto wrote in his Twitter account on Friday: "mission accomplished: we have him."

Benjamin Bergman, a spokesman for the Mexican marines, said El Chapo was rearrested after a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa early Friday. He said Guzman was in "good condition."

Five people have been killed and one Mexican marine wounded in the clash. The Mexican Navy said in a statement that marines acting on a tip raided a home in the town of Los Mochis before dawn. They were fired on from inside the structure. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. The marine's injuries were not life threatening. Read more. 

Drug Tunnels Along the U.S.-Mexico Border: High Costs, High Rewards

Newsweek: More than 80 tunnels have been discovered between Mexico and the United States since 2006, most recently this past Thursday after a six-month investigation by the U.S. government resulted in a large smuggling tunnel being uncovered, as well as 22 arrests and the recovery of 12 tons of marijuana.

The tunnel, about 32 feet underground, runs about 2,880 feet, between the Otay Center Warehouse in San Diego and another warehouse in Tijuana. In a statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Finn said the tunnel is believed to have a railroad system, lighting and electricity throughout.

Old Cartels Never Really Die…

FSN News: Despite recurrent pronouncements of death by some U.S. and Mexican officials, high-profile organized crime groups continue operating and shedding blood south of the border. Tijuana, where control of both the local and export drug business is the prize of contention, figures once again as a significant flashpoint of violence.

Violent rivalries were on public display this past week as at least five so-called narcomantas, or narco banners, were placed in highly visible spots in the Baja California border city of an estimated 1.6 million people.

Sinaloa Cartel Grew More Powerful During Chapo’s Prison Stay

Latin American Herald Tribune: The Sinaloa drug cartel became more powerful during kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman’s most recent 17-month prison stay, Mexico City daily El Universal reported, citing information obtained from the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.

Guzman was captured on Feb. 22, 2014, in Mazatlan, a Pacific coast city in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, and imprisoned at the Altiplano I maximum-security penitentiary until he escaped on July 11 of this year through a 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) underground tunnel that led from his cell to a deserted building. Read more. 

Mexican drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán escapes from prison again

The Guardian: Top Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, has escaped from a maximum-security prison for the second time, Mexican officials said as they launched a manhunt.

Guzmán was last seen about 9pm on Saturday in the shower area of the Altiplano prison, 56 miles outside Mexico City, according to a statement from the national security commission. He went to the shower area but security cameras lost sight of him. Upon checking his cell, authorities found it was empty. Read More. 

Life after El Chapo: kingpin's arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war

The Guardian: The fortune-teller smiled as she gazed out towards the distant peaks of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range.

“The mountains are glowing red and it will be a good harvest,” she predicted. The forecast was not based on second sight, however, but on conversations with local farmers looking forward to a bumper crop of marijuana – and the cash bonanza it will bring. Read more. 

How Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel Fed US Heroin Market

El Universal (Translated by Borderland Beat): The Sinaloa Cartel has taken control of New York’s heroin market, replacing Colombian and Asian groups as the principal supplier of the drug, according to an investigation by the Dromomanoscollective, winner of the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Awards.

Jeen Blake, a 40-year-old truck driver, drove from Queens, New York to Riverside, California. The cross-country trip, which took at least 42 hours, had an extremely profitable end: deliver $750,000 in exchange for 15 kilos of heroin.

Blake, an employee of the company Good Guys Transport Corporation, spent a week driving. His truck was filled with the soles of shoes in which some of the drugs were hidden. The rest was concealed in square packets located in secret compartments. After driving 4,800 kilometers, the driver entered New York this past August 26, without knowing that he was being monitored as part of a special operation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the state police.

Why Killing Kingpins Won't Stop Mexico's Drug Cartels

The Atlantic
By Keegan Hamilton
February 27, 2013

The rumor started Thursday afternoon when the newspaper Prensa Libre reported that several narcos were killed during shootout in Guatemala's remote Petén region. Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez said one of the corpses was "physically very similar" to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, top boss of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. Other outlets, including the unfiltered drug war diary Blog del Narco, spread the word on Twitter, piquing the interest of the international press, and sending Mexican and Guatemalan officials scrambling to confirm the powerful drug lord's purported demise.

The rumor was soon thoroughly debunked. There was no shootout, let alone one that claimed the life of the modern day Pablo Escobar. (Lopez, the Interior Minister, later apologized for the "misunderstanding" and blamed contradictory reports for the confusion.) Not only is El Chapo still very much alive, his legend has grown larger than ever. Already a billionaire according to Forbes, the Sinaloa capo has supplanted Osama bin Laden as the State Department's top international target, and the Chicago Crime Commission recently named him Public Enemy No. 1, a title originally reserved for Al Capone.  Read more. 

In Mexico’s murder city, the war appears over

Washington Post: By William Booth. CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — When this city was among the most murderous in the world, the morgue ran out of room, the corpses stacked to the ceiling in the wheezing walk-in freezers.

Medical examiners, in plastic boots, performed a dozen autopsies a day as families of victims waited outside in numbers sufficient to require a line.

For all this, Mexico has not made much sense of one of the most sensational killing sprees in recent history, which has left 10,500 dead in the streets of Juarez as two powerful drug and crime mafias went to war. In 2010, the peak, there were at least 3,115 aggravated homicides, with many months posting more than 300 deaths, according to the newspaper El Diario. Read more.

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, Mexico's Most-Wanted Drug Lord, Targeted By U.S. Kingpin Act

Reuters: WASHINGTON - The United States on Tuesday targeted three Belize-based associates of Mexico's most-wanted man, cocaine king Joaquin Guzman, by freezing their U.S. assets as well as those of five of his companies including a banana farm, grocery store and marina.

The U.S. Treasury accused John Zabaneh, his nephew Dion Zabaneh and Daniel Moreno of being key associates of Guzman, who is the head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel. Americans and U.S. companies are now prohibited from doing business with the three Belize men and the five companies controlled by Zabaneh and Moreno. Read more.

Mexican drug cartels try to establish direct ties in Las Vegas, officials say

Las Vegas Sun: Jackie Valley. Mexican cartels are working to establish a direct foothold in Las Vegas to sell drugs here and use the region as a stepping stone to shipping large quantities of drugs to the East, law enforcement officials say.

The vast majority of drugs entering the region still come via long-established routes through Phoenix or Southern California and are overseen by middlemen. But with greater frequency, traffickers here are ordering drugs directly from cartels in Mexico, enforcement officers have found. Read more.

Inside the Cartel

LA Times series of the Sinaloa cartel's drug trafficking distribution in the United States by Richard Marosi.

Part 1: Unraveling Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel
As drug smugglers from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico sent a never-ending stream of cocaine across the border and into a vast U.S. distribution web in Los Angeles, DEA agents were watching and listening. Read more.

Part 2: The strands of the Sinaloa drug cartel web
Channeling the Mexican cartel's nonstop river of cocaine onto trucks bound for cities in the U.S. requires a vast labyrinth of smugglers working in L.A. And women like Lupita, a no-nonsense psychic with a short fuse. Read more.

Part 3: Flying high for the Sinaloa drug cartel
Times were good for Carlsbad pilot John Ward as he smuggled cocaine across the U.S. for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. But the men at the other end -- they worried him. Read more.

Part 4: Suspicion in Mexico's Sinaloa cartel
Richard Marosi and Tracy Wilkinson. Why were drug smugglers' cocaine shipments being seized all over the U.S.? The boss in Mexico was demanding answers. He had no idea he was being targeted by the DEA's Operation Imperial Emperor. Read more.

Blunt Trauma: Marijuana, the new blood diamonds

The New Republic: Greg Campbell. In the summer of 2010, I harvested a small crop of marijuana I’d grown in my basement and sold it to a twentysomething college student who replied to an advertisement I’d posted on Craigslist. The transaction was conducted under the auspices of Colorado’s medical marijuana law, and so a certain degree of farce was involved. I wasn’t sick, yet I qualified as a stateapproved pot patient, which allowed me to grow and sell marijuana to other similarly qualified “patients.” Say what you will about the merits of such a system, but at least no one died as a result.

Marijuana may be one of the safest intoxicants known to man—in thousands of years of unregulated use, there has not been a single known fatality attributable to overdose. However, the system by which millions of Americans obtain their pot is deadly and growing deadlier. Mexican cartels have long supplied heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine to the United States, but marijuana is the most widely used drug in the United States, and the cartels are in a murderous frenzy to provide it. Since 2006, approximately 50,000 people have been killed in a gruesome war to control lucrative smuggling lanes into the United States. Read more.

Drug trafficking news: underground tunnel discovered, gang arrests, and drug flight pilot shooting

Mexico discovers drug tunnel under Arizona border
AP: MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's army has uncovered a 755-foot (230-meter) tunnel running under the Sonora-Arizona border that was used to smuggle drugs into the United States. Read more.

Gang Linked to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel Busted in Arizona
Fox News Latino: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and police in the Arizona city of Tempe have arrested 20 members of a criminal gang linked to Mexico's powerful Sinaloa drug cartel, authorities said. In addition to the arrests, made within the scope of "Operation Nayarit Stampede," authorities also confiscated $2.4 million in cash, an airplane, 10 vehicles, three tons of marijuana and 30 pounds of methamphetamine.Read more. 

US agents shoot dead Honduras 'drug flight pilot'
BBC News: Two agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) shot dead the pilot of a suspected drug flight last week, a DEA spokeswoman has said. Read more.

Shooting Highlights Mexico City Airport as Hub for Drug Trade

InSight Crime: The investigation into a shootout between different groups of Federal Police in Mexico City's international airport last month has not resulted in the arrests of the suspected killers, but it offers further indication of the airport's importance for criminal groups.

The airport in Mexico's capital city earned a wave of new headlines on June 25, when two Federal Police officers are believed to have shot three of their colleagues to death. The two alleged shooters are Daniel Cruz Garcia and Zeferino Morales Franco, who disappeared following the incident and remain at large. A third agent who was reportedly acting as an accomplice, shift leader Bogard Lugo de León, also fled following the shooting. Read more.

Cartels cast shadow over Mexico polls

Al Jazeera: Speculation rife over role of criminal syndicates as country votes for new president amid continuing drug violence

Juarez, Mexico - Covered in tattoos and working on a construction site in scorching desert heat is a reformed cartel assassin Luis (a pseudonym), who killed several men on orders from his bosses. "I was a bodyguard for one of the biggest gang members in Juarez," he told Al Jazeera. "We killed people, sold drugs and ran operations from inside prison and on the streets."

Luis was never interested in politics, but higher up the ranks of Mexico's notorious drug gangs, it seems likely that major players want to influence their surroundings. "All political things are like the mafia," Luis said. "I can tell you because I've been there."

As Mexicans head to the polls, analysts and security officials are split on what role wealthy criminal syndicates play in the country's political process. Along with picking a new president on Sunday, voters are electing: five governors, hundreds of congressional seats and nearly 1,000 local-level officials. Read more.

DEA’s ‘El Chapo Fiasco’ Sets Drug War Back for Years

El Universal: WorldMeets.Us Translation by Douglas
See Spanish Original.
“After a series of losing encounters with the facts, agents and operatives of the DEA, who had repeatedly insisted that they had the son of El Chapo, in the end had no choice but to surrender to the accumulating evidence and admit it was a case of mistaken identity ... this has dealt a major blow to the DEA and to the armed forces of Mexico, delaying, perhaps of years, the much-anticipated capture of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán.”

By J. Jaime Hernández
Night had already fallen in Washington, when the DEA reluctantly accepted that the presumed son of "El Chapo" was not the man their informants had pointed out. After almost 48 hours of frenetic communications between DEA agents, members of the Mexico Army and the [Mexico] Attorney General’s Office, they all came to the same conclusion: the faulty intelligence provided by informants of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the immediate reaction of the family of Felix Betrán León, and clumsy handling by the Mexico government had landed them in the midst of one of the worst ever intelligence fiascos and an embarrassing spectacle of political opportunism.

For those of us who followed the operation from Washington, the speed with which the government of Mexico, the DEA and media had acted the night before, displaying their long-coveted prey like a hunting trophy, was in stark contrast to the subsequent spectacle of stupidity, confusion and disbelief that resulted in a day of denials on the part of Felix Beltrán León and his lawyers. Read more. 

The Kingpins: The fight for Guadalajara

The New Yorker: At the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Enrique Peña Nieto, who is forty-five, boyishly handsome, and generally expected to be the next President of Mexico, was asked to name three books that had influenced him. He mentioned the Bible, or, at least, “some parts” (unspecified), and “The Eagle’s Throne,” a Carlos Fuentes novel (though he named the historian Enrique Krauze as the author). And, for a few excruciating minutes, that was all he could come up with. The crowd laughed wickedly. Peña Nieto’s wife, a former soap-opera star, squirmed in the front row. His teen-age daughter didn’t help matters when, in a tweet, she scorned “all of the idiots who form part of the proletariat and only criticize those they envy.

That debacle was in December. It did nothing to slow Peña Nieto’s well-financed march toward the election, which will take place on July 1st, but it did provide a welcome distraction for Guadalajarans, who are justly proud of their annual book fair. It is the second largest in Latin America, drawing more than half a million visitors, nearly two thousand publishers, and hundreds of authors, including, over the years, Nadine Gordimer, William Styron, and Toni Morrison. Guadalajarans sometimes offer it up as Exhibit A for the case that the city is a civilized place where life goes on unmarked by the violence that disfigures large parts of Mexico. Read more.

Lawyer of alleged son of "Chapo" accuses the government of profiting from the case

El Proceso: Americas Program Original Translation by Sarah Brady
See Spanish Original.
MEXICO CITY, (approved). - Veronica Guerrero, attorney for Félix Beltrán León, whom the Navy Department (SEMAR) presented as a son of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, accused the federal government of using the case to gain political favor for the PAN in the upcoming presidential election.

Interviewed by Carmen Aristegui on MVS News, Guerrero claimed that the weapons allegedly seized by SEMAR were "planted" on her client, and additionally, that his wife was illegally detained, both having been pressured to accept the charges of the federal government.

Beltran Leon and Kevin Daniel Beltran Rios, 23 and 19 years old respectively, were arrested last Thursday in Zapopan, Jalisco, and have been placed under surveillence for 40 days.

Mexico marines detain a son of most-wanted Mexican drug lord

AP: MEXICO CITY — Mexican marines on Thursday detained a young man they believe is one of the sons of Mexico’s most-wanted drug kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

The presumed son, identified by the Navy as Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, was allegedly taking on an increasing leadership role in Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel and purportedly served as the administrator of his father’s fortune, estimated by Forbes magazine at about $1 billion. Read more.