Briefings & Intelligence

16-07-2015: Latin American Weekly Report

  • LatinNews

Daring prison escape of Mexico’s ‘El Chapo’ leaves Peña Nieto reeling

The capture of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug-trafficking organisation (DTO), in February 2014 was lauded as the most significant blow against drug-trafficking for over a decade, underpinning the credibility of President Enrique Peña Nieto. As such, Guzmán’s escape from maximum security prison at the weekend is a significant setback in the fight against drug-trafficking, and a sharp blow to Peña Nieto’s credibility and that of Mexico’s institutions.

President Peña Nieto has some notable scalps as part of the ‘decapitation strategy’ targeting Mexico’s drug kingpins. These include the arrest of Miguel Ángel ‘Z40’ Treviño Morales, the leader of the Los Zetas DTO in July 2013, and Servando ‘La Tuta’ Gómez Martínez, the leader of Los Caballeros Templarios (LCT), last February. Indeed, Peña Nieto often boasts that 91 of the 122 most wanted criminals on a government list have been arrested or “taken out”. The high point was always the arrest of Guzmán – but when the biggest fish slips the hook, the rest of the catch looks like minnows.

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