January 16, 2025
El Chapo's Conviction Changed Everything and Nothing About the War on Drugs
One year after the historic guilty verdict: “It’s hard to say the Sinaloa cartel is weaker— it’s hard to put metrics to what that really means.”
One year after the historic guilty verdict: “It’s hard to say the Sinaloa cartel is weaker— it’s hard to put metrics to what that really means.”

Bureau of Prisons Inmate No. 89914-053 spends his days alone inside a 75-square-foot cell in Florence, Colorado. His only furniture is a concrete slab with a flimsy mattress, and a stainless steel toilet and sink. His narrow slit of a window affords no view of the snow-capped Rocky Mountain peaks that stretch for miles in every direction.

This is the end of the road for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera: ADX Florence, a federal prison better known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” Here he is surrounded by steel doors, concrete walls, maze-like corridors, hundreds of surveillance cameras, and layers of electrified fencing topped with razor wire. Nobody is going to push him out the front door in a laundry cart. There are ground sensors in place to detect tunneling. This time, there’s no escaping.

February 12 marks one year since a dozen Brooklyn jurors handed down a unanimous guilty verdict against the world’s most infamous drug kingpin, condemning him to a life sentence with no chance for parole. Chapo is now effectively cut off from the world, but the chain reaction of events triggered by his capture and conviction is still unfolding far beyond the prison walls. In Mexico, his Sinaloa cartel remains a dominant force. And in the U.S., his former drug-trade associates are cycling in and out of federal custody.

Just last month Genaro García Luna, once Mexico’s top law enforcement official, pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. His indictment was the other shoe dropping on one of the many bombshell allegations that emerged from Chapo’s epic three-month trial, when one witness testified to hand-delivering suitcases full of cash to García Luna in exchange for protection and information. That accusation was soon eclipsed by testimony that former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto solicited a $250 million bribe from Chapo and his partner Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

[Interesting Read]

See Also:

(1) El Chapo’s daughter marries nephew of another crime kingpin in Mexican cathedral

(2) An associate of the drug cartel once run by El Chapo has been charged with participating in an international drug conspiracy

(3) El Chapo & Narcos Mexico 2: When Does He Take Over?

(4) El Chapo 701 craft lager coming soon thanks to drug lord’s daughter

(5) ‘Little by little,’ criminal gangs being beaten down in Guanajuato: security chief

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BTDT
BTDT
February 20, 2020 9:07 am

I intended to put in my 2 cents worth on this issue yesterday but got sidetracked by the ongoing insanity of what Trudeau is allowing here in Canada. These statistics refer. Perspective. During the entire 19 yrs of the Vietnam War 57,939 Americans lost their lives.

In the United States, 70,200 people died from drug overdoses in 2017, which was an increase of about 10 percent over 2016. Since 2000, the U.S. drug overdose death rate has gone from 6.2 per 100,000 people in 2000 to 21.0 per 100,000 in 2018.

Now, anybody remember this from only last December?

Trump said last week he would make the designation to disrupt the cartels’ finances through sanctions such as asset freezes and travel bans. But Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador objected, saying he wanted U.S. cooperation on fighting drug gangs, not intervention.

“All necessary work has been completed to declare Mexican Cartels terrorist organizations,” Trump said on Twitter.

“However, at the request of a man who I like and respect, and has worked so well with us, President Andres Manuel @lopezobrador we will temporarily hold off this designation and step up our joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and ever-growing organizations!” he said.

In navy speak that’s called ‘a shot across the bows”. My prediction. DJT, unlike any other past POTUS or any other candidate will not tolerate this carnage. Cowards that they all are. After DJT wins his second term he will deal with the cartels. The Mexican President has been forewarned and you can be assured he understands that he will either be with Trump or against him. A failed state on America’s southern border cannot be permitted to continue to inflict so much damage in multiple ways on the nation. The one they are witnessing emerge on their northern border is quite enough. The reason Trump cannot act against the cartels now has to be delayed until after the election because of how the left and their media lap dogs would twist it into some grotesque violation of Mexico’s sovereignty. Meanwhile they had no problem with their hero Obama droning civilians in Pakistan or other ‘sovereign’ ME countries, even if they were America citizens. So come 2021 folks, watch for a Mexico/America alliance. Prepare to sit back and watch hellfire and brimstone (in more than one way) be unleashed on the heads of these cartels.