By Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped from a maximum-security prison yet again and is likely to resume smuggling drugs into the United States.
But there is a way to stop him and it isn’t putting him behind bars.
After his escape from Altiplano Prison in the State of Mexico on July 11, America was placed on alert because the “bloodthirsty” Chapo is on the loose once more. The American media immediately made it seem like the drug lord and his hit men were out to gun down anyone in their path.
What the media failed to realize is that Americans, and everyone really, are worth more to El Chapo if they are alive.
El Chapo is a self-made billionaire. Forbes Magazine ranked him as one of the richest people in the world in 2012 with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. It’s safe to say that he is a savvy businessman, and savvy businessmen don’t want their consumers dead.
Americans are El Chapo’s target demographic. According to Forbes, Guzman is responsible for an estimated 25 percent of all illegal drugs that enter the United States including cocaine, marijuana and heroin.
However, El Chapo isn’t personally walking around injecting needles into arms. Instead he leaves that up to his customers. This is why there is a way to stop him and it’s in the civilian’s hands, not the inept “man-hunt” after Guzman.
Deputy DEA Administrator Jack Riley told CNN’s Brian Todd that the U.S. and Mexico are working more closely than ever to put the dangerous Guzman back behind bars.
But how did that work out the last couple of times when he was detained?
El Chapo has grown too powerful for prison, which is why his extradition to the United States never came. It is also why his prison escapes seemed so effortless. His first escape was achieved by hiding in a laundry basket, like something out of a cartoon.
On July 11, a surveillance video shows how the kingpin calmly made his way out of jail through a hole in the shower that led to a mile-long tunnel equipped with lighting, ventilation and a motorcycle.
Along with being named on Forbes’ richest people list, El Chapo ranks even higher on its most powerful people list; No. 67 in 2013 before his second capture in early 2014.
The reality is that El Chapo is a beloved figure, and that makes him even more evasive because people simply look the other way when they encounter him.
The proof that El Chapo has become larger than life is in the countless ballads composed in honor of Guzman and his lieutenants. These ballads, known colloquially as narcocorridos, are songs that glorify drug cartels, and the artists who compose and sing these ballads generally make a killing in sales.
The idolizing of El Chapo doesn’t stop at U.S.-Mexico border; it bleeds into the strongest Mexican-American communities in the U.S.
Take a trip to Santee Alley in Downtown Los Angeles, or a local Denim Exchange, and you’ll find that shirts featuring the drug cartel leader’s face are in high demand.
The only way to stop El Chapo is if we stop buying what he is sells, and that is not limited to drugs. El Chapo sells an image of himself as a man of the people, a Robin Hood type figure.
But, unlike Robin Hood, he always projects this image with an undertone of violence. El Chapo wants you alive, as long you don’t pose a threat to his freedom and his business.
