News Mexico Sinaloa: Cartel kingpin El Chapo is jailed for life, but the US-Mexico drug trade is booming
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Luis Gómez Romero, University of Wollongong (THE CONVERSATION) The infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera – aka “El Chapo” – has been sentenced to life plus an additional 30 years for drug trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and weapons charges, among other crimes committed over the past quarter-century as head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful organized crime syndicate. Judge Brian Cogan also ordered Guzmán – who was convicted in U.S. federal court in February after a dramatic three-month trial – to forfeit US$12.6 billion in illicit narcotics proceeds. U.S. officials celebrated El Chapo’s demise as a triumph in the war on drugs. President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive stance on Mexican drug cartels, vowing at his January 2017 inauguration to stop “the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives.” “This sentencing shows the world that no matter how protected or powerful you are, DEA will ensure that you face justice,” said the acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Uttam Dhillon, at Guzmán’s sentencing. Having studied the politics and economics of the U.S.-Mexico drug trade, I see a different lesson in Guzmán’s life story. The U.S. may have locked up Mexico’s worst “bad hombre,” but the business he ran is far too big to fail. ‘Insatiable demand’ Mexicans have greeted Guzmán’s demise with more skepticism. The Mexican newspaper La Jornada noted that the flow of illicit drugs into the United States has not diminished since El Chapo’s arrest. Mexican estimates suggest that each month the Sinaloa cartel...
News Mexico Sinaloa: Bitter Sinaloa residents lament likely life sentence for 'El Chapo'
Culiacán (Mexico) (AFP) - As Sinaloa's most notorious son Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman faces sentencing in the United States, residents of the Mexican state sounded a bitter chorus at the prospect of the capo -- feared and revered here in equal measure -- spending his life behind bars. "
News Mexico Sinaloa: Mexico-Australia Meth Connection Reveals Fresh Crime Dynamics
But Mexico crime groups like the Sinaloa Cartel need intermediaries to move drugs to Australia, and experts say these middlemen are the new emerging players in the trade. “The interesting question is ...
News Mexico Sinaloa: Sinaloa cartel still active in Chicago, despite patriarch El Chapo's arrest
The temperature was about to plummet to single digits in early February of this year when a Chevy Traverse and a Dodge Charger pulled out of the parking lot of the Cicero Hotel near Midway Airport at 5:12 a.m.
News Mexico Sinaloa: Three large meth labs dismantled in Mexico
Three synthetic drug labs producing an estimated $160 million worth of methamphetamine were dismantled in Mexico on Tuesday, in what officials called one of the country's biggest blows to drug trafficking this year. Meth, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl are trafficked over the northern border and into
News Mexico Sinaloa: Mexico dismantles three synthetic drug labs in Sinaloa
A combined army and police force on patrol in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa has dismantled three labs producing the synthetic drug methamphetamine. Officials estimated the labs could produce ...
News Mexico Sinaloa: Mexico Cartel Presence in Colombia May Have Been Exaggerated
On April 12, authorities in Bogotá detained alias “Rafa,” an alleged emissary of Ismael Zambada García, alias “El Mayo,” the leader of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel. Rafa allegedly connected the ...
News Mexico Sinaloa: Mexico's press question president's commitment to press advertising reform
who is editor-in-chief of the Sinaloa newspaper El Noroeste and a member of Medios Libres, said. "What we're currently seeing, is the government doesn't have a very clear stance on the issue, but the ...
News Mexico Sinaloa: On the eve of World Press Freedom Day, yet another journalist is killed in Mexico
In March, Mexican media reported that journalist Omar Ivan Camacho was found dead in Sinaloa state. Just a few days earlier, radio journalist Santiago Barroso was shot dead in his home in northern ...
