{"id":15012,"date":"2019-01-16T02:22:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T02:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15012"},"modified":"2019-01-18T02:53:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T02:53:33","slug":"el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border\/","title":{"rendered":"El Chapo trial shows why a wall won’t stop drugs from crossing the US-Mexico border"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luis G\u00f3mez Romero<\/a>, University of Wollongong<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The trial of Mexican drug kingpin Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n Loera has exposed just how powerful Mexico\u2019s cartels really are<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The trial has now run for two months. On Jan. 15, a Colombian drug trafficker who worked for Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s Sinaloa Cartel from 2007 to 2013 testified that Guzm\u00e1n paid former Mexican president Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto a $US100 million bribe<\/a> while he was in power, a charge Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019 office denies.<\/p>\n

It was just the latest allegation of the cartels paying off high-ranking politicians in Mexico, presumably to exert influence over the government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Guzm\u00e1n is charged with drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping and money laundering<\/a> \u2013 crimes he allegedly committed over the past quarter-century as head of the Sinaloa cartel, the Western Hemisphere\u2019s most powerful organized crime syndicate.<\/p>\n

With its witness accounts of extreme violence, political corruption, international intrigue and entrepreneurial innovation, Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s trial is a telenovela-style explainer on why a wall is unlikely to stop the lucrative U.S.-Mexico drug trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Sinaloa cartel<\/h2>\n

Founded in Mexico\u2019s Sinaloa state in the 1990s, the Sinaloa cartel now distributes drugs<\/a> to some 50 countries, including Argentina, the Philippines and Russia.<\/p>\n

Determining the scale of Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s global empire is difficult, since gangsters usually don\u2019t keep books and charts of accounts. But his 2016 indictment in the U.S. sought forfeiture of more than US$14 billion<\/a> in proceeds and illicit profits from decades of narcotics sales in the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n

The Sinaloa cartel controls perhaps half of Mexico\u2019s drug market, with annual earnings of around $3 billion<\/a>. Mexican estimates suggest that each month it moves<\/a> two tons of cocaine and 10,000 tons of marijuana \u2013 plus heroin, methamphetamine and other substances.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Mexican druglord Joaquin Guzm\u00e1n after his capture by Mexican marines in January 2016.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Eduardo Verdugo, File<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The drug business<\/h2>\n

Illegal drugs are a highly lucrative business.<\/p>\n

In 2016, the year El Chapo was captured in Mexico<\/a>, the wholesale price<\/a> for a gram of cocaine was approximately $2.30 in Colombia and $12.50 in Mexico. The same gram had a wholesale cost of $28 by the time it got to the United States. In Australia, that same gram of cocaine fetched $176.50 wholesale.<\/p>\n

Drug prices rise significantly during transit as intermediaries demand compensation for the risk<\/a> they assume in getting the product to consumers.<\/p>\n

Retail prices<\/a> per gram of cocaine are even higher, reflecting the addition of even more middlemen: $82 in the U.S. in 2016 and $400 in Australia.<\/p>\n

This liability markup is one reason why some prominent policy experts and even conservative economists<\/a> call for legalizing and regulating illicit narcotics<\/a>. Keeping drugs illegal is what makes them so profitable for the people who traffick them.<\/p>\n

Bribes, violence and threats<\/h2>\n

Illegality is also what makes the drug business so violent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Running an illicit operation<\/a>, cartel leaders must both enforce their own business agreements and protect themselves from authorities and competitors.<\/p>\n

They do so using a combination of violence, threats and bribes.<\/p>\n

At least eight armed groups<\/a> worked under Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s command in Mexico, according to Mexican government reports, attacking<\/a> competitors and killing defectors.<\/p>\n

Guzm\u00e1n also bribed<\/a> as many politicians, police officers<\/a> and prison guards to stay in business.<\/p>\n

His elaborate disappearances from Mexican high-security prisons are the stuff of legend. In 2015, Guzm\u00e1n escaped jail<\/a> by riding a motorcycle through a lit, ventilated mile-long tunnel constructed underneath his cell.<\/p>\n

American demand<\/h2>\n

The Sinaloa cartel didn\u2019t become the world\u2019s biggest supplier of illicit drugs by coincidence. It has flourished because the United States is the world\u2019s biggest consumer<\/a> of illicit drugs.<\/p>\n

Mexican cartels serve Americans\u2019 \u201cinsatiable demand for illegal drugs,\u201d as Hillary Clinton once said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite President Donald Trump\u2019s focus on Mexican drug traffickers, his former chief of staff, John Kelly, has admitted<\/a> that the U.S. is part of the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not even trying,\u201d he told Congress in 2017, calling for more drug-demand reduction programs.<\/p>\n

Kelly added that Latin American countries chide American authorities for \u201clecturing [them] about not doing enough to stop the drug flow\u201d while the U.S. does nothing to \u201cstop the demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s wall<\/h2>\n

Trump\u2019s continued insistence on securing the southern border with a wall<\/a> seems to disregard the economic forces driving the drug trade and diminish Mexican cartels\u2019 innovative distribution strategies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A high-tech border fence constructed in Arizona long before Trump\u2019s inauguration has proven virtually useless in stopping drugs from crossing into the U.S.: Mexican smugglers just use a catapult<\/a> to fling hundred-pound bales of marijuana<\/a> over to the American side.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got the best fence money can buy,\u201d former DEA chief Michael Brown said<\/a> to The New York Times in 2012, \u201cand they counter us with a 2,500-year-old technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the other ancient technology perfected by Guzm\u00e1n: the tunnel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Officials have discovered about 180 cleverly disguised illicit passages under the U.S.-Mexico border. Many, like the one Guzm\u00e1n used to escape prison, are equipped with electricity, ventilation and elevators.<\/p>\n

Trump has admitted that anyone could use \u201ca rope<\/a>\u201d to climb over his wall, but believes that more border guards and drone technology would prevent infiltration.<\/p>\n

Corruption in the US<\/h2>\n

Corruption is not an exclusively Mexican trait.<\/p>\n

Over the past decade some 200 employees and contractors from the Department of Homeland Security have accepted nearly $15 million in bribes to look the other way as drugs were smuggled across the border into the United States, The New York Times<\/a> has reported.<\/p>\n

Some U.S. officials have also given sensitive law enforcement information to cartels members, according to the Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost no evidence about corrupt American officials has been allowed at [El Chapo\u2019s] trial,\u201d New York Times reporter Alan Feuer said recently on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article is an updated version of a story<\/a> originally published on Feb. 19, 2017.<\/em>\"The<\/p>\n

Luis G\u00f3mez Romero<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luis G\u00f3mez Romero, University of Wollongong The trial of Mexican drug kingpin Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n Loera has exposed just how powerful Mexico\u2019s cartels really are. The trial has now run for two months. On Jan. 15, a Colombian drug trafficker who worked for Guzm\u00e1n\u2019s Sinaloa Cartel from 2007 to 2013 testified that Guzm\u00e1n paid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[5718,5757,5380,5753,522,5756,1711,5754,1336,5755,1927,5716],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15012"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15026,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15012\/revisions\/15026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}