El Chapo, the Drug War, and the Refugee Caravan

FEATURING IOAN GRILLO – A high-profile trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the man better known as El Chapo, has begun in Brooklyn, New York. The notorious Mexican drug lord whose Sinaloa cartel has been responsible for immeasurable brutality, violence, and deaths, had been extradited for the trial from Mexico.

Unfolding as part of the trial is also the immense corruption among Mexican government officials who routinely accepted massive bribes from the cartels. It is fitting that El Chapo’s trial begins at the same time that a refugee caravan from Central America, traveling through Mexico, is arriving at the US border. Many among the refugees are fleeing the drug war in their home countries.

For more information visit www.ioangrillo.com.

Ioan Grillo, award winning journalist and writer based in Mexico City.. His books include El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency and  Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America. He just published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, El Chapo Puts the Drug War on Trial.