What El Chapo’s Conviction Means for US-Mexico Border Issues

FEATURING IOAN GRILLO – The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, also known as El Chapo, has been found guilty on all the charges he faced in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York. Guzmán had been extradited to the US about two years ago and his trial lasted several months. American prosecutors, according to the Washington Post, said that he, “pumped drugs into the United States, bribed Mexican officials, laundered money and repeatedly commanded his ‘sicarios’ — or ‘assassins’ — to commit brutal acts of violence.”

Richard P. Donoghue, a US Attorney for New York said in a statement, “Today, Guzmán Loera has been held accountable for the tons of illegal narcotics he trafficked for more than two decades, the murders he ordered and committed, and the billions of dollars he reaped while causing incalculable pain and suffering to those devastated by his drugs.” But many contend that El Chapo’s high-profile arrest, trial, and conviction will do little to stop drug cartels.

Read Ioan’s op-ed in the New York Times entitled, ‘El Chapo’s Conviction Isn’t Enough,’ HERE.

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.