In the book, you propose that the relationship between authorities and ”Chapitos” is so great that they even know where they sleep… but still they do not act to capture them…
The authorities know perfectly well where you and I are at this moment because we have a cell phone; They have a supposed cyber-police so prepared in Mexico City that it allows the operations of someone’s diary to be documented. They have absolute detail of what we do, where we move, what we eat, what we do, what we have spent our money on. In that same vein, the authorities know where the ”Chapitos” are. Evidently, they know where they live, how they operate, what their sources of financing are, what the ghost companies are, who are their allies in the government, who are the businessmen who provide them with aircraft so that they can travel from Mexico to other states or other countries to market, to launder money. So for me, writing the book Los Chapitos was revealing the modus operandi of these characters and to know and know which are the pieces that move the threads that they weave, I insist, a power that allows them to be carrying out operations in the public despite the fact that they navigate in secrecy.
Is it also related to maintaining the pax narca that you say is maintained in Sinaloa?
I think it is a combination of factors. The fact that the ”Chapitos” group operates freely in the country is due to… not only due to a governmental omission, but rather a shared complicity. I believe that the group, led by Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar… has this leadership because the authorities have allowed them to, because they can co-opt the municipal police, they can co-opt the mayor, the governor and even the closest circle of the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They can do this type of weaving and maneuvering because money allows it.
I believe that everything has to do with corruption and impunity; It all has to do with the prevailing corruption that exists in the country, but also with impunity. You could not navigate in certain levels. Or certain activities could not be done without the government knowing. That is to say, the ”Chapitos” have this capacity to transform themselves into an organization not only local, but state, national and international. They can afford that luxury, they can afford to expand their business, as big as they want. So, it seems to me that the ”Chapitos” is only the symptom of a group that has been able to co-opt all levels, both economic, political and social, and that the country itself has allowed it to do so.
Much has been written about young people who grow up in territories dominated by drug traffickers and that circumstances force them to get involved in organizations. In this case, you show the ”Chapitos” as people who had the opportunity to go another way and did not want to.
As I say in the book, inheritance is criminal. At some point, some of them did want to start legal businesses, but the origin of the money they have is illicit. That is, they do not have bank accounts that guarantee that they have or had at some point legal or consolidated jobs in a public or private company. At some point they did want to be on the path of righteousness. The case, for example, of Ovidio Guzmán López. That at some point he preferred to start his life as a farmer, planting crops, having cattle, he liked horses, but in the end his father won the business.
That is to say, they don’t know how to do anything else because it is like a company, it is a transnational company, it is like a McDonald’s. It works like a McDonald’s. It has a headquarters, a matrix that is Sinaloa and it has different franchises around the Republic, even in the world. It operates under the same scheme as a traditional company. That is, the criminal enterprise of the Sinaloa Cartel was inherited by his father. He told them how to manage the business, the contacts for drug trafficking, the contacts in the government… They know that they had to do the activity that their father inherited from them, because it is what also left them immediate money. They didn’t know how to do anything else. I think that the ”Chapitos” have a specific quality, which is that they are juniors in the drug trade, they are juniors in the mafia, because they only operated a business that was already consolidated.
They didn’t have to pave the road. His father did it, his father created them, his father encouraged them. Their father, in the end, gave them the modus operandi and they are working on it now with new technology, with new contacts, with new alliances and even with new drugs, such as fentanyl, a drug 50 times more powerful than morphine and that causes at least more than 100 thousand deaths in the United States. United annually.
They have been able to do it because it was already in their blood, they could not dedicate themselves to another activity because they did not like it or simply because they did not want to, because of money, because of ambition, because of power, because of women. For money, I insist, for animals, for luxury cars, for trips to Dubai, for parties in Las Vegas, for attending a Saúl Canelo Álvarez fight at the MGM. So, those kinds of things are what they are called to. There is nothing else, they could not dedicate themselves to anything else because the lifestyle they already have is that of a millionaire or multimillionaire or billionaire person.
(Photo: Special)
And despite all these collusions, did the moment come when the camel’s back broke with Ovid?
There was pressure from the United States, but also because he is a character, as I narrate in the book, who is very careless and very distrustful. A character who sailed with an untouchable flag, having the El Chapo seal and brand on his forehead and even with his cells, already independent of the group of hitmen known as Gente del Ratón. That character, Ovidio Guzmán López, wanted to go unnoticed, even in Mexican society, especially in the capital of the country, where he lived months after the first Culiacanazo, he lived in Mexico City and no one said anything to him, he attended parties In La Condesa, he went to Santa Fe to buy clothes, he walked in the Parque Delta shopping center and ate in the restaurants there.
He was a character who was very careless in his security, even when criminal groups detected him in the capital, that was when the Secretariat of Public Security intervened, because they were about to kill him on different occasions, but they contained those damages so as not to cause a wave. of violence in the center of the country, the Financial Center of the Mexican Republic. Then we find ourselves facing a character who did not know how to mediate or distinguish between the power he had in the criminal sphere and the role he represents in society. Imagine that the fact that the boss himself had that recognition became normalized or that it was legal for the figure of the drug trafficker to be accepted in the country. You could go to Parque Delta, in a restaurant and say to Ovidio: ‘Hey, it’s great to see you. It’s good that the operations of the Sinaloa Cartel are going well… Can I take a photo with you and you can sign this my shirt?’ Imagine him trying to pass himself off as an ordinary citizen… when he really was one of the most wanted criminals in Mexico and the United States.
I think that he is rather a character who did not know how to measure the reach and power he had. He was very careless, he was even very vain and very egocentric for wanting to stop in the capital and live here for a long time without anyone telling him anything. And in the end that bothered the Mexican government, which came under pressure from the United States government when it detected that a boss in Sinaloa was living like a king in the country’s capital.
They capture him, extradite him and the feeling remains that the trial against the Guzmán Loera will be endless. First the father, now Ovid, then whoever falls.
That would be ideal, that at some point Ovidio could be prosecuted, but I have another reading: rather I think it would be a strategic plan of the Guzmáns if they know how to manage it well, I would go more for the version that Ovidio Guzmán become a kind of protected witness, as Vicente Zambada did at the time, and help in trials at different times. For example, the next one comes to mind, the next one of the deliberation that they do in the District Court of this New York with the case of Genaro García Luna, probably Ovidio Guzmán could be a key piece to testify against him, because he was aware of some operations that the former security secretary carried out with his father and himself, with his organization, with the ”Chapitos”.
I would go more for that trend, that he becomes a key piece for future trials and that with these statements he does not testify against his brothers, but rather that he puts other rival organizations and has greater legal benefits, not the fact If he could perhaps take his wife to the United States or his daughters, he would be more in line with safeguarding the integrity of his family by being another snitch for the Sinaloa Cartel.
You mention that every president seems to have his capo. Are you referring to the favorite boss or the one who grows in that six-year term?
Let’s put it a little clearer. During the six-year term of Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox, the favorite boss was Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. They kept him at bay, they did absolutely nothing to him, they never extradited him or captured him. He continued to operate from prison. He was somehow one of the spoiled ones. There was no kind of benefit. At some point it was also said that Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, El Mencho, was one of the characters who were not touched at all or who did not pursue him as fervently as if they did the Sinaloa Cartel. If there is no combat, there are no seizures, there are no captures, drug traffickers continue to reign and control a large part of the economic activity of the State, social sectors that were not regulated before. That is to say, if it even profits from the mines, from oil, from gasoline, from rents, for example, as mentioned in the Sinaloa Cartel book, which charges rents to the slot machines, obviously there is control of each one. of the activities. We don’t go from the smallest to the largest. I think that it depends on what operation each of the posters does to know who is the favorite, from which city, from each state, from each country.
In a country where journalists face violence, you write about sensitive topics. What does it mean to write about those kinds of topics in a country like this?
In Mexico, this job, this profession, is high risk; It is more difficult to be a journalist than in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Mexico is in constant armed conflict, war narcoterrorism, whatever you want to call it… all the time with criminal organizations, with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, with the Zetas, with the Gulf Cartel, with the Knights Templar, the Michoacana family , the Beltrán Leyva, the Guzmán, the Zambada. Mexico is mired in a debacle and is going through a debacle of violence. And I believe that journalists have the obligation and citizen duty to report on these issues.
Evidently, during this six-year term there have been no conditions to exercise the free exercise of journalism without being judged, without being branded as snitches, as chayoteros, as fifis, as people who have been sold. That is to say, there has not been a guarantee of the right that is in the Constitution by the authorities. So it is up to us to anchor ourselves to journalism, in my case independent journalism, and do this type of research to reveal and show citizens that today more than ever it is important to talk about how Los Chapitos, who clearly continue to empower themselves.
