Author: Staff

The rumor started Thursday afternoon when the newspaper Prensa Libre reported that several narcos were killed during shootout in Guatemala’s remote Petén region. Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez said one of the corpses was “physically very similar” to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, top boss of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. Other outlets, including the unfiltered drug war diary Blog del Narco, spread the word on Twitter, piquing the interest of the international press, and sending Mexican and Guatemalan officials scrambling to confirm the powerful drug lord’s purported demise.The rumor was soon thoroughly debunked. There was no shootout, let alone one that claimed the life of the modern day Pablo Escobar. (Lopez, the Interior Minister, later apologized for the “misunderstanding” and blamed contradictory reports for the confusion.) Not only is El Chapo still very much alive, his legend has grown larger than ever. Already a billionaire according to Forbes, the Sinaloa capo has supplanted Osama bin Laden as the State Department’s top international target, and the Chicago Crime Commission recently named him Public Enemy No. 1, a title originally reserved for Al Capone.via Why Killing Kingpins Won’t Stop Mexico’s Drug Cartels – Keegan Hamilton – The...

An often overlooked problem with the so-called “war on drugs” mindset has been the effect on local populations: as military officials or militarized law enforcement officers fight narcotraffickers, they often play by rules of engagement that end up hurting the very citizens they are mandated to protect.Human Rights Watch has just released a report on disappearances in Mexico over the last six years. The document, “Mexico’s Disappeared: The Enduring Cost of a Crisis Ignored,” painstakingly investigates some 250 cases. The local police are linked to the most disappearances (roughly 40 percent of those that Human Rights Watch investigated), but the report provides unsettling evidence that all branches of Mexico’s armed forces have been involved in disappearing people at some point. This includes Mexico’s navy—generally considered to be one of the least corrupt military branches—for 20 missing people in June / July 2011.The report argues that it is not just the armed forces and police that contribute to the disappearances, but also the country’s judicial system. It reveals how prosecutors systematically delay or altogether avoid investigations, demanding at least seventy-two hours to pass before beginning the process and discouraging family members from filing claims when security forces are involved. For example, when Nitza Paola Alvarado Espinoza tried to report the Mexican army’s arbitrary detention (and eventual disappearance) of her cousin, Irene Rocío Alvarado Reyes, she was sent from one state...