World’s Most Wanted Man. The name thrown up most frequently, on account of how mystically elusive he appears to be, was one Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, the head of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and the biggest drug lord in Narcoville. Since he broke out (or “walked out” is the common consensus) of a maximum security prison in 2001, Guzman’s drug-trafficking empire has gone supernova, his estimated $1 billion personal fortune landing him a spot on the Forbes List as the 11th richest man in Mexico.

The Sinaloa Cartel controls more territory than any other drug-trafficking organization (DTO) in Mexico, distributing Colombian cocaine as well as domestically-produced marijuana, opium, and methamphetamine. The organization has successfully smashed its rivals’ operations in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and other key smuggling hubs to the point where formerly powerful cartels are either hanging on for dear life or mere tributaries. Then there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room – the fact that independent analysts and countless officials cite collusion between the Sinaloa Cartel and the federal government, which apparently prefers Guzman’s mob over the others. “El Chapo” – the nickname means “Shorty” – is routinely described as “el capo del panismo”, “capo” meaning drug boss and “panismo” referring to the current ruling party, the PAN, or National Action Party.

Mexico has seen the worst kind of action since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug-traffickers in 2006. Over 45,000 troops and federal officers have been deployed across the country in a US-funded crackdown, leading the DTOs to fight each other even harder over both cross-border traffic and a rapidly growing domestic market. In the resulting melee, former big names like the Tijuana and Juarez Cartels have taken serious losses; budding rivals like La Familia Michoacana and the Beltran Leyva Organization have come and gone, but the Sinaloa Cartel has only grown stronger. Its last major rival, the infamously violent Los Zetas, has made some gains but is taking a pounding from the Mexican military, which has made a slew of arrests and seizures against it. 

Born into poverty, for “El Chapo” Guzman the drug trade was an easy route to otherwise unattainable wealth (opium and marijuana have been big business in fertile Sinaloa since the early 20th century) and as a young man he became an apprentice of Pedro Aviles Perez, one of the first generation of big-time Mexican traffickers. Ambitious and savvy, Guzman took over what became the Sinaloa Cartel when the legendary Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (“the Godfather”) was busted in 1989. Four years later, Guzman was arrested and sentenced to twenty years for drug-trafficking and bribery, but on the eve of being extradited to the US in 2001, he miraculously escaped from Puente Grande maximum security prison in Jalisco. The most famous breakout in Mexican history purportedly occurred “A-Team”-style in a laundry cart, the wheels greased by $2.5 million worth of bribes for prison officials. 

Guzman’s escape took place early in the presidency of Vicente Fox, the first PAN administration after the 70-year PRI regime was thrown out in 2000. Every Mexican administration since the 1970s is said to have had its preferred drug lord. Whereas the PRI supposedly favored the Gulf Cartel in the ‘90s, the arrival of the PAN saw a shift of allegiance to the cartel with the closest ties to the party. Soon after leaving Puente Grande, Guzman called a meeting of top capos to plot the future of the Mexican drug trade, going after the then-dominant Gulf organization (now an ally) and later breaking a long-held truce with the Juarez Cartel, leading to a violent turf war in the border city of the same name. The goal was expansion and dominance, and Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel has been a juggernaut ever since.

“El Chapo” has taken on near-mythical status; rumors fly about his latest whereabouts and activity, or how hundreds of guests – including local politicians and police – raised their glasses when he married for the third time in 2007. For ordinary Mexicans, he is the personification of the intense “narco-violence” plaguing the country, which has gotten much, much worse since Calderon turned up the heat. The president’s apologists (and there are very few) claim that the PAN backs Guzman under the notion that it’s better to live with one all-powerful cartel and then negotiate peace. But Calderon leaves office next year, almost certainly handing over the reins to the PRI, and the cartel war goes on unabated between the Sinaloa Federation (Guzman and his allies) and a loose coalition of Los Zetas, the Juarez Cartel, and other DTOs.

Guzman commands significant respect (and fear) among Mexico’s downtrodden as a self-made man who stuck several fingers up to the authorities, particularly in his native Sinaloa where country songs portray him as a Robin Hood-type figure, albeit with AK-47 replacing crossbow. He has myriad political and business connections and the financial clout to buy new ones. His current rumored hideout is in the northern state of Durango.

There’s a theory brewing in Mexico, however, which says that Calderon is now so unpopular after five years of socially-devastating policy that he has not only cost his party next year’s election, but risks going down as one of the country’s worst ever presidents (which the average Mexican will tell you is no easy feat). After Bin Laden’s death hit the headlines, many domestic observers suggested that Calderon’s only option to salvage his legacy and leave office on a high is to pull an Obama “black-ninja-gangster” moment (as Bill Maher would say) and take Guzman down. The Colombian government pulled off a similar coup with Pablo Escobar in 1993, which had absolutely no effect on the cocaine trade but at least gave the impression that Colombia could kick some tail.

But just as one can question whether Bin Laden’s death really meant anything beyond retribution for 9/11, it’s uncertain what taking down “El Chapo” would do for Mexico’s Drug War. The major DTOs regularly go through internal upheavals where factions split off and go to war with one another, or one capo makes a power play to take control of the organization, leading to yet more bloodshed. The Sinaloa Cartel has long been considered the most stable of the Mexican DTOs, largely on account of Guzman’s iron hand. For that reason, “El Chapo” may be too valuable to simply wind up as trophy kill.

At some stage, the Mexican government will have to declare an endgame in the Drug War, or civil protests like the 100,000-strong March for Peace in Mexico City in May, and subsequent “Peace Caravan” that culminated in Juarez/El Paso, will become increasingly politicized. While obviously blaming the drug cartels as much as the politicians, many Mexicans resent the fact that their country has become a war zone due to the mores of US anti-drug and pro-militarization policy. As for Calderon – facing savage criticism at home – it’s likely that he didn’t expect the cartel war to get this bloody or drag on for so long. Yet while his own public decries his policies, Calderon continues to receive the green light from the Obama administration for further zero-tolerance. One might imagine the rhetoric from Washington if Hugo Chavez had deployed 45,000 troops to do the job of the police in Venezuela – allusions to military dictatorship, Soviet-style authoritarianism, not to mention “human rights abuses” would be rampant, and probably followed by an excuse for US intervention.

Needless to say, painting “El Chapo” as the drug trade’s Bin Laden is far easier for both media and politicians than addressing the more crucial issues of drug law reform and vast consumer demand, factors that feed men like Guzman. For Mexico, there are also huge questions to be asked about why an estimated 450,000 citizens have turned to the incredibly risky drug trade for employment in the first place. The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has devastated Mexican agriculture and driven many small farmers to grow opium and marijuana in its place. Meanwhile, in the cities, unemployed youth join street gangs that ultimately work for the DTOs, providing muscle in exchange for guns, cars and cash.

Mexico needs to find a way out. With nearly 40,000 lives lost and violence continuing to swell in trouble spots like Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, something has to give. The inevitable return to power of Mexico’s old guard, the PRI, next year may see more of a willingness to negotiate with the cartels, but just as the death of Osama Bin Laden is really just a footnote in the “War on Terror”, the capture or killing of “El Chapo” would only lead to more massacres in Mexico’s own never-ending war.

The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.
In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.
In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.
Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges.
His words are not those of a federal agent or drawn from a news conference or court papers.
Instead, he offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem — a mafioso who mingles among crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government.
If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity.
Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?"
"They cut guys to pieces," he said.
The victims are likely among the hundreds of people found in mass graves in recent months, he said.
In the vicinity of the Mexican city of San Fernando, nearly 200 bodies were unearthed from pits, and authorities said most appeared to have died of blunt force head trauma.
Many are believed to have been dragged off buses traveling through Mexico, but little has been said about the circumstances of their deaths.
The trafficker said those who survive are taken captive and eventually given suicide missions, such as riding into a town controlled by rivals and shooting up the place.
The trafficker said he did not see the clashes, but his fellow criminals have boasted to him of their exploits.
Killing 'for amusement'
Former and current federal law-enforcement officers in the U.S. said that while they knew Mexican bus passengers had been targeted for violence, they'd never before heard of forcing passengers into death matches.
But given the level of violence in Mexico — nearly 40,000 killed in gangland warfare over the past several years — they didn't find it tough to believe.
Borderland Beat, a blog specializing in drug cartels, reported an account in April of bus passengers brutalized by Zeta thugs and taunted into fighting.
"The stuff you would not think possible a few years ago is now commonplace," said Peter Hanna, a retired FBI agent who built his career focusing on Mexico's cartels. "It used to be you'd find dead bodies in drums with acid; now there are beheadings."
Even so, Hanna noted, killing people this way would be time-consuming and inefficient. "It would be more for amusement," he suggested. "I don't see it as intimidation or a successful way to recruit people."
Hidden behind designer sunglasses and a whisper of a beard, the trafficker interviewed by the Houston Chronicle talked at a restaurant's back table. He had silver shopping bags filled at Nordstrom, but seemed anything but a typical wealthy Mexican on a Texas shopping trip.
As a condition of the interview, he asked that he be referred to only as Juan.
He has worked as a drug-trafficker in Northern Mexico for more than a decade, he said, but has grown tired of gangsters running roughshod over each other and innocent civilians.
Juan, who has worked with the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, the two major drug organizations that control territory along the South Texas-Mexico border, said that back home, he sleeps with a semiautomatic rifle by his bed and a handgun under his pillow.
"It is like the Wild West. You can carry a gun and you are Superman," he said of gangsters and killing at will. "Like everybody says, it is out of control now. We have to put a stop to it."
A recent U.S. Senate report contends the Zetas are the most violent of Mexico's cartels. Its members are believed to be responsible for the recent killing of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was shot on a Mexican highway.
'They brag about it'
Just on Thursday, authorities in Mexico said they arrested members of the Zetas and seized 201 automatic weapons, 600 camouflage uniforms and 30,000 rounds of ammunition.
"I am not defending the Sinaloa or the Gulf Cartel," Juan said of the Zetas' main rivals. "I earn more money with the Zetas, but I know the (crap) they do," he said. "They brag about it."
With the recent killing of the ICE agent and perhaps other attacks, the Zetas also are breaking the golden rule for Mexican traffickers: Don't kill Americans, he said. It brings too much heat.
If the Zetas are crushed, violence will lessen, he said, and Mexico's older cartels will go back to the older way of doing business - dividing up territory and agreeing not to clash with each other.
Death toll has exploded
Mike Vigil, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was the chief of international operations, said Mexican gangsters used to understand that violence should be used sparingly.
"They love brutality," Vigil said of the Zetas. "They do not care whether you are a police officer, a trafficker or an innocent bystander.
"The drug-trafficking organizations are eventually going to have to deal with the Zetas."
The death toll has exploded since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and dispersed military troops throughout the country to fight the cartels. The resulting battles have wrought carnage among local politicians, soldiers, gangsters and civilians alike.
As for the military, Juan said, "They are not helping," noting that the soldiers, like the gangsters, seem to kill whoever they want.
He also discussed some of the finer points of drug trafficking.
Checkpoints no problem
"We don't hide it," he said, telling stories of openly off-loading tractor-trailer rigs of cocaine in parking lots. "These are not lies. Everybody in Mexico knows it."
Even the checkpoints Mexican officials operate along the highways between Central Mexico and the border do not pose much of a problem, Juan said.
The trick, he confided, is to send someone in advance to bribe a commander so a drug load won't be bothered.
"It is better to tell them," he said. "It will cost you more if they catch it."
Tries not to be flashy
As for how he's been able to survive a decade, Juan said the secret is not being greedy or flashy enough to draw attention from other gangsters, who these days show no hesitation to cut down rivals.
He said he can quickly size up in a bar or cafe who is likely to be a trafficker, from the money they spend to the way they talk, sit or eat.
"You can tell in a restaurant or anywhere - that guy is moving dope," Juan said.
Other keys to longevity in the business: knowing your place in the Mexican under­world's hierarchy and not giving the impression you are making more money or interested in taking a chunk out of another gangster's livelihood.
"You keep doing the work you do," Juan said. "Stay at your level."