On Friday October 16, government of Mexico announced that Mexico’s most wanted man who escaped in a spectacular fashion from a maximum security prison on July 11 had narrowly missed getting caught by the security forces of the country who have been hunting him for weeks!
El Chapo or “shorty”, whose real name is Joachim Guzman Loera was, according to Mexican police, injured in the face and leg, but managed to get away in the nick of time.
The New York Times of Saturday, July 18, published a fascinating front page story about the Mexican drug kingpin titled, “El Chapo, public enemy, is also folk hero No. 1” which amused and mesmerised me.
The motto of The New York Times is “All the news that’s fit to print” and one assumes that El Chapo’s story was fit to print in my favourite newspaper which could easily be the best in the world.
Who is Guzman, aka El Chapo?
Born poor in Badiraguato, Guzman is today filthy rich and powerful as head of Mexico’s largest drug gang called Sinaloa cartel which is akin to some African guerrilla outfits of the 1970s and 1980s, some of which falsely claimed to be liberation movements when they are in fact organised crime gangs.
According to Forbes magazine, El Chapo is worth more than $1 billion (Shs3.3 trillion), ahead of Uganda’s richest person.
El Chapo’s second escape from prison on July 11 was celebrated openly by wananchi in his hometown and the slums of Mexico City. One admirer of the notorious drug kingpin was quoted shouting with joy; “El Chapo got out!
He’s the greatest of them all. He was famous before, but now he is even more famous.”
For the down-trodden wananchi of Mexico, El Chapo is a latter day billionaire Robin Hood who grabs from the rich and distributes to the poor. Guzman is a man who has repeatedly outfoxed Mexico’s corrupt and unpopular government, led by president Enrique Pena Nieto who has no moral authority to admonish the drug baron.
For Mexico’s political elite, El Chapo is a dangerous fortune hunter, but wananchi admire and even respect him because he has challenged the country’s unjust laws and often won because he can afford the best lawyers in Mexico City and where necessary he bribes Mexico’s corrupt judges and police, which sounds familiar.
Guzman aka “narco-saint” is adored and feared by his fellow drug traffickers, but worshipped by poor people, peasant farmers and small fishermen because he regularly gives them the equivalent of entandikwa and bona bagaggawale.
Mexico’s government has offered a reward of $3.8 million (Shs12.5 billion) dollars for information leading to Guzman’s arrest, but wananchi have rejected the offer.
“The drug dealers do more for the people than the government does,” said Eric Reyes, a Mexico City engineer. Mexicans are so cynical of their government that most of them do not believe the official story about El Chapo’s almost miraculous escape from prison. They assume that El Chapo was assisted by prison officers after he gave them kitu kidogo (bribe)!
The economy of El Chapo’s hometown Badiraguato depends on his largesse and there Guzman is king of the jungle! He reminds me of many African leaders who plunder national treasuries to enrich themselves, their relatives, their side dishes as well as develop their tribal areas, like former DR Congo president Mobutu Sese Seko did in Gbadolite.
Some lessons for Africa
Like most African governments, Mexico’s corrupt and dysfunctional government is to a large measure a rogue regime which has turned that rich country into a den of thieves and a haven for drug barons and drug addicts.
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