Pubdate: Mon, 10 Aug 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Deborah Bonello

DRUG LORD IS A HERO AT HOME

Mexicans See Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman As a Robin Hood, and He Has 
Certainly Given the Economy a Boost.

CULIACAN, Mexico - A new shipment of caps arrived at Isaias 
Rodriguez's Culiacan store, black canvas with the image of Joaquin 
"El Chapo" Guzman - once again the world's mostwanted drug lord - 
embossed in gold on the front.

The hats came in just a week or so after El Chapo escaped from a 
high-security prison in July, via a ventilated, well-lighted tunnel 
just under a mile long.

Rodriguez, 46, said this is the first time he has sold merchandise 
that depicts Guzman, who was born and made in Culiacan. The latter's 
escape has been good for business.

"But I wouldn't let my kids wear one of these," said Rodriguez, "and 
I wouldn't wear one either."

Underneath the image on the cap is embroidered "Billionario 701," 
referring to Guzman's place on the Forbes rich list. Here in 
Culiacan, the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel is admired by many and 
has a folkloric image among some as a bandit benefactor who has used 
his wealth to help those in need.

At the Jesus Malverde chapel opposite the state government 
headquarters, a steady stream of visitors file through, sweating in 
the 100degree heat. They give thanks and ask favors of Malverde, a 
legendary figure now commonly known as the narco-saint.

During the 1980s and '90s, cartels embraced Malverde - an outlaw who 
is said to have stolen from the rich and given to the poor before 
being hanged in 1909 - in an attempt to give a Robin Hood touch to 
their criminal activities. The cult surrounding him grew (as did 
doubts about whether he ever existed).

Rodolfo, who sweeps the premises and did not want to be fully 
identified for safety reasons, thinks that Guzman and Malverde have 
much in common.

"El Chapo has helped lots of people so it would be good to have a 
monument or a chapel in his honor too. He's also a generous man who 
has helped a lot of people."

So legend has it. But much of El Chapo's Robin Hood-like reputation 
seems to be myth. In Badiraguato, the rural municipality where he was 
born and brought up, many were happy about his escape and spoke of 
his generosity. But none interviewed could point to a single public 
work, school or hospital built or funded by him.

However, Guzman's criminal enterprises have helped provide income for 
many of the people in the mountains who make a living producing 
poppies and marijuana for his cartel.

Even the mayor of Badiraguato, Mario Valenzuela, who is a member of 
President Enrique Pena Nieto's ruling Institutional Revolutionary 
Party, gave Guzman the nod for that.

"It's complicated but at the end of the day it generates jobs in the 
country, it moves money - and a lot of it," Valenzuela said in an 
interview. "We don't want to face up to the fact that our economies 
to a large extent depend on that. Sadly that's how it is."

Valenzuela also said he considered Guzman a very intelligent businessman.

Another factor for which Guzman has the respect of many is having 
made a fool of Pena Nieto and his administration. Not only was this 
his second escape - he f led a high-security Jalisco jail in 2001 in 
either a laundry basket or through the front door, depending on whom 
you ask - but after his (second) arrest in February 2014, Pena Nieto 
said any future escape would be "unpardonable."

The government scrambled to take journalists on a whistle-stop tour 
of Guzman's escape tunnel from the Altiplano prison in July, yet 
Mexicans are questioning the official version of events. His flight 
unleashed a barrage of mockery across the media and social networks, 
targeting Mexico's corrupt political system, which even federal 
officials have acknowledged had to have colluded, in parts, with 
Guzman's latest escape.

As she chopped up meat to fill flour tortillas, Simona, who runs a 
modest restaurant in Badiraguato and asked not to be fully identified 
out of concern for her safety, said that for many around here El 
Chapo is "el maximo" - the best. Her father, she said, used to be a 
cook for Rafael Caro Quintero, another of the area's famous drug 
traffickers. She's proud not only of Sinaloa's production of drugs, 
but also of the men who produce them.

"It's because they're REAL men!" she says with a chuckle.

The state of Sinaloa is widely considered to be the cradle of 
Mexico's drug-trafficking industry, and El Chapo is the most famous 
of numerous Sinaloan drug kingpins who are part of the vernacular of 
Mexican drug-trafficking legend. Others include Ismael "El Mayo" 
Zambada, Caro Quintero and the Beltran Leyva brothers.

Javier Valdez, a columnist and founder of the weekly Sinaloa 
newsmagazine Rio Doce, said that here "all roads lead to 
narco-traffic," and that the culture of drug trafficking has been in 
the state's DNA for a century.

"There are parts of society that are proud, they talk of narcos as 
being the biggest and the baddest - the idol or God or demigod.

"The night [Guzman escaped], people celebrated. Many people found out 
before we did. They had parties, there were gunshots."

Since Guzman went on the lam, there have been no official sightings - 
although photos of him in the passenger seat of a small airplane and 
another nursing a beer have circulated on social media. Many 
Mexicans, as well as the acting administrator of the U.S. Drug 
Enforcement Administration, Chuck Rosenberg, suspect that Guzman may 
have come home to Sinaloa, about 750 miles from where he was imprisoned.

And yet there is no sign of a major manhunt here - a few army patrol 
vehicles are stationed in sleepy Badiraguato, but there were no 
checkpoints on the hourlong drive on the highway between the town and 
Culiacan. Even Valenzuela, Badiraguato's mayor, doesn't see evidence 
of a government search and hasn't been informed of one by his superiors.

He doesn't have high hopes that if Guzman has come home, he'll be 
recaptured. His home turf encompasses about 3,600 square miles of mountains.

"El Chapo managed to escape through a tunnel of just [under a mile]. 
It was incredible. Do you think if he's here they're going to find him?

"Impossible."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom