Money and fear: How Juárenses react to escape

“El Chapo for president of Mexico,” Pastor Galván says. “He’s like Pancho Villa or Emilio Zapata. They had money but they helped the poor, something the government doesn’t do.” That was one of the many reactions I received during a trip to this border city two days after Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s extraordinary escape from the high security Altiplano prison outside of Toluca, Mexico. How could this happen at Mexico’s “supermax” prison, and what did people think about it? Chapo was at Altiplano from 1993 to 1995 before being transferred to another prison in Jalisco from which he escaped in 2001. No one had ever escaped from Altiplano since it opened in 1991, even though the prison houses most of Mexico’s highest profile inmates. It has walls 3 feet thick in order to repel an attack from outside, restricted airspace and cell transmissions, as well as regular polygraphs for all staff. Peña Nieto may have felt that keeping Chapo in Mexico was a matter of national pride. More likely, I think, was the fear that Chapo would reveal all sorts of government-cartel connections to U.S. authorities in an effort to plea bargain his case. What do Peña Nieto’s constituents feel about this daring event?“It’s all money. Even up to the president. All corrupt,” shouts Juan, a Mixteca Indian who sells trinkets on the Mexican side of the Santa Teresa border crossing west of Juárez. “He snaps his fingers,” says Josué Rosales, who works in a hospital on the edge of Juárez. “He has power all over the world, can tell anyone that he knows where their mother lives, their family. He has so much money no one can stop him.” Aurora, a lifelong resident of Juárez says, “To me, he is just a businessman. The people wanted him freed.” Carolina, also from Juárez, adds, “For a man with hardly any education, he became an extraordinarily successful businessman.” She blames the escape not on Chapo but the Mexican government. “It’s a global shame, a world embarrassment.”...more