Keegan Hamilton: Why Killing Kingpins Won't Stop Mexico's Drug Cartels Keegan Hamilton - The Atlantic
go to original February 27, 2013

Federal police present weaponry seized during an arrest operation against drug traffickers linked to Chapo Guzman, during a media presentation in Mexico City on February 4, 2012. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

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.

History has repeatedly shown that high profile drug kingpins rarely survive long in the spotlight. Guzmán has already outlasted many of his peers and predecessors in the Mexican underworld, but with international law enforcement agencies and rival cartels both gunning for him, his days are inevitably numbered. After the latest round of death rumors, the question is worth asking: What happens if (or perhaps rather when) El Chapo meets his maker?

The outcomes depend on the circumstances, but few people are likely to benefit from Guzmán's death. Slaying El Chapo would be a public relations boon for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, whose PRI party has long been associated with corruption and organized crime. Peña Nieto could claim success where his hardline predecessor Felipe Calderón failed in his bloody war against the cartels. But the long-term repercussions for Peña Nieto and the Mexican people may very well be negative.

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