Should Mexican Authorities have Arrested Oridio Guzmán?
Photo from Pexels by RODNAE Productions
Megan Heine
Last Thursday, January 5, Oridio Guzmán, son of the infamous drug lord, “El Chapo,” was detained by Mexican authorities as a result of the US government offering $5 million to Mexico for his arrest.
El Chapo, or Joaquin Guzmán, is the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel. He was arrested for the first time in 1993 and sentenced to 20 years in a Mexican prison. He quickly escaped and was arrested once again in 2014 just to escape in 2015 and get arrested once again in 2016. After a final escape, Joaquin Guzmán was arrested along with his son, Oridio Guzmán, in 2019. Joaquin has been incarcerated since that last arrest but Oridio was let out in an attempt to avoid further conflicts between the Mexican government and the Sinaloa cartel. Because Joaquin is still in jail but Oridio is out, Oridio has now taken over and become the new leader of the cartel.
This most recent conflict took place in the city of Culiacán near the airport. Gunfire was heard throughout the area for hours and ended with the death of 10 military personnel and 19 other cartel members. In the days following, riots spread throughout the northern state of Sinaloa protesting Guzmán’s arrest. Cartel members feel that the government does not have enough power to arrest their leader and have reacted by spreading fear throughout the state. Some attacks include carjacking, vehicles on fire, and robberies. Mexican citizens are in so much fear of the cartel that they have not left their homes for days.
The Mexican government should never have accepted an offer from the US to arrest Guzmán. Even though he is the leader of one of the most powerful cartels in the world, his arrest is not going to make any change to the cartels’ power or ability to distribute. When cartels are this big in size, losing their leader will not cause detrimental effects. There are so many other people working under them that are able to carry out their duties under any circumstances.
Arresting Guzmán only put pressure on the Mexican government to have him in their custody. Since his arrest, drug flow has not decreased out of Mexico and into the US. Not only was Guzmán’s arrest unnecessary on behalf of the Mexican government, but the US government just wasted $5 million on an operation that only resulted in deaths and riots and caused our country to get more involved than we needed to in this foreign affair.
Instead of offering a bride to Mexico that ended up causing more problems than relief, the US should offer their support to the country in other ways. The bribe money would have been much better spent in our country offering support to those that are affected by the drugs being transported from Mexico into our country. Not only was it a poor decision on Mexico's behalf to accept the payment, but it was also completely immoral and unjust for the US to propose it in the first place.
In summary, the arrest of Oridio Guzmán was a worthless operation with no long or short-term positive outcomes. The Sinaloa cartel is far too powerful to be taken down by another arrest of one of its leaders. Deaths and casualties resulted from this operation, not a stop of drug flow.
