For the third consecutive year, drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera made the Forbes magazine 2011 list of the World's Most Powerful People. El Chapo ("Shorty") is head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which the U.S. government says is the largest and richest narcotics trafficking organization in the world. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says that Sinaloa supplies the United States with the majority of its marijuana and cocaine.
Guzmán was number 55 out of a list of 70 persons. In 2010 he was number 60, and in 2009 number 41. Forbes has previously estimated El Chapo's fortune at $1 billion USD.
The United States has a standing offer of $5 million for Guzmán's arrest, to which Mexico has added another $2 million. U.S. and Mexican law enforcement authorities generally maintain that he is hid out in the remote and rugged Sierra Madre mountains in northern Mexico, but in late September president Felipe Calderón raised eyebrows when he said that he believes El Chapo is in the United States.
In an interview published today in the Chicago Sun Times, DEA agent Jack Riley said that the Sinaloa cartel is better organized than the Italian mafia, and far more dangerous. Riley told the paper that Mexican dealers are raising huge crops of marijuana in Wisconsin and northern Illinois and that they completely control the market for the drug in Chicago and Atlanta, both of which have become major wholesale distribution centers. They also are heavily involved in the production and sale of cocaine, heroine and methamphetamine. Riley said federal agents discovered over 10,000 plants at one remote Wisconsin location, together with stockpiles of weapons such as AK-47s. He said that the Sinaloa cartel controls its territory with "inconceivable violence." According to the DEA, marijuana is Sinaloa's basic "cash crop," which funds its other narcotics activities as well.
Previous stories on Guzmán: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/10/el-chapo-guzman-must-be-in-united.html;
and: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/10/sinaloa-cartel-of-el-chapo-guzman.html;
and: http://mexicogulfreporter.blogspot.com/2011/09/escaped-mexican-drug-lord-joaquin.html.
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