Fifteen hours after the capture of “el Chapo” Guzman, Wikipedia had amended his entry to specify his “former” role controlling the Mexican drug trade. With his capture, with the addition of just one word, Guzman went from a mystical figure who had escaped incarceration for an incredible 13 years to just another criminal. His parade before the cameras showed him to be human, fallible, and not really awe-inspiring.
Now that the law has caught up with the world’s most wanted man, now that we give a collective high five at his apprehension, I want to ask an uncomfortable question. Can we condemn el Chapo’s crimes while we admire the ingenuity he used to commit them?
Undoubtedly, El Chapo deserves to be remembered as a ruthless killer who bears much of the blame for destroying economic and social stability in many regions of Mexico and neighborhoods of the US. The Sinaloa cartel is estimated to control between 40-60% of the US import market for Mexican drugs, and violence in Mexico can surpass Afghanistan when the cartel fights for territory. Chicago declared him Public Enemy Number One, a designation originally created for Al Capone.
Perhaps most damning, el Chapo cultivated an image of perpetrating targeted violence against other drug dealers in contrast to practices of widespread torture, kidnapping, and extortion that other gangs are known for. In doing so, el Chapo presents Mexicans with a false choice—as if they should prefer one druglord over another rather than none at all.
But there is something fascinating—though not redeeming—about el Chapo’s rise to power. He was born into poverty in a forgotten and isolated village in northern Mexico but came to control a decentralized organization whose profits placed him on the Forbes list of world’s richest people. The keys to his success read like any other CEO’s on the list, with some elements specific to the criminal underworld: He got his start by running odd jobs for the local business owners (read mafia). He combined ruthlessness (read violence) and charisma to rise through the ranks. Once at the top, he leaned heavily on risk-taking and creativity to keep ahead of the game, pioneering secret tunnels under the US-Mexico border and, when that scheme was uncovered, diversifying into chili peppers so he could smuggled drugs in false bottoms of the canned product. He escaped capture more than once, undoubtedly through a combination of canniness, charisma, and generous sum of cash.
El Chapo was ambitious, creative, and stubborn—if we had somehow channeled his persistence towards productive work, how might he have transformed Mexico for the better? Imagine if el Chapo had been born into a village with schools that taught him to read and write and to think out of the box. If he had grown up in a region where the job market offered him something beyond the options of subsistence farmer or drug runner. In a society that appreciated and glorified entrepreneurialism instead of “los narcos.” Would we still be talking about him today as a has-been? Would we have sought to cut short his career, or would we have urged him on as a fine representation of bootstrapping?
In other words, while el Chapo is fully responsible for the crimes he planned and committed, how responsible are we for creating a society in which talented people become el Chapo Guzman?
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