Mexican Drug Lord `Chapo' Guzman Loses Top Ally in Gun Battle With Army
Mexico's president Felipe Calderon. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Mexican military personnel killed a leader in billionaire Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman’s drug trafficking cartel, signaling the biggest win for President Felipe Calderon in his four-year-old war on organized crime.
The army shot dead Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel yesterday during an operation in the western state of Jalisco, Defense Ministry official Edgar Luis Villegas told reporters in Mexico City. Coronel controlled the so-called Pacific Route for Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel, which sends cocaine to U.S. markets.
The killing will create a power vacuum in the cartel, causing infighting that may weaken Guzman’s organization, the most powerful of its kind in Mexico, according to Tony Payan, a political scientist at the University of Texas in El Paso. That may help Calderon, who is struggling to maintain public support for his war as retaliation killings increase, he said.
“This is the biggest fish Calderon has landed so far,” Payan, who also teaches at the Juarez Autonomous University, said in a telephone interview. “We’re talking about the person who is right next to the most powerful gangster in Mexico.”
Coronel shot at members of the armed forces during the raid, killing one soldier and injuring another, the Defense Ministry said. Military personnel killed Coronel when they returned fire, according to an e-mailed statement.
Autopsy Planned
A military convoy transferred Coronel’s body to the Jalisco Forensic Science Institute this morning for an autopsy, said Andres Zuniga, a spokesman for the institute.
Guzman, the head of the drug cartel based in the western state of Sinaloa, made Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list last year for the first time with a net worth of $1 billion.
Mexico’s peso rose 0.6 percent to 12.6422 per dollar at 10:55 a.m. New York time, from 12.7185 yesterday. The currency has gained 3.6 percent this year against the U.S. dollar, the second best performer among the 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, behind Japan’s yen.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Coronel’s capture.
“With actions such as this, the federal government reiterates its unfailing commitment to fight, energetically and without exception, organized crime in all its manifestations,” Villegas said late yesterday.
Mexico has reported almost 25,000 deaths related to organized crime since Calderon took office in December 2006. The government estimates violence shaves one percentage point from gross domestic product each year.
Biggest Threat
The impact of violence is the biggest threat to the Mexican economy, according to 57 percent of Mexican executives, up from 49 percent in March and 22 percent in December 2009, a survey published this month by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu showed.
The second-most cited concern was a U.S. economic slowdown, according to the June 7-29 poll of 381 Mexican business leaders.
The U.S. government has delivered only about 9 percent of the $1.6 billion in drug-war aid promised to Mexico through the 2008 Merida Initiative, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a July 21 report to Congress.
The U.S. closed its consulate in the Mexican border city of Juarez to review its security measures, the State Department said yesterday on its website. The consulate will be closed all day today and will stay closed until the review is completed.
In northern Torreon, Coahuila state, suspected gang members stormed into a party July 18 and opened fire, killing 17 people. The shooters were inmates at a prison in neighboring Durango state, whose jailers let them out and supplied them with weapons to commit the killings, the attorney general’s office said.
Authorities detained four prison workers yesterday in connection to the case, the attorney general said today in an e- mailed statement.
Politicians have also come under attack. Ex-senator and former presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos was reported missing May 15 from his ranch in the central state of Queretaro and has yet to be found.
Fernandez de Cevallos appeared blindfolded this week in photographs posted on Twitter and reported in Mexican media. The photos were accompanied by a message demanding $50 million in ransom.
Those threats will remain after the killing of Coronel, according to Payan. “This is winning a battle, not necessarily winning a war,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan J. Levin in Mexico City at Jlevin20@bloomberg.net
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