Last Updated on January 8, 2023
U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are due to attend the North American Leaders’ Summit, aka the Three Amigos Summit, in Mexico City, Mexico on Tuesday, just days after the arrest of El Chapo’s son, Ovidio Guzmán-López, 32, a commander in Los Chapitos drug cartel based in Sinaloa, Mexico.
Veteran Mexican Drug War journalist and former cartel member, OG Shadow, aka La Sombra, analyzed the arrest of Ovidio in light of the imminent visit by Biden. He highlighted the fact that AMLO’s government was forced to release Ovidio after threat of a full-scale urban conflict arose from the cartel in 2019.
“The Mexican president was extremely embarrassed last time when they captured him [when] he was forced by criminals to let him go. You could look at this almost as a chance for him to redeem himself in the eyes of the United States and in the Mexican public coincidentally, if you want to look at it like that,” Shadow said.
“The American President, Biden, is coming down in a few days. Most people are looking at this as a trophy basically for the United States to kind of justify their War on Drugs and all the money that’s being spent and lives lost,” Shadow said.
Shadow stated that the Mexican government chose to offer Ovidio as an olive branch to the American government as opposed to narco commander, El Mencho, head of the terroristic Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
“That’s why the government chose to go after someone like Ovidio, who’s somewhat more of a softer target than someone like Mencho, where they know they’re going to lose a lot of men,” Shadow said. “Biden has to take back his trophy, right?”
The use of anti-aircraft weapons by CJNG commander, El Mencho (above) has proven to be a bulwark against capture by the Mexican Government.
Shadow elaborated and stated the timing of the arrest is something can be chalked up to
“Like what coincidental timing like I said. Remember that, my friends. Too many things line up for [the arrest] to just be a coincidence. They didn’t just capture Ovidio right when the President’s coming. They had several chances to capture him before and the military denied to do so because they knew that the death toll on civilians and everything else that was going to happen would be bad so they denied to act on it,” Shadow said.
The Sinaloa-based independent investigative reporter asserted that the arrest of Ovidio was done at the behest of pressure by the U.S. government on AMLO and the Mexican feds.
“I feel like they were being pressured a lot more by the American government, which forced their hand in this affair and they had to give something as far as a trophy goes. That’s exactly what we’re seeing right now,” the intrepid Mexico-based journalist said.
“The government is extremely busy right now, if you want to look at like that, with multiple fronts against organized crime,” Shadow continued. “The president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, he doesn’t quite have a reputation for going after people and getting things done.”
“If you look at the state of the country, it’s steadily gotten more violent. These groups have become more volatile, all while the government sits back and watches. That’s why this is so important and this operation is so important. They couldn’t fail. They couldn’t. It’s just, too much is riding on it and they were already so extremely embarrassed that I think a lot of them took it personal, AMLO included,” Shadow said. “That’s a big stain on his presidency. People are going to remember, ‘Oh, you’re the guy that let the narco go because you got scared of them pressuring you. To a certain extent it’s true. He is the guy that let him go, right?”
“In fact, he had the saying before, “Abrazos No Balazos,” which is ‘Hugs Not Bullets,’ which I don’t think worked out too well for him,” the Mexican journalist added.
