Opinion: El Chapo Conviction Does Nothing To Tame Drug-War Consequences

La Cartita --- While corrupt US prosecutors pat themselves on the back over corralling federal witness testimony, torturing a Mexican national while in federal custody and sowing discord in their southern neighbor, the lucrative enterprise of drug trafficking remains in the same state as before. Meanwhile, Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, maintains that the conviction should serve as a lesson to youth considering a life of crime.

While condescending to some, the president's statements lack the usual hyperbole most past presidents, servile individuals trained in the United States, reserve for such high-profile arrests. This is a clear signal that the Mexican president emphasises the human problems faced in Mexico, not the legalistic obsessions of Americans, and their laws that somehow permit them to intervene in Mexico.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, most popular opinion swings against the arrest and incursion of US agents in the country. The country's president is providing legal aid for the immediate family of 'El Chapo' for visits in the US. Humanitarian visas are often provided for the visit of a family member under certain conditions.

In the US, the arrest and conviction of El Chapo has been held as a moral victory, without concern for the vast numbers of dead civilians due to an incessant need to assert control over powerful cartels that were otherwise irrelevant on day-to-day activities.