Translated by Amanda Moody
Act One: El Chapo leaves his cell and goes to the bathroom; Act Two: El Chapo leaves his cell and goes to the bathroom; Act Three: El Chapo leaves his cell and goes to the bathroom. What was the play called? El Chapo walks free. [Video released this week of El Chapo Guzmán entering the bathroom in his prison cell and not reappearing.]
By dawn on Sunday, July 12 the joke was already getting old. The social networks had livened up the family breakfast not only with the news but also with the mockery. El Chapo’s second escape was a joke in itself. Given the lack of details, what there was plenty of was certainty. He didn't leave by himself, it was them; they helped him.
If the government's credibility had been flying low, now it’s also sliding through a tunnel.
The polls show the public’s disbelief: 54 percent of those interviewed don’t believe he could have escaped like that versus 36 percent who do believe it; 88 percent are sure that he escaped with the complicity of the authorities and 65 percent state that the weight of blame for the escape lies with the "incompetence of the authorities" versus just 17 percent who blame the crime boss’s "cunning". (Reforma, 7/16/15).
And the closer the authorities’ inquiries get towards verifying that the escape was indeed through a 1.5 kilometer [.9 mile] tunnel, the worse it is for their credibility. The precision of the movements, the minutes of delay in the warnings, the type of construction of the tunnel, the time taken to dig it, electrical installations, ventilation, the building of the rescue house, the escape in the open, the prison’s lack of external surveillance, the carelessness at the prison, the stealing of the maps, the privileges in the cell.
Each data point has a root cause and someone who is responsible. And it's not a question of organizational structure. It’s down to ethics, responsibility and doing what they swore to do when they came to power.
Why has Elba Esther Gordillo [former head of the Teachers Union, arrested on charges of embezzlement in Feb. 2013] not left jail and yet El Chapo Guzman has? Because teachers are not experts in tunnels but in bridges ["puentes" bridges is also colloquial for "three-day weekends"].
The facts encourage irony. And the authorities’ attempts to explain trigger laughter. [Carlos] Monsiváis [writer, political critic, died 2010] said: "now they don’t call it cynicism, they call it sincerity."
President Enrique Peña’s comment to Leon Krauze - saying that another escape would be "unforgivable" - was famous. And so far everyone has been forgiven.
On March 26, 2014, the then newly commissioned Head of National Security, Monte Alejandro Rubido, told Carlos Loret in a television interview that he was “absolutely certain” that (El Chapo) "was not going to escape". "But we will be constantly reviewing the protocols and the security procedures in the federal prisons”, he promised.
On Thursday July 16, 2015, almost 500 days later, Rubido now told Adela Micha that “an escape of this type was unforseeable”, and he called it an act of "fantasy".
With the attempts at explanations turned into real "Chapo-tour" guides, excitedly detailing all the nooks and crannies of the macabre tunnel, the pitiful insistence that “the protocols did not fail" only the sellers of land in Almoloya [the indigenous campesino, peasant farmer, who sold the land to middlemen for unknown buyers, said he was paid the equivalent of US$100,000 in cash], the only thing that the authorities are causing is the lauding of the crime boss.
"El Chapo is loved by the people of the mountains ... he's like a real flesh and blood superhero", said Mario Valenzuela, the Mayor of Badiraguato, the crime boss’s home town. (Reforma, 7/19/15).He's like Robin Hood, says the comedian Eugenio Derbez.
"And you say, 'Gosh, yes this man we're all seeing as a villain, he was using all this ill-gotten money to do good." (Reforma, 7/18/15).Miguel Herrera [manager of the Mexican national soccer team] is in front of the TV cameras for the selection of the national soccer team for the Gold Cup when he hears, "El Chapo escaped again.” He jumps up angrily, “There was no penalty (prison) against him!" ["penal" means both prison and sports penalty]
The abundance of jokes is in direct proportion to the absence of responsibilities. The joke, however, comes from a lack of respect. A comical authority - the protocol didn't fail but the plumber didn't mention the hole in the shower - who calls the reality revealing his incompetence a “fantasy”, and responds with bluster (resigning is for cowards or the escape is an affront). He digs himself deeper.
Don’t laugh - the country is cracking up.
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Roberto Zamarripa De La Peña is a graduate in Communication Sciences from the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco campus. He has been a reporter and editor specializing in political issues. He is the author of the book "Sonora 91, History of Politicians and Police." his stories are included in the anthology "The End of Nostalgia" and "Special Envoys".
Reforma only allows subscribers to access articles online.
Roberto Zamarripa De La Peña is a graduate in Communication Sciences from the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco campus. He has been a reporter and editor specializing in political issues. He is the author of the book "Sonora 91, History of Politicians and Police." his stories are included in the anthology "The End of Nostalgia" and "Special Envoys".