El Chapo’s daughter is the latest person to break her silence about the drug lord and his escape. She has given an interview claiming that El Chapo was able to stay on the run for so long, and to even cross the border into California twice, due to the help of corrupt Mexican officials.
Talking to the Guardian, Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz says her father was able to bribe senior officials to build his empire, and then to evade capture later on. “My dad is not a criminal. The government is guilty,” she said. Guzmán Ortiz says that her family might publish copies of monetary checks that El Chapo gave to politicians to expose those who aided or were complicit in his crimes.
In a less important development, back in January, Sean Penn interviewed escaped drug lord El Chapo to great derision for Rolling Stone. He then went on 60 Minutes to say that he regretted that this interview didn’t start a conversation about the war on drugs, as if others weren’t trying to do the same thing.
Now at a security conference, Penn has something utterly confusing to say about how his journalistic failure was actually a “good failure.” As quoted in Mashable at a security conference:
“What I meant in saying that the article failed was that the interpretations at large by mainstream media virtually failed to see what the article was about. Not only in the lines but between the lines and what I really meant by failed was to get them to say ‘oh it failed’ and to keep talking about it. And I sit back at home and I watch them talk about the drug war every fucking day now. It was a very good failure.”
If we’re to impose any sense on this, Penn is saying that it’s the media’s fault that his article was so misunderstood. But now that there’s a discussion about the war on drugs (which again, was never happening before Penn’s interview, apparently), it’s all because of him. Okay.
(Via The Guardian and Mashable)