When Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, went on trial in the Eastern District of New York from 2018 to 2019, it provided hours of entertaining news for U.S. cable shows. Hosts gaped and laughed at stories of Guzmán running through a tunnel naked to escape marines, building a private zoo with lions and tigers, and of his lover crying in the witness box while his beauty queen wife cackled from the public gallery.
As former Mexican Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna began his trial for cocaine trafficking in the same court this month, U.S. coverage has been sparser and more solemn. The majority of journalists lining up in the freezing mornings to enter the courthouse were from Mexican media outlets. But if the accusations are true, then García Luna’s trial will serve as proof that the Mexican state plays just as important a role as cartel leaders like Guzmán in bringing billions of dollars’ worth of drugs to American users—and in creating a bloodbath in Mexico as rivals fight over these profits.
