This Friday, Mexico extradited to the United States Ovidio Guzmán López, alias "El Ratón", one of the heirs of the Sinaloa Cartel since his father, drug trafficker Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán, is serving a life sentence.
Ovidio Guzmán was arrested last January in Mexico and was imprisoned in the Altiplano penitentiary center in the state of Mexico, in the center of the country.
The Mexican authorities accuse him of crimes against health and carrying firearms, but they are also investigating him for crimes linked to organized crime.
Ovidio Guzmán had already been detained on October 17, 2019 in Culiacán (northwest), but was released by order of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the midst of a raid by the criminal organization.
The leftist president then defended his decision, stating that a bloodbath was avoided when military personnel were surrounded by armed people.
"Today, as a result of cooperation between Mexican and United States law enforcement, Ovidio Guzmán López, leader of the Sinaloa cartel, has been extradited to the United States," reported US Attorney General and Secretary of Justice Merrick Garland. it's a statement.
Washington accuses him of "drug trafficking, money laundering and other violent crimes," White House National Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall detailed in another statement.
– “Hot blooded” –
33 years old, thin and with thick eyebrows, Guzmán is considered the head of "Los Menores", a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, founded four decades ago.
He is the best known of "Los Chapitos", a clan also formed by his brothers Joaquín, Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán.
He is known as "El Ratón", a nickname his father would have given him, according to a corrido dedicated to him by the musical band Codigo FN.
In the song "I am the mouse" he is described as a "boss with a lot of brains", "hot-blooded and action-oriented", and passionate about luxury cars.
The United States Anti-Drug Agency (DEA) is on the warpath against the Sinaloa Cartel, which it considers to be primarily responsible for fentanyl trafficking.
This drug, 50 times more powerful than heroin, has caused a good part of the 109,000 overdose deaths in 2022 in the country, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Sherwood-Randall insisted that President Joe Biden's administration will continue to use all available tools to "vigorously counter the deadly scourge of fentanyl and other narcotics that are killing so many Americans."
And that means collaborating closely with Mexico, where most of the fentanyl that enters the country comes from.
According to Washington, Mexican cartels negotiate the sale and import of chemicals from China with which they manufacture this opioid.
The fentanyl crisis has led a group of US Republican congressmen months ago to request that cartels be designated as "terrorist" groups in order to combat them wherever they are.
Mexico protested and, after comings and goings of authorities, the diplomatic gale subsided. Mexico is one of more than 80 countries in the global coalition against synthetic drugs.
This Friday, the US government had words of praise for the US and Mexican security forces, as well as the military.
Many of them "have given their lives in the pursuit of justice," Garland said.
"We will always be grateful to them for their brave and tireless efforts," added the National Security Advisor.
The arrest operation of Ovidio Guzmán in January alone left 29 dead, including 10 soldiers and 19 alleged criminals, when members of the Sinaloa Cartel tried to rescue their boss.
DEA and government officials accuse the Sinaloa Cartel of acting with excessive brutality.
In April, Garland explained that his contempt for life is such that "Los Chapitos" fed pet tigers with "some of their victims, dead or alive."
