With the war between narcotics and law enforcement continuing as well as advances in technology, it has become more difficult to stop narcotics from entering America. Usually there are only three ways a narco trafficker may escape from a drug cartel: go to jail, get killed, or become a government informant. If charged with criminal charges, a trafficker has the option to become a government informant, giving the person some advantages during his sentence. Many choose to run away from law enforcement. Some have gone up to a decade without getting caught. Though some traffickers are arrested and put into maximum security prisons, some maintain connections to continue transporting drugs.
For example, Joaquín Guzmán, also known as El Chapo, is a narco who sold and transported drugs from Mexico to the United States of America. On Jul. 12, 2015, Guzmán escaped Mexico’s maximum-security prison, The Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 “Altiplano.” Guzmán managed to escape his prison cell just like Pablo Escobar. Escobar had escaped in June of 1992 while “authorities attempted to move him to a more standard holding facility.” After searching for almost six months, Guzman was finally recaptured by Mexican Marines on Jan. 8, 2016 in a house from the coastal city of Los Mochis, Sinaloa Mexico. Many people believe El Chapo had gotten help from the high maximum-security prison guards in Mexico. Even though some people are not associated with narcotics, some are involved with narco-corrido. Narco-corridos, which can refer to the poor and illegal immigrants, focus is on drugs.
From Joaquín Guzmán to Pablo Escobar, there is one famous woman who differentiates them all, a woman known as the Cocaine Godmother and the Queen of Narco-Trafficking, Griselda Blanco. At such a young age she was exposed to difficult situations by her mother, Ana Lucía Restrepo, that led to her killings, pickpocketing, and even prostitution. Blanco was allegedly arrested for selling drugs and transporting drugs in and out of the country, putting her in jail after being chased for almost a decade. Not only did Blanco escape prison, but she was also able to escape her death sentence on the electric chair. Soon enough, Blanco was later killed after having been shot twice in the head in a drive-by shooting by a motorcyclist in Medellín, Colombia.
Since the 1930s to 2016 the world has learned more about drugs and drug traffickers. Through new advances in technology, drug traffickers have learned new ways to transport drugs into countries, some methods include smuggling under tunnels or bribing government officials. Using their power and money, drug lords can convince government officials to allow them to transport drugs into the country. For example, Escobar would pay or persuade officials with money to let him in or give them luxuries like cars or flat screen televisions.
Nowadays, drug lords use techniques like underground tunnels to transport drugs. This war between narcos and the government has become so intense, many law enforcement officials have been killed or retired. On the border between Mexico and USA, there is a team of officers who patrol the border to stop immigrants and drugs from coming into the US illegally. As U.S. Customs and Border Protection state’s, ¨[their]primary mission remains unchanged: to detect and prevent¨(Biography.com Editors). Everyday border patrolcovers at an average of two-thousand miles of coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula and the island of Puerto Rico, while other Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers patrol six-thousand miles of Mexican land borders.
With advances in technology, it has become more difficult for bagmen to cross the border with illegal contraband and illegal immigrants into the US. Nowadays, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has multiple groups of CBP officers that are assigned to different tasks to stop these groups of narcos from entering into the U.S. Now that the 2016 presidential elections are in place, the candidates are all trying to address the issue of the drug war.
