Mexican Drug War Reporting: Hazardous to Press Freedom
There's a lot that is worth criticizing about actor Sean Penn's rambling Rolling Stone article about his friendly meeting with cutthroat fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
But if Guzman's desire to be in the movies led to the recapture of this hemisphere's biggest trafficker of heroin, cocaine and other illicit commodities, justice has been served.
That, at least, is how Mexican authorities are spinning the story, hoping everyone will stop asking how Guzman escaped their custody in the first place -- twice.
Penn's interview led police to the drug lord's hiding place, an unnamed official told Associated Press after the magazine published Penn's story Saturday.
If so, that could make a nice twist for the biographical movie that Guzman has been hoping someone will make about his life. But unfortunately it also sounds like the sort of narrative that Mexican officials would say in order to save face.
Of all the corruption scandals and security lapses that have tarnished Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's record of reforms last year, the most embarrassing was the July prison escape of El Chapo ("Shorty").
I'm not surprised that lying low in his mountain retreat wasn't good enough for Guzman. He wants to be in the movies like numerous other gangsters. He sent a bushel of roses to Mexican soap opera and movie star Kate del Castillo, a naturalized American citizen, and pitched the movie idea to her. She helped him to meet Penn.
Maybe Guzman saw the award-winning Netflix series "Narcos," based on the late Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar and thought, hey, I can top that.
Guzman in the past decade or so has replaced Escobar as the most famous drug kingpin in the planet. That's a story worthy of the big screen and Guzman wanted the world to know it.
After all, federal prosecutors in at last six U.S. cities say El Chapo is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Besides his own rivals whose executions he ordered, there are gangbangers killed in drug turf wars and innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.
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