The head of the Sinaloa cartel has long been used as a way to distract people from messy truths that we’d rather ignore
El Chapo gave the international drug trade a tall-profile recognizable face – and we will miss him now that he is gone. It is always convenient whether for politicians,bureaucrats, journalists, and scriptwriters or the larger public – for a problem to believe a familiar face to hate and target. Al Capone was the face of Prohibition-era organized crime,Pablo Escobar the face of Colombia’s cocaine wars and Osama Bin Laden the face of transnational terrorism. It is far easier to blame and move after a ruthless individual or set of individuals for problems that believe deeper, messier, and more complex roots. In the case of El Chapo,having him at the top of the “most wanted” list creates flashy headlines, sells newspapers, and justifies budgets and provides tough sounding political sound bites; extreme poverty and displacement in Mexico and other Latin American drug exporting countries and woefully inadequate drug treatment and addiction research in the United States and other consumer countries do not.
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Source: theguardian.com