Surrendered

… The surrender of the 'Chapiza': collaboration or collapse of the state?

The image is powerful: seventeen immediate family members of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ovidio Guzmán López crossing the San Ysidro border crossing with suitcases, cash, and heading straight for the FBI. What might appear to be the final act of a criminal saga becomes, in fact, a devastating portrait of Mexico's institutional fragility.

While the Mexican government remains silent—or worse, feigns surprise—the United States is making progress in dismantling one of the most powerful drug trafficking networks on the continent. "La Chapiza" is surrendering not out of fear of the Mexican Army, nor because of a national intelligence operation, but because of a negotiated agreement with the U.S. justice system. Where, then, is sovereignty? Where is the rule of law?

Claudia Sheinbaum's administration, in her first term as president, opted for evasiveness. She neither denied nor confirmed the situation. She simply said that "the Attorney General's Office must be informed." But when a country's judicial branch learns from the press that key family operatives of the Sinaloa Cartel are negotiating their release in another country, we are not talking about binational collaboration, but rather the abdication of essential state functions.

The case of Ovidio Guzmán—who is already negotiating a sentence in exchange for cooperation—is doubly symbolic. His capture and extradition were presented as a triumph for the López Obrador administration, although in reality they were part of a deeper process: the internal erosion of the cartel and the US determination to cut off the supply of fentanyl, no matter the cost.

The Guzmán family's surrender is not a gesture of peace. It's an act of strategic survival. The "Chapiza" gang faces siege from its enemies in Sinaloa and growing judicial pressure in the United States. Taking refuge in the U.S. legal system, paradoxically, may be safer than remaining on Mexican soil, where pacts are dissolved with lead, not signatures.

Meanwhile, the Mexican government, now headed by Sheinbaum, is watching as a spectator a film it should have starred in. A government that can't prosecute its criminals, that lacks territorial control to offer security even to its citizens, and that needs Washington to resolve what Mexico doesn't even dare to touch.

It's time to seriously ask ourselves: who governs in Mexico? The Mexican state or the backroom deals with our northern neighbor? Because when an entire family of drug traffickers crosses the border to surrender to the FBI, the message is not only that crime seeks redemption, but that it trusts the justice system of others more than its own.

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