Ovidio Guzmán López, known as “El Ratón,” has come a long way from Culiacán to Illinois, in the American Midwest: he was one of the bosses of the “Los Chapitos” faction, along with his brothers, in the Sinaloa Cartel. After escaping capture once, similar to what his father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, did, their paths now diverge: while the boss was sentenced to life in prison, his son has reached an agreement with US prosecutors to collaborate with them and find less severe sentences for him and his family.
The scope of this agreement has been questioned since President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s morning press conference. This Friday, she criticized the US government for claiming it does not negotiate with criminals, when in fact, this is not the case. “This is a poorly understood position of the United States government, because on the one hand, it labels criminal organizations as terrorists. It has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and if there is an agreement, then what about its position of not negotiating with terrorist groups?” he explained.
“We don’t know the agreement. What we know is that they intend to declare guilty in one of the trials and that it will be concentrated in one trial, but no agreement has been reached publicly. What we are saying is that Mexico extradited this person in an operation that even resulted in the deaths of Mexican soldiers. So the United States should coordinate with the Attorney General’s Office, which has the arrest warrant for this person. That must be the case, and that is the relationship between the Attorney General’s Office and the Secretary of the United States Department of Justice regarding these trials. That is the first step, and it is something established in international agreements,” he noted.
Ovidio, like Joaquín Guzmán López, is the son of Griselda López Pérez, the second wife of “El Chapo” Guzmán. He is 35 years old, three years younger than his brother, and both held “senior command and control positions in their drug trafficking organization,” “Los Chapitos,” under the umbrella of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Nicknamed “El Ratón,” he managed to keep a low profile, although in 2012, the US government included him on the list of international drug traffickers, considering that he played “a significant role in his father’s activities.” With his inclusion on this list by the Treasury Department, Ovidio Guzmán was prohibited from conducting business transactions with US citizens, and his financial assets in that country were frozen.
