Thursday, April 22, 2010

Disputing the Official Version

This is from a while back, but worth repeating: on April 9, Judith Torres reported that no one in Juárez believes the theory that Chapo has won the town. It does seem a bit far-fetched, but the one thing I can't make heads or tails of is why the US officials would be eager to get that story out there. One of the sources for Torres' blog post says that the Americans peddling the story have their interests, but how are American or DEA interests served by falsely promoting the idea that Chapo controls the city?

2 comments:

malcolm beith said...

each DEA/FBI person has their guy, or their cartel, or their gang, usually due to turf. they lobby for resources/budgets etc based on that stuff. you see it a lot, agent so-and-so claiming that Chapo is the one to watch, while others claim that La Familia is most dangerous or whatever. Claiming Chapo had won could even be a bit of backstabbing – the official's way of saying his Sinaloa counterparts aren't doing their job; or even a sly way of implying that the mexican gov't is protecting Chapo. hard to know.
in the more harmless way, it's just like reporters, pushing their own cases. the real difficulty lies in deciphering which reports are accurate, how they're biased, etc etc, and then making the decisions. the source to talk to of course is the director of DEA intelligence, but he barely says anything. i'm working on a story on this exact problem right now, hopefully will get it done soon.

pc said...

oh ok that seems plausible, thanks for that. I look forward to checking out the story...