Narco Museum Dedicated to Sinaloa Cartel Leaders El Chapo, El Mayo, Rafael Caro Quintero to Open in Mexico's Sinaloa State

The hometown of convicted Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, also known as "El Chapo," is considering opening a "narco museum" to attract tourists.

In a video shared Thursday, the mayor of Badiraguato said he is open to the idea of a museum that tells the stories of notorious Sinaloa cartel leaders like El Chapo, Rafael Caro Quintero, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, and Juan Jose "El Azul" Esparragoza.

Badiraguato, a municipality in the northern state of Sinaloa, is known for being the birthplace of a long list of Mexican drug lords. Mexico News Daily reported that Badiraguato's mayor Jose Luis Lopez Elenes described the municipality as a traffickers' "cradle" and said they must acknowledge it.

"We can't deny our history," Lopez Elenes said, adding that their priority was to encourage economic development in the municipality and not to promote drug trafficking. The mayor noted that they are not closed-minded and listen to people's voices on any issue.

"We are a government that does not have favorite figures, we have no commitment to anyone, what we have is a commitment to Badiraguatense society and we are going to push those recommendations to us if that is precisely what interests them," Lopez Elenes said as Proceso reported.

The Morena party mayor noted that his government was aiming to "overcome the stigma of drug trafficking" through the economic development of Badiraguato. However, the Sinaloa governor does not like the idea of a narco museum.

Sinaloa's governor Ruben Rocha Moya, who was born in Badiraguato, tweeted that he "emphatically rejects" the idea of building a narco museum in his hometown.

A municipal official told Reuters that the museum, which would be housed in a $711,000 (14 million pesos) regional museum building, was under construction, but its subject matter has yet to be finalized.

Proceso reported that Lopez Elenes said the narco museum will be completed on December 10. The town leaders and museum specialists will reportedly meet on Monday to discuss the project.

El Chapo, Caro Quintero, and El Azul were born in Badiraguato, while El Mayo was born in a small town in the neighboring municipality of Culiacan. Mexico City already had a narco museum.

The Museo del Enervante displays things or objects seized during Mexico's drug war. However, it is not open to the public, and you can only go inside through written request and at the discretion of the Ministry of Defense (SEDENA).

Arrest of Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo

El Chapo was sentenced to spend the rest of his days in the ADX Florence "supermax" prison in Colorado after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 on multiple drug-related charges.

The infamous Sinaloa Cartel boss was first arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and extradited to Mexico, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder and drug trafficking.

However, in 2001, the Mexican drug kingpin escaped from prison. He was arrested again in 2014 in Sinaloa but escaped again through a tunnel the following year. In January 2016, Mexican officials announced that El Chapo had been captured again. He was extradited to the U.S. the following year.

El Chapo is serving a life sentence in prison after being found guilty of all 10 federal charges he faced. He was accused of illegally importing millions of kilos of cocaine from Mexico to the U.S., along with significant quantities of heroin and marijuana.

Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo Makes New Appeal to Overturn Life Sentence

El Chapo recently asked a court to have his life sentence overturned. ABC7 Chicago reported that the Sinaloa cartel boss is convincing the court that he was wronged by U.S. prosecutors in his racketeering conspiracy case.

El Chapo reportedly filed a new court request signed by himself, not an attorney, and asked to be freed or retried. In the habeas corpus petition filed by El Chapo, he criticized his lawyers and claimed unfair extradition by the U.S. government as well as prosecutors' unlawful treatment.

ABC7 legal analyst Gil Soffer, a former federal prosecutor, said El Chapo "lost his trial, [and] he lost on appeal." However, Soffer noted this was "a mechanism" for the Mexican drug lord "to say, despite all that, I'm still entitled to a reversal of my conviction and a new trial because my constitutional rights were violated."

According to Soffer, El Chapo must show that his constitutional rights were indeed violated, and the outcome of his trial would have been different if they had not been violated, which "is a very high hurdle to clear."

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Mary Webber

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