- Marco Ugarte/AP Photos
- Mexican federal authorities arrested drug lord El Chapo Guzman in February 2014.
Starting Friday the Patio Theater will present a weeklong run of Es el Chapo?, a documentary feature about Mexican drug lord El Chapo Guzman and, more generally, the ineffectiveness of the war on drugs. The movie centers around widespread rumors that it wasn’t Guzman who was arrested last year by Mexican authorities and members of the DEA, but rather a double. Director Charlie Minn doesn’t offer much solid evidence to support these rumors, but he offers some compelling observations all the same. The movie shows how Guzman—a billionaire whose cartel is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands—became a beloved figure in his hometown of Culiacán, where he’s credited with creating jobs and improving public life. Esteemed journalists Javier Valdez Cárdenas and Annabel Hernández also appear to offer informed analyses of Mexican politics. But if you’ve followed the Guzman case over the past few years (the Reader has reported on it consistently), you might find the overall analysis a little thin.
Charlie Minn: I got on this huge justice thing for Mexico. I started studying the country about five years ago, when I moved to El Paso, and when I did, I was embarrassed by how little I knew about the human-rights disaster going on there. But I went through hard work and research and was able to educate myself. I’m actually working on my fifth film about the tragedy in Mexico. It’s about the 43 students who went missing in Guerrero.
That’s an excellent question, and I want to start the answer by telling you that these films are very difficult to make—the drug war is so freaking mysterious. You sure as hell can’t sit down with people who are going to tell you a lot, like cartel members. Ninety-five percent of the [drug-related] murders in Mexico are not investigated, and that leads to three questions: Who’s being killed, by who, and why?
Only in Mexico could that happen. A few years ago, they reported that the leader of the Knights Templar cartel was killed—but then, a few months later they reported he was killed again. How did he die twice? It just points to the corruption. The Mexican people are not going to believe anything their government tells them, like if they say that Chapo Guzman got caught.
There’s enough speculation about this: about 50 percent of people in the U.S. and about 40 percent in Mexico think it wasn’t him. I’m surprised that that total wasn’t higher. I think that the [Mexican] government might have manipulated those numbers to make it seem like more people believe [the real Guzman] was caught.
Did you find out what kinds of jobs he created?
