SM1'S BLOG 4 U: Weekly InSight | 7 March 2014 Special - Corruption in El Salvador: Politicians, Police and Transportistas ...

Weekly InSight | 7 March 2014

Special - Corruption in El Salvador: Politicians, Police and Transportistas (Web)

The Infiltrators: Corruption in El Salvador's Police

Ricardo Mauricio Menesses Orellana liked horses, and the Pasaquina rodeo was a great opportunity to enjoy a party. He was joined at the event -- which was taking place in the heart of territory controlled by El Salvador's most powerful drug transport group, the Perrones -- by the town's mayor, Hector Odir Ramirez, and the infamous drug and people trafficker Jose Natividad Luna Pereira, alias "Chepe Luna." Also present were undercover narcotics agents, who immediately recognized Menesses as the director of El Salvador's National Civil Police (PNC).

'Chepe Luna,' the Police and the Art of Escape

The United States -- which through its antinarcotics, judicial and police attaches was very familiar with the routes used for smuggling, and especially those used for people trafficking and understood that those traffickers are often one and the same -- greeted the new government of Elias Antonio Saca in 2004 with a proposal: take down this Chepe Luna.

This Week's Analysis

How to Reach New Criminal-Political Equilibrium in Mexico's Post-'Chapo' Vacuum

With Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman now back in a cage many analysts and ordinary Mexicans alike fret about the expected knock-on effects. What those effects are, and how bloody they might be, will depend on President Enrique Peña Nieto's next moves in dealing with both the power vacuum Guzman leaves and the political and financial networks that supported his grip.