“El Chapo” ran a global narcotics crime ring and escaped two maximum security prisons before being captured, extradited to the United States in 2017, found guilty in 2019, and sentenced to life in prison.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman's daughter Alejandrina Guzman just launched a beer branded with her dad's name, because nothing matters.

Excerpt from Reuters:

The beer is part of the “El Chapo 701” brand, which has already launched a clothing line, and gets its name from when Forbes named him the 701st richest person in the world in 2009. Forbes estimated his net worth at $1 billion at the time.

“This is an artisanal beer, with 4% alcohol. This prototype is a lager, and it’s made up of malt, rice and honey so it’s good,” said Adriana Ituarte, a salesperson for the brand. “And the idea is for it to be sold at bars that stock craft beer.”

A 355 ml bottle is due to be priced at 70.10 pesos ($3.73).

Read more: Drink like a Mexican kingpin: 'El Chapo' beer launched by daughter [reuters.com, Jose Luis Osorio, 1-17-2020, image courtesy El chapo beer] Read the rest

[Warning: Post contains graphic images.] Mexican investigators said Thursday they have discovered 166 human skulls in a clandestine burial pit in a central area of the Gulf state of Veracruz. Read the rest

In the Mexican state of Zacatecas, authorities announced today they have found the severed heads of four men. The heads were left in Styrofoam coolers, along with gang messages that appear to have been written by members of one drug cartel, directed at a rival cartel. Read the rest

Sinaloa drug cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was barely out of maximum-security prison when musicians all around Mexico started uploading hot musical takes about his (again) escape.

Gawker's Jesus Diaz points us to this bangin' video charting the escape route of noted Sinaloa drug cartel boss Chapo Guzmán, with a narco-corrido soundtrack. Read the rest

Wired's Danger Room blog points to this new report [PDF] by the NGO International Crisis Group, which details how Mexican drug cartels recruit and coerce kids as young as 11 years old to kill. Narcos “have recruited thousands of street gang members, school drop-outs and unskilled workers” over the last decade, and the report claims “cartel bosses will treat the young killers as cannon fodder, throwing them into suicidal attacks on security forces.” [Wired.com] Read the rest

An animated short on the escalating drug cartel violence on the US-Mexico border.

(Eric Holder. Photo: REUTERS)

A congressional subpoena directed to Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to be issued soon, according to CBS News, and will order him to hand over documents to lawmakers showing when he became aware of "Fast and Furious," a "gunwalking" operation that supplied guns to Mexican drug cartels. Snip from CBS:

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports the the subpoena will come from the House Oversight Committee, led by Republican Darrell Issa. It will ask for communications among senior Justice Department officials related to Fast and Furious and "gunwalking." The subpoena will list those officials, says Attkisson - more than a dozen of them - by name.

In Fast and Furious, the ATF allegedly allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons into the hands of suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. The idea was to see where the weapons ended up, and take down a cartel. But the guns have been found at many crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S., including the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

In related news, the very latest in a series of reports at the Los Angeles Times about "Fast and Furious" reveals that guns from that covert US operation were found literally inside the home of a narco boss in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico:

High-powered assault weapons illegally purchased under the ATF's Fast and Furious program in Phoenix ended up in a home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, whose organization was terrorizing that city with the worst violence in the Mexican drug wars.

Read the rest