Red faced Guatemalan officials are gingerly backing away from initial claims that
the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel has been killed in a gun battle.
Rumours
about the death of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman spread like wildfire, after an unconfirmed
report that a body from a gun battle in the Peten zone of Northern Guatemala, bordering
Mexico, resembled him. Troops and helicopter gunships have swept the area and haven't
even found any traces of a fire fight.
A senior Mexican Presidential Spokesman
says there's no confirmed evidence that Guzman is dead. And Guatemala's Minister of
the Interior concedes the data was, quote: "Chaotic."
The only salient fact
about the unsubstantiated assumption is that the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas are
fighting tooth and nail throughout the border zones of Southern Mexico and Northern
Guatemala.
Guzman, who changes locations almost as often as cell phones, is
guarded by a heavily armed phalanx of bodyguards. For him to be caught in an ambush
is unlikely. He bribed his way of a so called Mexican maximum security jail in January
2001, just before he was due to be extradited to the United States. His only public
appearances since than have been in Forbes Magazine's Richest and Most powerful lists.