Mexico shuts down prison where El Chapo organized his first escape and which fell under the control of the country's most dynamic cartel and currently house the leader of the defunct cartel featured in Netflix's Narcos: Mexico
Mexico announced the closing of a prison where Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán staged his first escape in 2001 and which fell under the power Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the country's most dynamic cartel.
The Federal Center for Social Readaptation Number 2 West in the western state of Jalisco had become known for such lax standards that it earned the nickname 'Puente Grande,' or 'Big Bridge.'
The jail housed almost 400 prisoners, including Miguel Felix Gallardo, the founder of the defunct Guadalajara Cartel. Gallardo's rise to power is portrayed in the hit Netflix series, Narcos: Mexico.
Public Safety Secretary Alfonso Durazo said 'it was a myth that it was a high-security prison.'
'For inmates who belonged to the Jalisco New Generation, being at the Puente Grande prison meant having all the conditions to continue ruling themselves,' Durazo said Thursday. 'Part of the goal is precisely to disperse these criminals among other prisons to eliminate the possibility of them repeating their self-rule.'
On Monday, the federal Public Safety Department, which Durazo leads, announced it was closing the prison, which had been opened for 27 years.
The agency did not give a specific reason, other than saying it was part of a modernization effort to ensure prisoners´ rights and rehabilitation, and a government cost-cutting campaign.
The department said Monday all inmates currently at the prison would be transferred to other facilities. The complex, near the western city of Guadalajara, also houses at least one other state prison; it was not clear if that would remain open.
By early Wednesday morning, the majority of the prisoners had been placed on 10 buses and transported to a local airport before they were placed at different prisons across the nation.
File image from January 28, 2005 shows Mexican Army soldiers inspecting the surrounding the top-security Puente Grande prison in Jalisco, Mexico. The Mexican government announced Monday that it was closing the federal prison made famous by the 2001 escape of convicted drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán
El Chapo was serving a 20-year sentence when he escaped from the prison in 2001, purportedly in a laundry cart. According to other versions, he simply paid off prison staff and walked out.
Guzmán would remain on the lam for another 13 years before being recaptured and escaping another Mexican prison through a tunnel. He was finally re-apprehended, extradited to the United States in 2017 and sentenced to life behind bars in 2019.
The Puente Grande complex continued making news earlier this year. In May, inmates fought each other with fists and guns at the prison, leaving seven prisoners dead and nine wounded.
Officials did not explain how the inmates got the two guns used in the fight. Of the seven dead, three were shot to death and four were beaten to death.
The killings followed a prison baseball game, but it was not clear if that was related to the dispute. Nor was it clear if allegiance to rival drug gangs could have been involved in the dispute.