City of El Chapo may gain drug trafficking museum to attract tourists

The hometown of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman is considering opening a drug trafficking museum, the mayor said on Thursday, hoping to attract tourists to the area.

The museum, in the city of Badiraguato, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, could tell the stories of several drug trafficking leaders who were born in the region, which is the heart of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, Mexican newspaper Reforma reported.

The mayor of Badiraguato, José López, is said to have earmarked about US$1 million for the project, according to Reforma.

The theme of the new museum has not yet been finalized, Lopez said in an interview published by the Milenio news channel this week, but he noted that drug trafficking is an irrevocable part of the state’s history.

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“We cannot deny our history… we may have a museum dedicated to drug trafficking,” López told Milenio, adding that the local government’s priority is to encourage economic development in the region.

“We will listen to museum experts to guide us,” he added. “We are not closed to any subject.” Avigail López, the assistant to the municipal government, told Reuters that a museum was under construction, although its contents and subject had not yet been finalized.

Guzmán, 65, was convicted in New York in 2019 of smuggling billions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States and conspiring to assassinate enemies made because of his role as leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

He is serving a life sentence at Supermax Penitentiary in Colorado, the safest federal prison in the U.S., after escaping a Mexican prison through a tunnel in 2015.

With information from UOL