Just rewards for El Chapo

Chicago Tribune: El Chapo’s murderous Sinaloa drug cartel was based in Mexico, but for years its American nerve center was Chicago. His henchmen from the Little Village neighborhood, twin brothers Pedro and Margarito Flores, turned the city into a conduit for as much as 1,500 kilos of cocaine and heroin each month that would be distributed throughout the U.S. and Canada. Often, drugs sent to American cities were stashed behind fake walls or in crates of frozen fish or avocados shipped in boxcars and tractor-trailers.

Once atop a drug smuggling operation that spanned four continents, Guzman, 61, now faces spending the rest of his life in prison after his conviction Tuesday in a Brooklyn federal courtroom.

The 51/2-foot kingpin’s “bloody reign,” said Richard Donoghue, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, “has come to an end, and the myth that he could not be brought to justice has been laid to rest.”

That declaration is universally welcomed, but particularly in this city. A share of those drug shipments that came through Chicago stayed in Chicago. El Chapo’s evil stoked street violence and ruined the lives of countless youths here.