LEADING MEXICAN DRUG TRAFFICKER ESCAPES FROM PRISON

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 20 -- Authorities launched a massive manhunt today for
one of Mexico's most famous drug kingpins following his escape Friday night
from a maximum-security prison.

Joaquin Guzman, who was convicted of drug trafficking in 1993 and was said
to be the former head of the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel, was not in his
cell this morning, triggering the nationwide search. "We found out this
morning after a routine inspection," said a spokesman for the attorney
general's office.

Dozens of guards inside the prison were detained for questioning today, and
the warden was placed under house arrest; authorities said the escape could
not have occurred without the guards' help.

Guzman, known as "El Chapo," had been serving a 20-year-minimum sentence at
the Puente Grande prison in the city of Guadalajara.

His escape came a day after President Vicente Fox announced a new crusade
against organized crime. Fox has used particularly tough language against
drug traffickers, so much so that many worry for the president's safety.
Last year, Fox issued an unusually direct, televised warning to drug
traffickers: "To them I say: This is the last call."

Despite Fox's intentions, many people here say taming the Mexican drug
cartels -- well entrenched, enormously wealthy and marked by brutality --
could be an impossible task. With the help of corrupt police and judges,
many drug kingpins in Mexico have enjoyed virtual impunity.

The Sinaloa cartel has been a major shipper of Colombian cocaine into the
United States. It was also widely believed to have been involved in the
sensational 1993 killing of Archbishop Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of
Guadalajara.

The official report on that assassination was that the Roman Catholic
leader was accidentally killed in a shootout between Guzman's drug gang and
a rival cartel at the Guadalajara airport. But the bizarre circumstances --
the archbishop was wearing his clerical robes, making him difficult to
mistake for a member of a drug gang -- have left it one of Mexico's most
mysterious killings. Posadas was also slain in a particularly gruesome
manner: shot 14 times at point-blank range.

Following Posadas's killing, for which Guzman has never been charged, there
was a multimillion-dollar reward posted for his arrest. Guzman was captured
later that year and imprisoned until he vanished last night.

Santiago Creel, secretary of the Ministry of Interior, said he would pursue
the case "with all the force of the state and the new administration."