From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production

of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

The trial of Joaquin Guzman Loera began this week in New York.

Known better as El Chapo, Guzman was regarded once as the biggest trafficker in the entire drug business,

and Forbes called him one of the most powerful men in the world, full stop. El Chapo had twice before escaped from Mexican prisons,

the second time through a tunnel that his henchman dug right under his cell,

and after that, Mexico finally agreed to extradite him to the United States for trial.

He faces 17 counts related to drugs and firearms, and prosecutors intend to tie him

to more than 30 murders. Convicting a cartel boss is no easy feat, but the government has two-star

witnesses, two Americans, major drug traffickers who worked very closely with the Sinaloa

cartel and became federal informants.

Patrick Raddenkief has covered the drug war for years. And Patrick, who are these guys, these witnesses?

So there are a pair of identical twins from Chicago, Pedro and Margarito Flores. They're Mexican-American.

They're born in the U.S. and actually grew up on the West Side. It's funny, you know, I've been writing about the drug trade for years, but there's this one aspect of the business that always remain kind of stubbornly mysterious to me. We all know about these big drug cartels in Mexico. I've written about them for the magazine. And we know they

import huge amounts of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine to the United States. And we're also

probably familiar with the idea that there's a retail drug market here where people buy these

drugs. You have mental images, maybe because you watch the wire, or maybe because you buy pot

from time

to time. I take the Fifth Amendment on that. No, no accusation intended. But the one thing I've

always been curious about is where do those two worlds intersect? Where do they meet? Who are the

middlemen who actually negotiate with the big suppliers who deal in kilos in Mexico and the street corner

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