Mexico City

In Mexico City. This capital is tense and angry following the sensational prison break by El Chapo, the powerful billionaire drug lord who busted out Saturday night.

With the Mexican president out of country on a state visit to France there is a feeling that the government is helplessly inept and hopelessly corrupt.

From here in the capital, every newspaper is blaming that malignant corruption for the great escape. No way, the feeling goes, that prison officials at the highest level were not involved. Think about it, this notorious drug kingpin who had escaped before, managed to gain his freedom by walking or riding through a mile long tunnel that was not only lighted and air conditioned, but managed to land directly under the one tiny spot in El Chapo's cell that the surveillance camera could not see.

It was an audacious, remarkable engineering achievement. And it must have required a huge bucket of bribes to buy a substantial supporting cast. Think about it, how could no one in authority notice the enormous amounts of dirt dug out of a three storey deep, mile long tunnel?

Now dysfunctional Mexico, which was already in crisis because of bloodshed, drug gangs and endemic corruption, has to face the fact that officials at the highest levels probably conspired with Public Enemy Number One to humiliate their own country. They are also guilty of helping foster the view from the United States that this is a dangerous deadly place that should.be walled off.