Alva Review-Courier -

NEW YORK (AP) — The infamous Mexican drug lord and escape artist Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was alternately portrayed at his U.S. trial on Tuesday as a calculating leader of a bloodthirsty smuggling operation that funneled tons of cocaine and other drugs into American cities and a scapegoat for a conspiracy whose actual mastermind bribed crooked Mexican officials as high as the president to keep his freedom.

In opening statements amid tight security in federal court in Brooklyn, Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Fels told a jury whose identities have been kept secret how the man who got his start in...