I am at once humiliated and outraged that hypocritical Mexican officials have fired me as director of Altiplano prison in Mexico and loudly accused me of incompetence if not outright cooperation in the recent escape by celebrity mass murderer and narcotics trafficker Chapo Guzman. That is unfair. I am merely one decent man in a country of vast political and institutional corruption. I thought I could overcome the system, and I certainly tried.

I was confident Chapo Guzman would never leave Altiplano while his heart still beat. My maximum security prison matched the finest detention facilities on earth, and no one had ever escaped. How could they? We controlled regional airspace and precluded helicopters and other aircraft from even trying to approach. Our walls three-feet thick deterred all vehicles, even those loaded with explosives, from attempts to ram us. Superb technology limited cell phone transmission to a mere six miles from the prison and enabled us to instantly pinpoint the location of any person or piece of equipment. We trained our guards in a variety of disciplines, especially in repelling attacks, and had to option to administer regular polygraph examinations to all personnel. No Chapo agents could overcome all these security obstacles.

All right, some say, that’s fine far as it goes, but why weren’t you attuned to tunneling since Chapo is the foremost practitioner of tunnel making in the world today? That is hindsight. Let me tell you what you see around Altiplano prison. You see ditches and tunnels and pipes and lots of related equipment. There was no reason for us to investigate, or even notice, the construction of a house about a mile from the prison. I was busy running the prison and ensuring that Chapo’s human rights weren’t violated. He told me, and his lawyers announced to the public, that he felt degraded having to shower while on camera. He needed at least a little privacy. Let’s be honest and acknowledge I might not have lived long had I denied Chapo’s request. After discussing this with other penal officials, many of whom have also lost their jobs and, like me, are under investigation, we decided to build a short wall blocking Chapo’s shower from the omnipresent eye of a security camera. What could be the harm?

I really don’t blame prison guards for not telling me they heard sounds like digging near and ultimately underneath Chapo’s cell. That could’ve been gophers or rats. I sometimes walked by his cell and heard the noise too. I made a note to contact maintenance about pest control. None of us discussed the matter further, and I wasn’t worried last Saturday night. I was watching TV when the alarm interrupted and officers pounded my door.

“Chapo’s gone,” they said.

“Where?”

“Down a hole.”

I ran to his cell and saw, behind the short privacy wall near the shower, an opening two feet by two in the floor. Some guards had already climbed down about thirty feet into a tunnel, five and a half feet high and two and a half wide, and quite carefully begun walking to see where it led. I could’ve gone, too, but decided to organize recapture operations. Seal the prison, I said; block all highways and roads; close the airport; bring in the army; announce this on radio and TV.

The tunnel went to that damn house about a mile away. The exterior was finished but the rough interior served as excavation central. The equivalent of three hundred truckloads of dirt were brought out of a hole in the earthen floor of the house and spread around the property which, when you actually look at it, appears about three feet higher than it was. I’d never been there. How would I have known? There was a lit and ventilated tunnel equipped with a motorcycle on rails probably used to haul dirt to the house. Maybe Chapo rode it during his escape.

I hope they don’t put me in prison for this. It wouldn’t be fair if I suffer in custody while Chapo screws his hot young wife and drinks booze with his lieutenants. If they convict me of something, I want Chapo’s cell. But I think we’ll capture him again. I have to say and believe that. In hindsight I’d also say the privacy walls blocking surveillance cameras were a bad idea. We really shouldn’t have had to worry about all this. If Chapo had been extradited to the United States, I doubt he and his gang could have pulled this off.