With new escape, Guzman's legend grows Policemen check a house at the end of the tunnel through which Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman could have escaped from the Altiplano prison, in Almoloya de Juarez, Mexico on July 12, 2015

With new escape, Guzman's legend grows

12 Jul 2015

afp.com / PGR /

A picture released by the Attorney General of Mexico (PGR) shows the mugshot of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman published on the PGR website on February 22, 2014

Folk bands sang his praises. When he was arrested, supporters protested in his home state. Now that Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has escaped again, singers may add a new verse.
Guzman, 58, nurtured a Robin Hood image in his northwestern state of Sinaloa while running the most powerful, and one of the most ruthless, cartels in Mexico.
His capture in February 2014 had been a huge victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto in his battle against organized crime after years of violence that have left tens of thousands of people dead.
But the tables turned again on Saturday night, when Guzman escaped from the Altiplano maximum-security prison in central Mexico through a secret tunnel under his cell's shower.

AFP / Yuri Cortez

Policemen check a house at the end of the tunnel through which Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman could have escaped from the Altiplano prison, in Almoloya de Juarez, Mexico on July 12, 2015

The 50-by-50 centimeter (20-by-20 inch) hole was wide enough for his small frame -- his nickname means "Shorty."
After crawling through, he fled down a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) long tunnel that opened into a construction site.
The Sinaloa cartel's legend grew after he escaped a first time in 2001 from another prison, in western Jalisco state, by hiding in a laundry cart.
He spent 13 years on the lam before his capture last year, long enough to build a drug trafficking empire that stretched around the globe.
Musicians wrote folk ballads known as "narcocorridos," tributes to drug capos.
The mustachioed drug lord married an 18-year-old beauty queen, Emma Coronel, in 2007 and is believed to have 10 children with various women.

AFP / Yuri Cortez

Federal policemen stand guard outside the Altiplano prison in Almoloya de Juarez, Mexico on July 12, 2015, after drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped

He is believed to have been brazen enough to walk into restaurants in his state of Sinaloa, ask diners to hand their cell phones to his bodyguards, eat calmly and pay everyone's tabs before leaving.
He is Mexico's answer to Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord who was a popular in his native Medellin while terrorizing his rivals and the authorities until police killed him in 1993.
When Mexican marines backed by US law enforcement agencies captured Guzman in the Sinaloa beach resort of Mazatlan in February 2014, his reign appeared to be over for good.
- School dropout -
Born on April 4, 1957, to a family of farmers in Badiraguato, a Sinaloa town known as a cradle of drug traffickers, Guzman had humble beginnings.
He dropped out of primary school to work in marijuana and opium poppy fields as drug consumption rose in the neighboring United States.

AFP / Alfredo Estrella

Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted by marines as he is presented to the press on February 22, 2014 in Mexico City

He was recruited by Guadalajara cartel boss Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the "chief of chiefs" and a godfather of Mexico's modern drug cartels.
Guzman's job was to contact drug traffickers in the Colombian cities of Medellin and Barranquilla, gaining a valuable network of contacts to smuggle cocaine into the United States, Europe and Asia.
After Felix Gallardo was arrested in 1989, Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel began its rise as the biggest gang in the country.
A turf war ensued, with a gunfight in 1993 at the airport of Guadalajara that killed the western city's archbishop, Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, allegedly because he was mistaken for Guzman.
Guzman was arrested that same year in Guatemala but escaped eight years later.
- On billionaire list -
His ability to sneak tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana into the United States made him "Public Enemy Number One" in Chicago, a moniker that had been given to US prohibition-era mafia boss Al Capone.

AFP / Fernando Brito

People protest in support of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman in Culiacan, Sinaloa state, Mexico, on February 26, 2014

Guzman "easily surpassed the carnage and social destruction that was caused by Capone," the Chicago Crime Commission said in February 2013.
He even made Forbes magazine's list of billionaires until he was left out in 2013 because he was believed to have spent much of his wealth on protection.
But Guzman remained on the Forbes list of the world's most powerful people, standing at number 67.
His time at the top was marked by violence.
His cartel became entangled in brutal turf wars against the paramilitary-like Zetas cartel and other gangs for years.

AFP / Alfredo Estrella

Newsapers hang at a stand in Mexico City, on February 23, 2014, the day after Mexican drug trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was arrested

More than 80,000 people have died in the drug war since 2006, when then president Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers against gangs.
More than 10,000 were killed in Ciudad Juarez alone in violence between Sinaloa and Juarez cartel members fighting for supremacy in the key drug corridor at the border with the US state of Texas.
Guzman's own family has paid dearly for his life of crime. One of his brothers was killed in a Mexican jail in December 2004 and a son was killed in a Culiacan shopping center in May 2008.

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