Shorty drug lord family. Shorty made legs
The free life for Joaquín Guzmán “El Chapo” Loera (Shorty) ended at 56 years old with his arrest last Saturday when Mexican Marines dragged the head of the largest drug cartel, Sinaloa, half naked from his bed and dragged him across the street, drilling into the back of his head with the barrel of a gun. The public learned what the world's most wanted drug gangster looks like, whose power and influence extended far beyond the borders of Mexico at a height of sixty meters.
But if the peasant son Joaquin Guzman decided to choose an honest life, it would probably involve tomatoes. It was these that his father grew on his farm. It was in a tomato box, they say, that baby Joaquin slept for the first months because his parents did not have money for a crib. It is these ripe red vegetables that still adorn the license plates of the state of Sinaloa, as if trying to convince them of what its many residents supposedly do for a living.
That’s how it was, of course, a hundred years ago. Until the Chinese brought opium poppy here, and enterprising peasants learned a new, and completely legal, business. During World War II, Mexicans officially supplied opium to the United States, where they made morphine for the army. Then they learned to grow marijuana, and the free 1960s provided them with a wonderful market.
Therefore, when Joaquin Guzman approached adolescence, an alternative to tasty, but not very profitable tomatoes was obvious - he began working as a courier for his uncle Pedro Avilez, one of the “pioneers” of the Mexican drug trade. My uncle was no fool - he was one of the first to come up with the idea of transporting weed to the USA on light aircraft. A couple of decades later, his nephew was no longer carrying marijuana on planes, but cocaine, which by that time had become the number one drug in America, and had long forgotten what it meant to count money in his pocket.
Very our son of a bitch
The “status” of a drug lord in Mexico is surprising in its own way. Locals will never argue about the moral qualities of these people. Yes, murderers, yes, robbers. But our murderers and robbers, our “sons of bitches.” In impoverished areas of Mexico, drug cartels have long operated as parallel structures of power, guarantors of a system of minimum social security for people.
Locals try not to remember that the drug wars started by Guzman claimed tens of thousands of lives. But they remember that schools were built with his money, roads and electricity were laid in hard-to-reach areas of the state. Guzman is not the first. In the center of Culiacan, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, stands a chapel built in honor of Jesus Malverde. This is the main local bandit of the beginning of the last century. The authorities hated him so much that, having caught him and hanged him, they forbade him to bury him - they left him to rot on the gallows. But day after day, passers-by threw stones at its foot, forming a grave. Soon a chapel appeared on this site. This is because Malverde had a reputation as Robin Hood.
Joaquin Guzman achieved even greater veneration among local residents. Its most striking manifestation is in the songs of narco corrido. Based on Russian realities, this is a kind of local chanson, only performed not by tattooed gloomy personalities, but by romantic guys in beautiful sombreros.
Following the main characters of the corrido means being aware of how Mexican society lives. At the beginning of the last century, this musical tradition glorified revolutionaries and independence fighters, but realities are changing. Since the 1980s, the main theme of many corridos has been drug wars and the lives of drug lords. And the following lines are dedicated to Joaquin Guzman:
He sometimes sleeps in houses,
But often in tents.
Radio and rifles at the foot of the bed.
Sometimes a cave serves as its roof.
Guzman seems to be everywhere.
Discs with similar songs are sold throughout the country in huge quantities, and clips on YouTube collect millions of views. There is even something of a propaganda war in this: in 2006, bandits killed one of the most famous corrido performers, Valentin Elizalde, as they say, because he sang a song glorifying El Chapo in territory controlled by his sworn enemies, the drug cartel. Zetas." And then he also posted a video of the song on the Internet. Two months later, a video of Elizalde himself appeared on the Internet - with his throat cut...
However, the murder of the people's favorite remained only a minor episode against the backdrop of the worst drug war in the history of Mexico, which began just in 2006 and claimed about 70 thousand lives. The war, to which Guzman had a direct connection and which showed: people like him are needed not only by the poor peasants of the state of Sinaloa. At some stage, respectable bankers, Hollywood producers, and the authorities themselves are ready to enter into alliances with the kings of drug trafficking. There would be benefits.
Allied with the authorities
In 2006, Mexico's new president, Calderon, declared war on the drug cartels. And the drug cartels themselves violated the truce and began to fight among themselves.
Joaquin Guzman essentially attacked the one and a half million city of Ciudad Juarez, bordering the United States. Four roads - “gold” veins passing through the city towards America were controlled by the Juarez cartel. After several years of undeclared war, the city was recognized as the most dangerous place on earth - an average of ten people died there every day. In relation to Russian realities, imagine that this would happen in Nizhny Novgorod, which is comparable in size.
Guzman's next target was another powerful cartel, the Zetas. It is significant that in these wars the Mexican government unexpectedly took his side - with its operations it bled the Juarez combat units, eliminated almost the entire leadership of the Zetas, but almost did not touch the cartel of Guzman himself. They say the tactic was this: take one cartel as an ally in order to defeat the rest, and then behead him too.
As long as there was an informal truce between the authorities and El Chapo, he was allowed a lot. So much so that even US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was outraged. She once spent an entire day almost as El Chapo’s neighbor: in 2012, she came to the city of La Paz in Mexico to discuss drug trafficking problems. There, at the same time, the main drug lord also lived quietly in one of his mansions. The police, of course, ran to arrest him, but only the day after Clinton left. And, of course, I didn’t find anyone in the house.
Expanding the business to a global level
By that time, El Chapo began to show less and less caution. People say he, a billionaire and one of the most powerful people in Mexico, if not the entire American continent, is tired of hiding in the mountains. He was increasingly seen in large cities, where he equipped at least seven mansions with a complex system of underground passages.
Perhaps he no longer perceived himself as a bandit. Hollywood producers from the Univisuon channel are buying the rights to film the 60-episode series “Drug Lord” about his life. Leading European bankers do not shy away from dealing with him and even stand in line. Who would refuse a client whose business turnover is estimated from 3 billion to 7 billion dollars a year?
In July 2012, at a hearing in the US Senate, a representative of one of the largest and most famous British banks, HSBC, was asked: how is it that the bank for four years could not close a suspicious account, which, as it eventually turned out, belonged to the Sinaloa cartel and through which it was possible launder almost $7 billion? “Can this be allowed?” - the senators asked the banker Paul Terson, and he answered, looking down: “No, senator.”
Not long before this, another British bank, Wachovia, was fined $50 million. It was proven that over four years, $10 billion passed through Sinaloa’s accounts in cash alone.
The bankers got off with fines and no one was punished. Paul Terson, who withstood senatorial questioning with such courage, was sent into a well-deserved retirement a few months later, thanked, according to corporate press releases, for “37 years of service to HSBC” and for “helping to achieve the expansion of the division’s business into a global level."
Arrest of Shorty
But no one thanked Shorty himself. When the authorities weakened most of the drug clans with his hands, they decided to remove the new “ally” from the scene. It turned out to be easier than before. There was no longer any need to travel hundreds of kilometers along impassable mountain roads to his lair. He was tracked down to a house in the luxury resort of Mazatlan, very close to the country's main military academy. The security did not offer any resistance.
After Guzman’s arrest, fifty armored vehicles and a huge arsenal of weapons were confiscated. All of it was stored on three farms and 17 mansions that were also confiscated. That is, it is obvious that the authorities had long been keeping records of the property of their enemy “ally” and were only waiting for the opportunity to lay their hands on it.
However, not everyone in Mexico is confident that the blow to the cartel was delivered at the right time. Sinaloa has not yet celebrated a complete victory over its rivals from the Zetas cartel, and now this clan can again strengthen its position. In addition, there is information that as soon as El Chapo began to drift from the mountains to the cities towards a more comfortable life, operational control of the cartel passed from him to partners Ismael Zambada and Juan Jose Esparragoza. So it’s too early to talk about the complete collapse of Sinaloa.
Now El Chapo faces trial in Mexico or extradition to the United States, where he faces five charges in absentia. The Americans are trying to take Shorty to their place as soon as possible. They remember that in 1993, the Mexican authorities already arrested Guzman and even sentenced him to 20 years in prison. But he first essentially “privatized” the prison in which he lived. And then, when the prospect of extradition to the United States loomed, the video surveillance system in the prison suddenly broke down, the electronic doors were unlocked, El Pacho left the cell, hid in a wagon with dirty laundry and calmly drove out of the most secure prison in the country.
That escape was called the “golden kilogram” - with a hint of the size of the bribe the guards received from the drug lord. Since then, Shorty has clearly had more gold, but his desire to be in the USA has clearly decreased.
Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera (Joaquin (Archivaldo Guzman Loera) was born in 1954 in the Mexican state of Sinaloa (La Tuna, Badiraguato, Sinaloa, Mexico). Other sources call the year of his birth 1957, and there is no exact information on this issue. But there is information that he was born in real poverty, and grew up in poverty. At some point, Joaquin probably got tired of surviving on the pitiful crumbs he got from selling oranges, and switched to a more profitable business - drug trafficking.
In the 1980s, El Chapo worked with "The Godfather" Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, being considered his "student". After the arrest of the latter, the young drug lord managed to split the Sinaloa Cartel, becoming the head of one of the organizations.
In 1993, El Chapo was caught by the police - he was sentenced to 20 years, but in 2001 he managed to escape by hiding in the depths of a laundry van. By the way, for his escape he had to bribe a lot of people, including prison staff. It was said that in total almost a hundred people helped El Chapo.
Today, the Sinaloa Cartel is one of the main suppliers of drugs in the United States. In 2011, Joaquin Guzman Loera, according to Forbes, was “worth” about $1 billion, which meant that he was among the ten richest Mexicans, and, in addition, it is believed that El Chapo’s influence has now surpassed the famous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
In 2004, El Chapo Guzman managed to simply disappear in a fantastic way and not fall under a carefully planned operation to arrest him, and in 2005 members of the Guzman family were arrested. However, this still did not help arrest the drug lord himself.
It is known that he married Alejandrina María Salazar Hernández in 1977, from whom he later separated; The first marriage produced three children. Joaquin's second wife was Griselda López Pérez, with whom he had four more children. According to reports, his sons are also involved in the drug business. Thus, one of his sons, Ivan Archivaldo, spent in prison from 2005 to 2008, but was eventually released due to insufficient evidence of guilt. Other members of the Guzman family - El Chapo's brothers and nephews - are also involved in criminal activities.
El Chapo today remains elusive to all the world's intelligence services - he continues to supply drugs not only to America, but to the entire interested world. He reportedly lives in the mountains of western Mexico.
It is known that El Chapo's name was recently directly linked to the alarming crime rate in Chicago. Thus, the fact that all the drugs in this third largest city in the United States are supplied by El Chapo is the main reason for territorial battles between street gangs. This, in turn, is what causes the murder rate to rise.
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A Mexican drug lord nicknamed "Shorty" has escaped from the Altiplano maximum security prison.
Has everyone already heard about this on the news? The heroes of the famous TV series “Escape” would be jealous of this plan. On July 11, 2015, Shorty escaped from the Altiplano in the state of Mexico through an underground tunnel 1.5 kilometers long.
Joaquin Guzman Loera, who is also a drug lord and billionaire, was for a long time the head of one of the most powerful Mexican drug cartels, Sinaloa, which supplied drugs to the United States. In 2011, he ranked 24th in the ranking of the most influential people in the world.
Previously, it was believed that escaping from this place was impossible. Let's see how he managed to escape?
Video: Who is “Shorty”
Drug lord's first escape
He has already escaped from prison once. In 1993, he was detained once and sentenced to 20 years in prison, but in January 2001 he managed to escape from prison.
From then until his capture, he was on the international wanted list of Interpol. In February 2014, he was caught by Mexican Marines in a hotel in Mazatlan. He was placed in a maximum security prison. But, as it turned out, not for long.
How the little guy ran away the second time
Prison perimeter and guard towers.
Video from El Chapo's cell before escaping from prison
This time he escaped from the highly guarded Altiplano in the state of Mexico through a 1.5 kilometer long tunnel. His escape has already cost the head of the intelligence service of the Mexican Federal Police his job, and 22 Altiplano employees suspected of possible involvement remain in custody.
(googlemaps)https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d4463.431190423161!2d-99.75111088468083!3d19.4208295460884!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i10 24! 2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x85d27a3ef46dba8f%3A0xb691dcf6ab9c445e!2sCentro+Fe deral+de+Readaptaci%C3%B3n+Social+no.+1+Almoloya!5e1!3m2!1sru!2s!4v14727250 39853(/googlemaps)
"Altiplano" on the map from which "Shorty" escaped
This is what the shower and toilet look like in the cell from which Onko escaped.
Let's take a closer look at the soul.
In the floor of the shower “cabin” there is a hole into the underground corridor.
According to investigators, someone inside the cell provided El Chapo's accomplices with a detailed plan of the Altiplano so that they could accurately calculate the construction of a tunnel from a separate building in the field directly to the shower stall.
The tunnel is not simple, but with an air conditioning system. Inside is a trolley with a converted motorcycle for quick movement to the final point, after all, its length is 1.5 kilometers.
The builders knew their way inside very well. In order to accurately dig a tunnel under the shower, they could be guided using special GPS tags, as is done when building underground siphons and tunnels in the mountains. And only prison staff could do this.
In the famous “Shawshank Redemption”, based on the story by Stephen King, Andy Dufresne dug an underground passage for 20 years and was not noticed in this matter. But this only happens in movies. In real life, it was impossible not to notice El Chapo’s preparations to escape, especially the very fact of his disappearance.
Video surveillance in the chamber.
This tunnel leads from the shower stall to an abandoned building, from where he managed to escape.
Oxygen cylinders in the tunnel.
Abandoned tools of the workers who dug this passage to freedom.
After 1.5 km the tunnel ends. The stairs lead up to an abandoned house.
Inside an abandoned house.
This is the exit from a tunnel in an abandoned house.
Aerial photograph of the house where the underground passage ended . The prison is 1.5 km away. Just a month ago it was believed that it was impossible to escape from it.
Interpol posted on Wednesday information about the search for Joaquin Guzman Loera, nicknamed Shorty, on its official website. Now more than 190 countries that are members of Interpol are searching for him.
After Guzman escaped, the entire Mexico City police force was put on enhanced duty, roads were blocked, buses and cars were inspected, and train and plane flights were suspended. All to no avail. Management suspected 18 prison employees of colluding with the criminal. They were immediately interrogated, but this also did not help. Police fear that if El Chapo sneaks into his mountain hideout in his home state of Sinaloa, he will never be caught.
Let your guard down
In 2014, the US government announced a $5 million reward for information about Shorty's whereabouts.
Video from the tunnel through which "Shorty" escaped
That same year, the drug lord went to jail. Then several hundred Mexican marines were sent to detain him. The mafioso believed so much in his elusiveness that he completely let down his guard.
He was detained without firing a shot in the resort town of Mazatlan on the Pacific coast. Then the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Federal Marshals Service also participated in the operation to capture El Chapo. For Washington he was and is of no less interest than for Mexico City, since his drug cartel is considered the main supplier of cocaine to the United States. The police tracked El Chapo for a very long time, gradually removing people from his circle. The work was complicated by the fact that “Shorty” is a very secretive person and organized a rather intricate communication system. It was almost impossible to track his phone. In the end, using a mobile phone signal, the police identified one of his closest associates, and then caught his personal courier. Thanks to the information received, it became clear where El Chapo was hiding.
According to experts, Guzman made one fatal mistake - he stopped hiding in the mountains, as he had done before, deciding that he could just as successfully hide in the city.
With reference to a statement from law enforcement agencies.
It is noted that he was last seen in the shower room of the prison block. A preliminary investigation showed that he went under the protection of Mexico's largest drug cartel, Sinaloa. - Insert K.ru]
An event with many definitions of “the most” took place in Mexico. The most dangerous criminal, who controls the entire worst business in America - drug trafficking in the USA, has escaped from the most secure prison.
The name Joaquín Guzmán Loera is not known to many people in Russia, but in South America, just the mention of it makes people shiver. Guzman is so terrible that after the death of Osama bin Laden, the US authorities consider him the most dangerous criminal in the world and “public enemy number one.” Before Guzman, only 1920s mafia leader Al Capone had received such a title. Since 2009, Guzman has consistently been included in Forbes magazine's list of the 60 most powerful people on the planet, and his fortune was estimated at $1 billion. The Sinaloa drug cartel, led by Guzman, is considered the largest and most powerful of the cocaine, heroin and marijuana smuggling organizations. The cartel delivers drugs not only to the United States, but also to 50 countries in Europe and Asia. The cartel plays a central role in Mexico's raging war between rival drug gangs, which has killed tens of thousands of people in recent years.
The escape
from prison is reminiscent of the plot of Frank Darabont's legendary film "The Shawshank Redemption", but, unlike the hero of the film, the drug lord did not dig a tunnel for 20 years. He only had a year to do this. The hole into the cell of “El Chapo” (“Shorty”, as Guzman was nicknamed for his short stature) was dug by accomplices from an abandoned house one and a half kilometers from the Altiplano prison. The tunnel had everything for the boss’s convenience: a motorcycle, lighting and even fans. The accomplices took care of the convenient dimensions of the underground passage: the height of the tunnel was 1.7 meters and the width was 70–80 centimeters. A hole measuring 50 by 50 cm was found in Guzman's cell, and under it was a ladder and a descent 10 meters down. According to experts, to complete such a task it was necessary to extract about 3.25 thousand tons of earth, while underground work using noisy equipment had to be carried out in three shifts for six to seven months. Removing such a volume of land would require at least 380 trips of seven-ton trucks. At first glance, such an escape seems fantastic. However, it should be noted that it was the tunnels that became the basis for the success of El Chapo’s drug business, which is why it is especially surprising that the prison authorities did not take this into account.The American press has released a video of the daring escape from a Mexican prison of drug lord Joaquin Guzman, nicknamed El Chapo (Shorty). The crime was committed almost in front of the guards of the Altiplano prison. A surveillance camera recorded the inmate walking up to the shower screen and “disappearing.”
Footage released by KTLA shows Guzman pacing back and forth in his cell. At 20:52 on July 11, he went to the far corner, where an individual shower was equipped behind a fence shorter than a man’s height.
The drug lord bent down and disappeared behind the partition, as if he had been sucked into a drain pipe. [...]
Shorty’s escape was not prevented even by the fact that he was under round-the-clock surveillance, and video surveillance was carried out even in his cell. However, there were two “dead zones” in the room, one of which was located in the shower, said Mexico’s Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.
In addition, Guzman was wearing a special electronic bracelet that revealed his location. However, before escaping, the criminal managed to take off this device and leave it in the cell.
Shorty was last seen during a medical examination at 8:00 p.m. And an hour later he left prison. [...]
US authorities are demanding the extradition of Joaquin Guzman from Mexico. The former head of perhaps the world's largest drug trafficking network, known as "El Chapo", was arrested a few days ago in his home Mexican state of Sinaloa- also the name of the drug cartel headed by Guzman.
Several years ago, the respected financial magazine Forbes named El Chapo one of the two most influential people in Mexico, along with billionaire tycoon Carlos Slim. Many Mexicans believe drug trafficker and killer Guzman has too much influence in the country to end his days behind bars.
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, nicknamed El Chapo, or “Shorty,” decided from an early age that, as the song says, “you can’t become famous for good deeds.” As a teenager, he became involved in the drug business and by the age of 30 had already become the head of a drug cartel, earning a reputation as a desperate and ruthless bandit. Many believe that “Shorty” has even surpassed the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in terms of influence and wealth.
In 1993, Guzman was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for drug trafficking and murder. After serving eight years, he managed to escape. Authorities have announced a $5 million reward for help in the capture of El Chapo.
Shorty ended up behind bars again only in 2014, as a result of a special services operation. But in July last year, the drug lord escaped again: a one and a half kilometer long tunnel was discovered under his cell.
Authorities recently tracked Guzman in his home state of Sinaloa. Mexican commandos finally managed to capture him on January 8th.
“When I saw a lot of soldiers and then heard machine gun fire, I realized that something serious was happening,” says a local resident. “First there was a shootout, and then the soldiers, shining their lanterns, burst into the house. The whole neighborhood woke up, but no one was allowed to come close.”
The third arrest of El Chapo was another, but not the last chapter in this detective story.
Recently, Rolling Stone magazine published an interview with Joaquin Guzman by the famous Hollywood actor Sean Penn. The interview produced the effect of a bomb exploding in society. As it turned out, in October, after the drug lord escaped, the actor met him in the wilds of the Mexican jungle. According to Penn, Mexican film star Kate del Castillo helped him organize an interview with Guzman. As it turned out, Shorty agreed to del Castillo's mediation, hoping for her contacts with film producers. Shortly before this, Guzman sent representatives of film studios a request about possible filming of a feature film based on his biography.
While drinking tequila, Guzman proudly told that his organization has a whole arsenal of all kinds of equipment for delivering drugs: trucks, boats, planes and even submarines. In general, as Sean Penn noted, “Shorty” did not at all give the impression of a wanted killer. Many observers were quick to call Penn's move "naive" and "risky."
“I don’t think Kate del Castillo is personally responsible for this, but I don’t think there was any need to do it,” said Mexico City resident Francisco Luz.
Perhaps Guzman's reputation as a rebel anti-establishment activist endeared him to Penn. But now the movie star may face two dangers at once: reprisals from Guzman’s accomplices and a potential lawsuit from the authorities of Mexico or the United States. Although at the moment, criminal law experts do not believe that by talking with El Chapo, the actor broke the law in any way. First of all, because he did not provide any assistance to the criminal.
Now Joaquin Guzman is placed in the same maximum security prison from which he previously managed to escape. US authorities are seeking the extradition of "Shorty". In America, the former drug lord could be charged with at least seven articles, providing for the most severe penalties.
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