Joaquín Guzmán – A Mexican Drug Lord and A Former Leader Sinaloa Cartel

Who is Joaquin Guzman?

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzman Loera is a Mexican drug lord and a former leader of an international crime syndicate, Sinaloa Cartel. He was born on the 4th of April, 1957 in La Tuna, Badiraguato Municipality, Sinaloa, Mexico. He is commonly known as “El Chapo” because of his 168 cm stature. Furthermore, he is considered to be the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.

Early Life

Guzman is the son of Emilio Guzman Bustillos and Maria Consuelo Loera Perez. His father was officially a cattle rancher. Some people suspect him to be a gomero, an opium poppy farmer. Furthermore, He has two younger sisters and four younger brothers.

Guzman was physically abused by his father. Furthermore, he entered the drug trade through his father, as he helped him grow marijuana for local dealers. Guzman began working with one of the nation’s rising drug lords, Héctor Luis Palma Salazar by the late 1970s. Furthermore, he helped Salazar map routes to move drugs through Sinaloa and into the United States. Later, he supervised logistics for one of the nation’s leading kingpins in the mid-1980s, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. However, Guzman founded his cartel in 1988 after Gallardo’s arrest.

Criminal History of Joaquin Guzman

Guzman oversaw operations whereby mass cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin were produced and smuggled as well as distributed throughout Europe and the United States. He pioneered the use of distribution cells and long-range tunnels near borders. This enabled him to export more drugs than any other trafficker in history to the United States. Furthermore, Guzman’s leadership of the cartel brought immense wealth and power. He ranked as one of the most powerful people in the world between 2009 and 2013 by Forbes. Also, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimated that he matched the influence and wealth of Pablo Escobar.

The cops captured Guzman in 1993 in Guatemala. He sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico for charges of murder and drug trafficking. However, he bribed the prison guards and escaped in 2001 from a federal maximum-security prison. Mexico and the U.S combined offered $8.8 million rewards when he was a fugitive. Cops captured him again and arrested him in Mexico in 2014. However, He escaped before formal sentencing through a tunnel under his jail cell in 2015. Mexican authorities recaptured him that followed a shoot-out in 2016. He extradited to the U.S. a year later. In 2019, Guzman found guilty of several criminal charges. These charges were related to his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel. Currently, he is serving a life sentence at ADX Florence.