El Chapo

The Untold Story of the World's Most Infamous Drug Lord

Noah Hurowitz

• Editorial: Atria Books
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781982133771
• Categoría: Ciencias sociales
• Categoría: Biografías de ciencias sociales

A stunning investigation of the life and legend of Mexican kingpin Joaquín Archivaldo "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, building on Noah Hurowitz's revelatory coverage for Rolling Stone of El Chapo's federal drug-trafficking trial. This is the true story of how El Chapo built the world's wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months' worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo's family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down.Over the course of three decades, El Chapo was responsible for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, and fentanyl around the world, becoming in the process the most celebrated and reviled drug lord since Pablo Escobar. El Chapo waged ruthless wars against his rivals and former allies, plunging vast areas of Mexico into unprecedented levels of violence, even as many in his home state of Sinaloa continued to view him as a hero.This unputdownable book, written by a great new talent, brings El Chapo's exploits into a focus that previous profiles have failed to capture. Hurowitz digs in deep beyond the legends and delves into El Chapo's life and legacy—not just the hunt for him, revealing some of the most dramatic and often horrifying moments of his notorious career, including the infamous prison escapes, brutal murders, multi-million-dollar government payoffs, and the paranoia and narcissism that led to his downfall. From the evolution of organized crime in Mexico to the militarization of the drug war to the devastation wrought on both sides of the border by the introduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, this book is a gripping and comprehensive work of investigative, on-the-ground reporting.

1 THE BOY FROM LA TUNA

IT’S A HOT and sunny day in mid-April 2019, and I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a borrowed Honda Pilot SUV driven by Miguel Ángel Vega, a jovial reporter born and raised in Culiacán. We’re on our way to La Tuna, the birthplace of El Chapo, and like many of the towns and villages in these parts, it is not an easy place to get to. For people who don’t want to be found, that’s what makes it such a good place to hide. Driving along the twists and turns of Highway 24 as it hugs the curves of the hillsides, I can see why Sinaloans pride themselves on autonomy: in a place this remote, you can’t look to the outside world for help. As I was about to find out, they take matters of security into their own hands out here.

It’s an hour just to get from Culiacán to the municipal capital of Badiraguato, a town of about 3,700 people that spreads out on either side of the highway, which forms a main drag through town. Crossing the last bridge on the way out of Badiraguato, our cell phones lose service, and we drive for another hour up the highway before our next turn. Miguel Ángel and I pass the time chatting about the job, him quizzing me on my experience reporting on El Chapo’s trial and me asking him questions about the area, obscure figures in the drug trade, his life reporting on the violence in his hometown. It’s early afternoon now, and I’m forced to reapply sunscreen to my skin, still pale from winter in New York, and eventually I drape a spare shirt over my right arm to keep it from burning in the sun. Finally we come to the turnoff that will lead to La Tuna. This is where we hit the first checkpoint.

Miguel Ángel eases his foot off the gas and cuts the wheel left to turn onto a narrow dirt track headed off the highway and deeper into the mountains. By the side of the road, lounging in the shade of a tree, three men sit cradling AK-47-style rifles. As we pull up, they go bolt upright and eye us with sudden attention. A few feet away up a slight hill, a fourth man hops out of the cab of a bulldozer, an AK in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. With the walkie-talkie hand, he waves at us to stop, as his pals get to their feet. Apart from the tactical vests that hold extra magazines of ammo, all four men are dressed in street clothes. These men are not soldiers, and they’re not cops, although they might be the closest thing to cops or soldiers around here.

Years after a team of Mexican Marines and a couple of DEA agents captured El Chapo in the coastal Sinaloan city of Mazatlán, and years after he made his second escape from a maximum-security prison, and years after another team of Mexican Marines captured him in the Sinaloan city of Los Mochis, and years after Mexican authorities washed their hands of him and handed him over to U.S. agents and he was loaded onto a plane and flown to New York, where he was convicted on all counts to face life in prison, the valley where El Chapo spent his youth remains solidly under the control of his brother Aureliano Guzmán Loera, a rotund and fearsome man known by his nickname, “El Guano.”

El Guano was never much of a kingpin, nor even a second-in-command to El Chapo, who had always favored another brother, Arturo. El Guano’s not much of a kingpin now, either; his domain extends about as far as the highway, and he’s mostly in control of the drug cultivation in the area, while others make the real money smuggling drugs north and wield the real power, paying off entire police departments and city governments. But on this road, in this valley, El Guano is the man, and it’s with his permission, granted on a semipermanent basis through a contact of Miguel Ángel, that we’re allowed to enter the area.

The lead gunman appears to be in his late twenties, his arms covered in tattoos. Gripping the AK by its distinctive curved magazine—referred to in Mexico as a cuerno de chivo, or goat’s horn—he keeps the muzzle pointed at the ground as he strolls up to the passenger-side window and motions for me to roll it down.

He wants to know who we are, what we’re doing there. Do we have permission to be there?

I’m not sure how to respond.

When Miguel Ángel picked me up at the airport twenty-four hours earlier, the first thing he told me was the importance of being honest with these guys: as long as you’re straight with them, they’ll be straight with you. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to worry. Miguel Ángel should know. After working for years as a journalist in Culiacán for the local weekly paper Riodoce (and a stint directing movies), he now makes his living as a “fixer,” driving international reporters around the state setting up interviews with all manner of shady characters. Around here, he’s the best in the business, and does a brisk trade as one of the only reporters with the contacts necessary to gain access to La Tuna.

When the gunman asks me if I speak Spanish, the first thing that comes out of my mouth is a lie.

“No,” I say, feigning a look of regret.

My heart is pounding. Although I had known we might come across checkpoints like this, and I had heard stories of other reporters being turned away, Miguel Ángel and I have not discussed what I should say in such a situation. It seems wise to let him do the talking.

After giving me a hard stare for a moment, the gunman turns to Miguel Ángel and asks him who we are, if we’re journalists. In a cheerfully deferential tone, Miguel says that yes, we’re reporters, but explains that we’re just here to see a friend.

Not a lie! Over the years, Miguel Ángel has cultivated a relationship with our host, an evangelical Christian who lives and raises cattle in La Tuna, just a short walk from the home of El Chapo’s mother, and who graciously hosts Miguel Ángel and his rotating cast of guests.

“He’s expecting us, ask them on the radio,” Miguel Ángel tells the gunman with the tattoos and the hard stare.

Without taking his eyes off us, the young gunman takes a step back and mutters something into the radio. After a moment, he receives an answer that seems to satisfy him. He turns to me again, nearly blinding me with his gaze.

“¿Cómo te llamas?” he asks. “What’s your name?”

Although I’ve been following the conversation fine, I perk up at this, as if the question is the first thing I understand, a relic of some Spanish 101 class in high school, and answer like I’m proud to pass a test.

“Noah, me llamo Noah,” I chirp with only partially feigned relief, heart still racing.

The gunman gives me a close look, as if trying to determine if I’m lying.

“Okay,” he says finally, with a raise of his eyebrows. After one more squint for good measure, he waves us along.

Miguel Ángel waves at the men as we pass. I dig into my backpack, pull out a pack of cigarettes, and light one, taking a long drag in relief.

“Dude,” Miguel Ángel says happily, “were you so fucking scared?”

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From the highway, we follow a dirt track as it curves and plunges and climbs its way deeper into the hills. The drive is punctuated now and again by small ranches and villages, some with names that would be familiar to a knowledgeable scholar of Mexico’s drug lore, in which Sinaloa plays a central role. This area spawned enough big-name narcos to field the starting lineup of a baseball team (along with a healthy portion of the bullpen), and we pass through a series of villages that were once home to many of the men whose names have dominated most-wanted posters and newspaper headlines at one time or another for decades: Huixiopa, the birthplace of Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, alias El Azul; La Palma, hometown of the brothers Beltrán Leyva; and finally, La Tuna, home of El Chapo.

As we enter the village, it’s immediately apparent that, among the impoverished villages of the region, this little community has received special attention. Dirt roads give way to paving stones, and most of the houses are in better shape than those in the villages we’ve passed. A group of young men in skinny jeans and polo shirts sit on all-terrain vehicles clustered around one of the stores. Most have walkie-talkies clipped to the belts of their jeans, and some of them have pistols sticking out of their waistbands, and they turn to give us a hard stare from under their flat-brim baseball caps as we roll past.

La Tuna is laid out in something of a horseshoe shape, and at the end of the valley, the road bends sharply and heads up the hill before curving back around. Above the midpoint of the bend in the road there sits a walled compound, the roof of a red-tiled pagoda poking above it, overlooking the valley: the home El Chapo built for his mother, now in her nineties. At the top of the ridge, about fifty yards from the compound, sits a beautiful blue and white church, which El Chapo financed in the late 1980s as a gift to his mother. Like many in La Tuna, she has been a devout born-again Christian since missionaries began spreading the good word here in the eighties, prompting a wave of conversions to the Apostolic Church, a breakaway Pentecostal movement. Just below the church sits the home of our host, and we climb out of the SUV and stand on the patio stretching, taking in the view.

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Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera was born on April 4, 1957, in La Tuna to Emilio Guzmán Bustillo and María Consuelo Loera Pérez, and he grew up there with his brothers Miguel Ángel, Aureliano, Emilio, and Arturo, and sisters Armida and Bernarda. Like most of their neighbors in La Tuna, the Guzmán family didn’t have much, but with a few head of cattle inherited from El Chapo’s grandparents, they were still better off than some of their neighbors. Little Joaquín was a short kid, squat, earning himself the nickname El Chapo—meaning “Shorty”—that would stick with him for life. During my visit to La Tuna, I find a first cousin of El Chapo wrangling cows into a wire cattle pen, and when he takes a break, I ask him to describe young El Chapo to me.

“Ever since he was a child, he was a talented and bright kid, he wanted to get ahead,” he told me. “I’m telling you, this guy was a real fighter, a good worker and everything.”

When it comes to El Chapo’s early home life, it’s hard to separate mythology and fact. Some versions paint El Chapo’s father as a vicious and brutal man, a mean drunk who beat the young future kingpin at every opportunity and spent the little he earned on booze and prostitutes. Most of the relatives I speak with deny any abuse by Emilio’s hand, although some do acknowledge that El Chapo’s father was never one for hard work.

“Just like in any big family, there’s one lazy one, one dumb one, one wild one, and so on,” the cousin says. “Emilio just didn’t like to work very much, but he was a good person.”

María Consuelo, El Chapo’s mother, on the other hand worked herself to the bone, tending to the family’s small herd of cattle and raising young Joaquín and his siblings. El Chapo took after his mother’s work ethic.

“Even as a little child he had ambitions,” María Consuelo recalled in an interview published in 2014.

“I remember he had a lot of paper money—little notes of fifties and fives,” his mother told the reporter. “He’d count and recount them, then tie them up in little piles. He’d say, ‘Mama, save them for me.’ It was just colored paper, but they looked real. He piled them up carefully.… Ever since he was little, he always had hopes.”

With an eye toward business at an early age, legend has it that he would sell oranges to people along the winding, hilly walk between La Tuna and Huixiopa. On Sundays, his sister has said, he would get dolled up in cheap, fake gold chains and go out visiting family members and chatting up his neighbors. No matter that the fake gold would often give his skin a greenish hue.

El Chapo would continue to be a bit of a mama’s boy even as he rose to prominence as one of Mexico’s most notorious drug traffickers. In his only known interview, he described the relationship with María Consuelo as “perfect… lots of respect, affection, and love.” For years, even when he was the most wanted man in Mexico, El Chapo would make regular visits back to La Tuna to see his mother. And as his wealth and status increased, he saw to it that she lived in comfort; he built the spacious compound in the center of La Tuna that she occupies to this day and installed on a hill above town a massive tank that continues to deliver running water to his mom’s house, along with the rest of the village.

El Chapo never grew taller than five feet six inches tall, but he was a lively kid who loved to play volleyball, as long as he wasn’t busy helping with the cattle or heading out on his sales rounds. It was that inner drive, that motivation and entrepreneurial spirit, that pushed him to look for opportunities beyond selling bread and oranges. As with so many other young men in the Golden Triangle, opportunity came in the form of opium and weed.

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The hemp plant arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century, introduced by an emissary of the Spanish Empire who realized the crop would grow well in the colony, straddling the Tropic of Cancer, where temperate and tropical climates meet. The marijuana plant was in great demand at the time for the fabrication of the hemp ropes and sails necessary to maintain the Spanish crown’s world-conquering navy, but over time the plant’s flowers and the THC they contained began to be used for their psychoactive properties.

The red and pink flowers of opium poppies were also imported, from the Far East; government officials first made note of the presence of the plant growing in Sinaloa in 1889. In the mountains of the so-called Golden Triangle, where persistent droughts, thin topsoil, and steep slopes limit agricultural yield, poppies presented an attractive option to poor subsistence farmers. They could be harvested as many as three times per year and brought a significantly higher price at market than corn or beans. Many local farmers started to augment their subsistence crops with small plots of poppies and marijuana, while landowners and ranchers began to see large-scale promise in them as cash crops. A terminology sprang up around the trade: in these mountains, the opium poppy is known as amapola; the sap that is harvested for opium is called goma, or gum; and the growers and harvesters are known as gomeros, or gummers.

Before long, opium dens could be found in cities across northern Mexico, and opium and its derivative morphine began appearing in tinctures and patent medicines, as a brisk trade grew between the Sinaloan port city of Mazatlán and merchants in San Francisco. With the prohibition of opium in the United States in 1914, and in Mexico in 1920, the early drug runners of Sinaloa saw their profits soar when selling the stuff on the black market. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, opium (along with cocaine) had been legally available to consumers in a wide array of medicinal forms. In a pattern that would grimly repeat itself nearly a century later in the OxyContin-to-heroin pipeline, many consumers who had gotten hooked on formerly legal opium tinctures soon began turning to heroin. Thus demand increased, which in turn increased cultivation of opium in the Golden Triangle and other opium-producing regions across the globe.

The early drug trade in Sinaloa and the smuggling routes to the United States were initially dominated in part by pharmacists, but also by Chinese-Mexican syndicates who by at least 1916 were ferrying tins of raw opium north to Mexicali and across the border into Southern California, where they sold it to a Los Angeles–based Chinese man with connections up the West Coast. Even in these nascent, mom-and-pop days, there was a tremendous amount of money to be made in the illegal drug trade, and members of the Chinese syndicates could be seen rolling around Tijuana and Culiacán in the most expensive late-model cars Detroit had to offer. It wasn’t long before Mexican gangsters began looking for a way to wrest the business from their Chinese counterparts.

Mexico during this time was in the midst of an identity crisis. After years of turmoil, the federal government was faced with the challenge of uniting a racially diverse nation divided into thirty-one states, many that were essentially ruled by the landowners who had survived the revolution or revolutionary generals who had used it to seize power. The early state builders and founding intellectuals of post-revolution Mexico set out to craft a unified national identity, celebrating the mix of indigenous and Spanish heritage that had no room for minorities like the Chinese or culturally distinct indigenous communities. Throughout the 1920s, anti-Chinese propagandists churned out newspapers such as El Nacionalista (The Nationalist) and Pro-Patria (Pro-Fatherland), blaming any social ill imaginable on the Chinese, whom they depicted as spreaders of disease and peddlers of vice, contaminating the purity of Mexico’s youth with illegal gambling parlors, brothe...