1 THE BOY FROM LA TUNA
ITâS A HOT and sunny day in mid-April 2019, and Iâm sitting in the passenger seat of a borrowed Honda Pilot SUV driven by Miguel Ăngel Vega, a jovial reporter born and raised in CuliacĂĄn. Weâre 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 donât want to be found, thatâs 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 canât 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.
Itâs an hour just to get from CuliacĂĄn 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 Ăngel and I pass the time chatting about the job, him quizzing me on my experience reporting on El Chapoâs trial and me asking him questions about the area, obscure figures in the drug trade, his life reporting on the violence in his hometown. Itâs early afternoon now, and Iâm 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 Ăngel 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 theyâre 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 MazatlĂĄn, 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 GuzmĂĄn Loera, a rotund and fearsome man known by his nickname, âEl Guano.â
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 Guanoâs not much of a kingpin now, either; his domain extends about as far as the highway, and heâs 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 itâs with his permission, granted on a semipermanent basis through a contact of Miguel Ăngel, that weâre 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 magazineâreferred to in Mexico as a cuerno de chivo, or goatâs hornâhe 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 weâre doing there. Do we have permission to be there?
Iâm not sure how to respond.
When Miguel Ăngel 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 youâre straight with them, theyâll be straight with you. If you tell the truth, you donât have to worry. Miguel Ăngel should know. After working for years as a journalist in CuliacĂĄn for the local weekly paper Riodoce (and a stint directing movies), he now makes his living as a âfixer,â driving international reporters around the state setting up interviews with all manner of shady characters. Around here, heâs 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.
âNo,â 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 Ăngel 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 Ăngel and asks him who we are, if weâre journalists. In a cheerfully deferential tone, Miguel says that yes, weâre reporters, but explains that weâre just here to see a friend.
Not a lie! Over the years, Miguel Ăngel 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 Chapoâs mother, and who graciously hosts Miguel Ăngel and his rotating cast of guests.
âHeâs expecting us, ask them on the radio,â Miguel Ăngel 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.
âÂżCĂłmo te llamas?â he asks. âWhatâs your name?â
Although Iâve 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 Iâm proud to pass a test.
âNoah, me llamo Noah,â I chirp with only partially feigned relief, heart still racing.
The gunman gives me a close look, as if trying to determine if Iâm lying.
âOkay,â he says finally, with a raise of his eyebrows. After one more squint for good measure, he waves us along.
Miguel Ăngel 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.
âDude,â Miguel Ăngel says happily, âwere you so fucking scared?â
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 Mexicoâs 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 JosĂ© Esparragoza Moreno, alias El Azul; La Palma, hometown of the brothers BeltrĂĄn Leyva; and finally, La Tuna, home of El Chapo.
As we enter the village, itâs 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 weâve 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.
JoaquĂn Archivaldo GuzmĂĄn Loera was born on April 4, 1957, in La Tuna to Emilio GuzmĂĄn Bustillo and MarĂa Consuelo Loera PĂ©rez, and he grew up there with his brothers Miguel Ăngel, Aureliano, Emilio, and Arturo, and sisters Armida and Bernarda. Like most of their neighbors in La Tuna, the GuzmĂĄn family didnât have much, but with a few head of cattle inherited from El Chapoâs grandparents, they were still better off than some of their neighbors. Little JoaquĂn was a short kid, squat, earning himself the nickname El Chapoâmeaning âShortyââthat 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.
âEver since he was a child, he was a talented and bright kid, he wanted to get ahead,â he told me. âIâm telling you, this guy was a real fighter, a good worker and everything.â
When it comes to El Chapoâs early home life, itâs hard to separate mythology and fact. Some versions paint El Chapoâs 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 Emilioâs hand, although some do acknowledge that El Chapoâs father was never one for hard work.
âJust like in any big family, thereâs one lazy one, one dumb one, one wild one, and so on,â the cousin says. âEmilio just didnât like to work very much, but he was a good person.â
MarĂa Consuelo, El Chapoâs mother, on the other hand worked herself to the bone, tending to the familyâs small herd of cattle and raising young JoaquĂn and his siblings. El Chapo took after his motherâs work ethic.
âEven as a little child he had ambitions,â MarĂa Consuelo recalled in an interview published in 2014.
âI remember he had a lot of paper moneyâlittle notes of fifties and fives,â his mother told the reporter. âHeâd count and recount them, then tie them up in little piles. Heâd say, âMama, save them for me.â It was just colored paper, but they looked real. He piled them up carefully.⊠Ever since he was little, he always had hopes.â
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 mamaâs boy even as he rose to prominence as one of Mexicoâs most notorious drug traffickers. In his only known interview, he described the relationship with MarĂa Consuelo as âperfect⊠lots of respect, affection, and love.â 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 momâs 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 wasnât 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.
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 crownâs world-conquering navy, but over time the plantâs 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 MazatlĂĄn 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 Angelesâbased 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 CuliacĂĄn in the most expensive late-model cars Detroit had to offer. It wasnât 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 Mexicoâs youth with illegal gambling parlors, brothe...