Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
So that's the level of intimidation that has been brought on by Chapo and other cartels in Mexico that even in the law enforcement are hiding their identity to ensure that their families aren't retaliated against. I would say between 2008, 2009, you would see a high peaking point in the violence. After Chapo was manscaped from Puente Grande, Jalisco, Chapo wanted to continue the negotiations with us.
That's why we have so many pandemics of drug abuse here in the United States, where it could shift from opioids to methamphetamine, then back to cocaine. Chapo Guzman moved very quickly in assessing what drugs were going to be profitable here in the United States. It's 2001. Mexican drug baron Joaquin Guzman Lurera
better known as El Chapo, has spent nearly a decade behind bars. In 1993, he was captured by the authorities in the Central American country of Guatemala. He was extradited home to Mexico and sentenced to 20 years in Puente Grande jail. This is a top security facility, one of the country's finest. But now, at the turn of the new millennium, it's about to witness the most daring escape attempt in all its history. Noiser Podcasts, this is Real Narcos. ♪
On the evening of January 19th, 2001, a guard makes his usual rounds through the corridors of Puente Grande. He approaches the cell of Joaquin Guzman. The guard's throat is dry. He always gets nervous when he has to deal with El Chapo. This is a prisoner whose reputation precedes him. The guard's pulse quickens when he notices the cell door is ajar. He gulps. He knows the sight that's about to greet him. True enough, the occupant of the cell is nowhere to be seen. Within minutes, chaos reigns throughout the jail.
Guards round up inmates, who are interrogated one by one, but none of them shed any light on the whereabouts of the fugitive. The cops arrive and take over the search. They turn every cell, room, and closet upside down, but they find nothing. In the nearby towns and villages, the Mexican army is deployed to raid houses, ranches, and municipal buildings. All to no avail. Chapo Guzman is vanished into thin air. El Chapo was busted out of a top security jail in Mexico.
But how did he do it? Let's rewind a few hours to 9:45 PM. A janitor pushes a laundry cart through the jail. He arrives outside El Chapo's cell. He turns a key in the lock and the door swings open. The cell's resident steps out of the shadows, but he has no intention of handing over his dirty laundry. Chapo pokes his head out onto the corridor and casts a look up and down. He needn't worry. It's empty. The guards are nowhere nearby.
And on top of that, the security cameras have been conveniently switched off. Chapo climbs into the laundry cart and buries himself in a pile of dirty sheets and pillowcases. Turns out the guy pushing the cart is no honest prison worker. He might be wearing the uniform, but it's merely a disguise. His name is Francisco Rivera, and he's on Chapo's payroll. Rivera wheels the cart down the corridor and through several security doors. The last door leads outside to a service yard. Finally, fresh air. Moonlight.
A truck is waiting. Chapo emerges from the dirty lid. He peels a grubby sock from his thinning head of hair. He dusts himself down before clambering into the passenger seat of the truck. Rivera gets behind the wheel. The engine coughs into life, and just like that, they drive off into the night. Chapo and Rivera are now wanted men, both of them. They're in this together. Rivera takes the northbound highway toward Guadalajara. They drive in silence, Chapo savoring the sweet taste of freedom.
This escape was years in the making. So far, the plan has been executed to a T. After a little while, Chapo asks to stop. He's thirsty. Could do with a drink of water. Rivera pulls in at the next gas station. They're both fugitives, but it's Chapo's face plastered over the most wanted posters on every street corner. So he stays in the truck, while Rivera heads inside. The gas station is an island of light in the dark of the evening. Chapo watches Rivera stride across the forecourt.
A baseball cap pulled down over his face and enter the store. Inside, Rivera heads to the cooler and grabs a bottle of water. He pays at the counter and exits. He heads back to his vehicle, then he stops. The bottle of water drops to the floor and rolls away. Looks like Rivera has been left to fend for himself. The right hand door of the truck is wide open and the passenger is gone. Over the following days, the prison guards at Puente Grande are called into the superintendent's office.
and given one hell of a grilling, only one of them has anything to say. This man's brave testimony lays bare how Chapo bribed and intimidated the guards. With the jailers in his pocket, Chapo complained that his rights were being violated. A visit by a human rights official was demanded and agreed to. The official took up Chapo's cause and insisted on a new cell right by the exit. In total, 78 individuals are implicated in aiding Chapo's escape.
The authorities discover that $2.5 million worth of bribes have been paid to grease the wheels. Rivera is successfully prosecuted for his part in the debacle. He's joined in the can by the prison director himself. A few weeks later, the jail guard who spilled the beans about bribery is found dead. He's put his head above the parapet and paid the ultimate price. The escape from Puente Grande is a reputational disaster for the Mexican authorities, and a kick in the teeth for the DEA.
Over the coming months, Chapo Guzman slips from safe house to safe house, constantly on the move, always one step ahead of law enforcement. But despite this itinerant lifestyle, he still exercises the same dominance over the drug trade. He's been behind bars for eight years. Now that he's finally out, Chapo wastes no time getting on with unfinished business. He takes the cartel wars to a whole new level, exacting revenge on his enemies for all their incursions into his territory.
Now that he was actually out of jail, crime increased against the Arellano and the Chapo Guzman organization, the Sinaloa Cartel. They were killing each other. The killings were very brutal and it kind of became their calling card, you know, who's the baddest cartel? And as a result of that, you know, they wanted to be even more brutal than the organization that they were in conflict with.
So it was, "Okay, well, you're going to kill 10 of my people. I'm going to go and behead 50 of yours, and then I'm going to pile them up on the outskirts of a town, which not only sends a shock value to the rival cartel, but also to the government."
They were fighting not only other drug cartels that were encroaching into their territory, but they were also fighting the government. So it was a very defensive posture. And the more violence you generate, just like Pablo Escobar did in Colombia, the more you intimidate the government. Desperate for leads, Agent Joe Bond of the DEA continues to work his sources. There's one glimmer of hope.
Chapo's brother-in-law, the guy who brokered the DEA sit-down at Puente Grande, is still in contact. Chapo knows his biggest existential threat is extradition to the United States. On that basis, could he still be open to doing some kind of deal? After Chapo was manscaped from Puente Grande Jalisco in 2001, our negotiations continued. Chapo wanted to continue the negotiations with us.
My confidential source, being his brother-in-law or one of his brothers-in-law, kept talking to me. He said, Joe, he does want to meet with you again. He's willing to turn over tunnels that the Arellanos are using, locations where the Arellanos are. And that will bring a reduction in violence in the government, which is what the government wanted. So he says, this is going to benefit everybody if we get rid of the Arellanos. And I would tell his brother-in-law, yeah, but it's also going to benefit El Chapo tremendously. He says, of course it will, but there won't be the violence that it is now.
the killings that are taking place. It's tempting, the thought of using Chapo to undermine the Arellano Felix brothers. But the DEA can't play two cartels off against each other, especially if it means giving one of them a free pass. Besides, Chapo's brother-in-law is overexposed. Each time he communicates with the DEA, he's taking his life in his hands. He starts to worry that he'll be unmasked. Informants come and go. Openings in the case appear, then disappear.
The trick is having multiple lines of inquiry. Lucky for Joe Bond, another lead is about to fall into his lap.
Want a website with unmatched power, speed, and control? Try Bluehost Cloud, the new web hosting plan from Bluehost, built for WordPress creators by WordPress experts. With 100% uptime, incredible load times, and 24-7 WordPress priority support, your site will be lightning fast with global reach. And with Bluehost Cloud, your sites can handle surges in traffic no matter how big.
Plus, you automatically get daily backups and world-class security. Get started now at Bluehost.com. In late 2001, a new informant reaches out. This guy says he can arrange a sit-down with Arturo Guzman. Arturo is El Chapo's younger brother. Bond is realistic. He's been led on wild goose chases before, but it's worth a shot. Arturo is not only the brother of the Sinaloa boss, he's a wanted smuggler in his own right.
The Mexican Feds, the AFI, have a warrant outstanding for Arturo. The head of the AFI, a guy called Genaro Garcia Luna, wants in on this meeting. Joe Bond is given permission to talk to Arturo, but only with AFI backup. Bond agrees, he has little choice. But if Arturo gets wind that the AFI are monitoring the meeting, he won't show up. Garcia Luna can come to the meet, but he better keep his head down.
The Hotel Bristol sits just a few blocks away from the US Embassy in Mexico City. Inside the hotel, Joe Bond takes a seat in a room. A few moments later, Arturo Guzman enters. Arturo is younger and slimmer than his older brother, but he's clearly a chip off the same block. Same mustache, same thin dark hair. They begin to talk. Arturo seems keen to help. Maybe he can sense the noose is tightening around his neck. He's looking for a way out.
Arturo insists he has the power to get El Chapo to mend his ways, so Joe Bond hands him a cell phone. He can get in touch when he's ready to talk again. Arturo leaves the hotel. Garcia Luna emerges from the room next door. He's been listening in through the wall. Joe Bond believes Arturo can lead them to El Chapo. Garcia Luna… not too sure. To his mind, Arturo is playing them. Bond is adamant they should keep the channel of communication open.
But ultimately, the DEA don't call the shots on the ground. This is Mexican home turf. Garcia Luna is not about to waste an opportunity to arrest a ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel. The prospect of taking down Arturo Guzman and parading him in front of the cameras is too tantalizing to resist. That evening, as he drives through the outskirts of Mexico City, Arturo is pulled over by the cops. Then he's arrested and taken into custody. The DEA agents are deeply frustrated.
Arturo might have led them to their elusive prey. Now that possibility is gone. - We were completely, "What would you want to do this?" You saw the meeting, you saw what we're trying to accomplish. He's just a brother to Chapo Guzman. He has no real control of the organization. It's gonna be detrimental to what we're doing here. And he says, "You don't understand the pressures that we are getting from the president. We need to arrest somebody in the Chapo Guzman organization."
So an hour later and far away from the meeting, he was taken down on a traffic stop and he was arrested and taken to the AFI where he was debriefed. It was very frustrating for me personally, for the work that we had done for so long. There was a lot of political pressure at the time and they needed to show that, "Hey, we're going to arrest this guy and show them what we really are to the Chapo Guzman organization." With Arturo Guzman behind bars,
Joban's cartel sources go quiet, the trail goes cold. The rival cartels want Chapo's head on a platter. And at the same time, the Mexican cops and the DEA have arrests of warrants for drug trafficking, criminal association, and bribery. Chapo continues to live his life, to enjoy the fruits of his nefarious labor, but he's always careful to take precautions. He is now responsible for more than 15 years of bloody, drug-fueled violence in Mexico.
The people of Sinaloa are exhausted and downtrodden. Chapo knows that the only way to stop them dobbing him in is to buy them off. So he invests in local infrastructure on a monumental scale. When you examine the life of a cartel leader,
And let's say you're sitting in judgment over him and you're going to decide whether St. Peter's going to open the door or not. He's going to ask him a very simple question. Well, tell me what good you've done. It's going to be very little compared to all the acts of violence and all the acts of evil. Most cartel leaders will say things like, well, remember that park in the neighborhood that I built?
Remember the donation I gave to the local church? You know, half a million dollars goes a long way at supporting a church and hospitals and things of that nature. So there's a lot of charitable work that has been promoted by ill gains in terms of profit from drugs. Go back to Pablo Escobar. He basically set the standard.
He was building hospitals. He was building parks where kids can play soccer. But at the same time, he was blowing commercial aircraft out of the sky and killing innocent people with bombs. That's the irony in the life of these traffickers. Chapo gives with one hand and takes with the other. The message is clear. Enjoy these gifts, but don't throw them back in my face.
He focused on making poor people rich, so he offered him hope from unemployment to putting lots of money and food on their table. The other way was through intimidation. So it was very easy for him to move up the ranks with those two things in mind. If you go online and you see any of the photos of military in Mexico or police officers in Mexico, what you will see throughout those photographs and videos
are the Mexican military and the officers wearing masks. They're not wearing those masks because they're afraid of getting sunburned. They're wearing those masks to hide their identity so that their families aren't retaliated against. So that's the level of intimidation that has been brought on by Chapo and other cartels in Mexico that even in the law enforcement are hiding their identity to ensure that their families aren't retaliated against.
I can tell you a story once. We were providing information and technology in Mexico, working side by side with their customs officers. We seized $7 million.
Here in the United States, that's very exciting for officers and agents to be able to seize $7 million, take $7 million in drug money off the street. But in Mexico, our counterparts are very frightened. Why? Because they just knew that they seized $7 million from a cartel that was probably going to come back and retaliate against them. Completely different type.
of challenges that we face living right on one side of the border or the other. And literally the Mexican customs officials at that time in that small little airport were literally shaking out of fear of what they had just stumbled into. Morale sinks for the DEA and their allies as months and years drag on. It's now 2004, three years since Chapu escaped from Puente Grande. He's only been sighted a handful of times since then.
and on each of those occasions, he was long gone by the time the cops arrived. He's still just 47 years old, in the prime of his career. Tons of cocaine continue to cross the border and find their way onto the streets of American cities. The chances of grabbing him might be slim, but the DEA continue to work their web of anonymous informants, spread out across Mexico.
It was like a ghost. People would always, they'd have a sighting of him and I would hear about a sighting. Nobody could substantiate that and there was no law enforcement people in the position to actually take any action. Finally, the network throws up a new promising lead. An intelligence report suggests Chapo is hiding in the mountains of Sinaloa. On its own, this intel is hardly a surprise. Chapo knows these mountains like the back of his hand. The Sierra Madre is his backyard. But the report doesn't stop there.
It pins down Chapo's probable location to a ranch in a neighborhood of La Tuna, near where he lived as a kid. When he escaped from the penitentiary, he fled up into the mountainous area in Sinaloa because he was very familiar with it. It's a very austere, hostile environment, but he knew it like the back of his hand. This time, responsibility for leading the mission is given to the Mexican army.
200 soldiers are dispatched to Sinaloa.
Imagine you're running a major global company, and Chapo was. He had a lot of resources, lookout scouts. You know, he had extensive counterintelligence operations going on. So when you're going to move in to arrest Chapo, you're not going to do it with two law enforcement officers because you'd be outgunned and outmanned. You're going to have to move in with an army of soldiers or a large group of law enforcement officers. You're anticipating a major gun battle.
They've tried smaller operations, they've tried sneaking up on him, and it's gotten them nowhere. So this time, the authorities are going in heavy. A fleet of helicopters closes in on the ranch. The soldiers know that once they get within a certain distance of Chapo, the sound of their propellers will give them away. There's only one reason military helicopters would descend on this part of the world.
What the army underestimates is quite how far Chapo's network of scouts extends. He knew that he was safe there because it was very difficult to generate operations because, you know, he also played the Robin Hood with, you know, the local citizens.
And if anybody came within 100 miles of Chapo Guzman, he would already know. They had telephone, radio communications, so he knew. And if they mounted a helicopter assault, he would hear the helicopters coming, and he would have 10 to 15 minutes to make his getaway. So he was very protected in that area.
The helicopters have barely taken off by the time Chapo's henchmen spot them and radio back to base. Chapo wastes no time in actioning his contingency plan. He was at a ranch and the Mexican military went in there. When they approached, there were about 50 individuals that jumped on these four-wheeler all-terrain vehicles.
and they scattered like cockroaches throughout the countryside while the military didn't know which four-wheeler Chapo Guzman was in, and they were able to escape. I've been to those mountains in the Sinaloa area. It is rugged terrain, and to mount an operation is very difficult, so I don't fault the Mexican army because it is very tough, and that's why he was able to elude capture
for so many years is because of the terrain that he was hiding in.
So it was very difficult to get close to him with the amount of people he could pay as lookouts just to make sure that if he even saw a group of two vehicles traveling in his area, he was worried about those for two reasons. It could be competition and another cartel coming to kill him, or it also could be a military operation or police operation amounting to come and arrest him. So security for him was paramount. Foiled again.
Now, Chapo lays low, very low. He seems to have learned his lesson. Attempting to live a normal-ish life, where he travels, socializes, spends his money, only invites pressure. He's safer in the shadows. For three whole years, there are no sightings, no new leads. But then in November 2007, El Chapo journeys out from his secret ranch deep in the Sinaloan hills and heads to the northwest state of Durango.
His destination is a place called Canales. It's a small rural settlement, buried in a luscious green valley. He's here to attend a beauty pageant. It's hosted by the 17-year-old daughter of one of his deputies. Her name is Emma Coronel. Chapo Guzman arrives at the pageant with 100 armed gunmen. Necessary security, but also a show of strength. In full view of the gathered guests, Chapo announces that he's had his eye on Emma, and he intends to marry her.
Just a few months later, on Emma's 18th birthday, that's exactly what happens. It's El Chapo's fourth wedding. After exchanging their vows, the couple decide not to stick around for the dancing. Instead, they make a hasty start to their honeymoon. It's a good job they do. The Mexican army have got wind of the couple's happy news and gatecrash the wedding party. But they're too late.
Well, it's always frustrating, especially when somebody of the stature of Chapo Guzman in the drug trade escapes the clutches of the law, which means that he's going to be able to funnel more poison into the United States, poison our youth, and then at the same time engage in additional violence.
It's like, you know, having a serial killer in your clutches and then he escapes only to kill more people. So it's frustrating and it really is a horrific situation for law enforcement to have individuals like that escape your grasp. Over the next few years, Chapo Guzman dips in and out of Mexico. He also surfaces in Argentina and Colombia. He travels under assumed names.
Always preceded by healthy bribes that clear the runways at private airfields or turn the heads of customs agents. During Holy Week in 2011, he's spotted enjoying dinner at a restaurant in Guatemala. Then it's on to Honduras. Then he's back in Mexico, on the Baja California Peninsula. Chapo has another close shave. His aides arrange for him to see a local prostitute. But someone at the brothel tips off the Mexican army. They execute a raid on the brothel, but Chapo isn't there.
He never showed up for the appointment. Either he heard that they were on to him, or he got his kicks elsewhere. All the while, as Chapo ghosts between jurisdictions, the Sinaloa cartel is expanding its range of products. So the evolution of the cartels has been constant and it has allowed them to be more effective.
Many years ago, you know, the drug cartels were, you know, would either traffic marijuana or they would traffic cocaine or they would traffic heroin. But then they started to become polydrug. At this point in the mid-2000s, Chapo's lieutenants start to experiment with a new product, one that has the potential to make him almost as much money as cocaine. It's produced by mixing amphetamine with chemicals from common over-the-counter drugs.
It's cheaper to produce than cocaine and more addictive. There isn't a long supply line stretching down into South America like there is with coke. Meth can be manufactured right here in Mexico. He started to go into the methamphetamine business and he was buying kilos of the precursor, which is ephedrine or pseudoephedrine in Europe for $65 a kilo. And then once he manufactured it or converted it into methamphetamine,
Now all of a sudden he takes an initial investment of $65 a kilo and he sells it for $18,000 or higher on U.S. streets. And for the first time in the history of Mexican drug trafficking, they had a very viable product and they didn't have to pay the Colombians to do that. They already had the existing infrastructure.
And they didn't have to buy more planes, they didn't have to buy more vehicles, and they had the existing pipelines to take that methamphetamine and then just funnel it right into the U.S. consumer market. It's the ideal product for an astute businessman like Chapu Guzman. Biker gangs in the U.S. used to hold a monopoly on meth,
but no longer. The bikers, the outlaw motorcycle gangs in the United States basically control the Met train. But the Mexican organized crime groups are very astute businessmen and they saw an opportunity to get into the Met train. And it has become
one of their staples and one of their biggest revenue generators. And right now in the United States, there's a huge tsunami of meth going across the United States. It's sweeping across America. The cartels in Mexico are very quick to adapt to changes. Users here in the United States are very much like hummingbirds.
They go from one flower to the next to the next. But in this case, they go from one drug to another drug to another drug. And that's why we have so many pandemics, if you will,
of drug abuse here in the united states where it could shift from opioids to methamphetamine then back to cocaine so those are things that happen here and chapo musman was one of those that you know moved very quickly in assessing what drugs were going to be profitable here in the united states
Some estimates suggest the Sinaloa cartel go on to supply 80% of the meth consumed in the U.S. And it's not just meth. Heroin, fentanyl. Chapo is diversifying his portfolio in a big way. He's spreading his bets. Chapo Musman, being as exceptional as he was in terms of logistics, quickly started to import the
The precursor chemicals needed for the manufacture of heroin, the manufacture of fentanyl from China. And China has a tremendous amount of laboratories there that provide precursor chemicals. They are willing to mislabel
what they really are so that when they come into a, let's say, maritime port in Mexico, you know, the customs officials are going to see something else other than, let's say, ephedrine or pseudo-ephedrine. And then there's bribes involved. So it makes it very easy for cartels like the Sinaloa cartel to manufacture ton quantities
This expansion of business opportunities continues through the mid-2000s. By now, violence between cartels has morphed into full-blown war between the narco criminals and the Mexican government. The 1990s saw unimaginable levels of violence, but now, even that peak has been surpassed. I would say between 2008, 2009, you would see a high peaking point in the violence.
And that also just doesn't coincide with Chapo's chronology of events. It also coincides with the efforts of President Calderón and his movement of troops into the battlefield with the drug traffickers that also you'll see some spikes in violence with efforts that were in place by Mexican authorities as well. El Chapo has never been wealthier. There's only one problem. He and his glamorous young wife have an immense fortune, but they can't enjoy it.
He was a multi-millionaire, if not billionaire. And then he had a young beauty queen as a wife. And here he is living like a pauper up in this rugged mountainous area where he had no television. He had no creature comforts. So he wanted to enjoy the fruits of his labors. But now Chapo and Emma Coronel have stopped traveling around. They've returned to the Mexican interior.
holed up deep in the valleys of the Sierra Madre. She didn't marry him to live a life like this. What's the point in being an industrial-scale drug trafficker if he can't enjoy the lifestyle? He takes a bit of persuading, but after a while, Chapo relents. He's pretty fed up too. Besides, what's life without a little risk? The family decide to make the move into the city, to the nearby state capital of Culiacan. Chapo has fond memories of this place. It's where he got his break as a teenager.
lending his services to local low-level pushers. Here they're well-placed to make day trips to swanky beach resorts along the Gulf of California coast. They might be getting their fill of sun and sand, but for the first time in years, El Chapo is within earshot of police surveillance. Being on holiday has lulled him into a false sense of security. As he kicks back on sun loungers and samples cocktails, Chapo is a sitting duck.
And in the next episode of Real Narcos, a bold new military operation will succeed where countless others have failed.
What made this operation a success is that he was now in an urban area, which made it easy to track him and find him. In comparison to being in a very austere, mountainous, rugged terrain, which made operations very difficult, now he had entered into the den of the tiger.
That's next time on Real Narcos. Real Narcos is a Noiser podcast and World Media Rights co-production hosted by me, John Cuban. The series was created by Pascal Hughes, produced by Joel Duddle. It's been edited by Katrina Hughes with music from Oliver Baines from Flight Brigade. The sound mixer is Tom Pink. Follow Noiser podcast on Twitter for news about upcoming series. If you have a moment, please leave us a review wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
