El Chapo Quickly Rises in Criminal Ranks
Born in poverty in Sinaloa state in 1957, Guzmán was the eldest of seven children. Short and stocky, he was nicknamed El Chapo ("shorty" in Spanish) as a youth.
In his late teens he left Sinaloa and joined a Guadalajara-based cartel, where he quickly rose through the ranks, thanks to his brutal—and deadly—efficiency. He paid millions in bribes to officials and ruthlessly eliminated anyone who posed a threat–from rival drug smugglers to a Roman Catholic cardinal who was assassinated.
By the 1990s, Guzmán was leading his own cartel back in Sinaloa, amassing a fortune trafficking heroin, cocaine and other drugs primarily to the U.S., but also to Europe and Asia.
Come 2009, El Chapo was on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, with an estimated worth of $1 billion. Much of his drug trafficking success was due to his innovative smuggling methods, such as building sophisticated underground tunnels to move drugs across the Mexico-U.S. border.
While he was known among the poor for donating badly needed funds to rural parts of Mexico, the cartel was also responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in drug-related violence, fueled addiction in countries where drugs were sent and was accused of involvement in large-scale human trafficking and brutal violence.
Joaquín Guzmán Makes His First Escape
Guzmán was arrested in Guatemala in 1993, extradited to Mexico and sentenced to 20 years in prison connected to murder and drug trafficking, setting the stage for his first daring escape.
Law enforcement officials hoped El Chapo’s imprisonment would curtail his criminal activity. They were sorely mistaken—Guzmán used bribery and threats of violence to keep running the cartel while behind bars.
In January 2001, he escaped from Mexico’s Puente Grande maximum-security prison. Some accounts said he left the lockup hidden in a laundry cart, but more recent accounts suggest he walked out dressed in a guard’s uniform, accompanied by corrupt officers.
His escape exposed widespread corruption in the Mexican prison system, with dozens of guards and officials implicated in helping him flee. The seriously embarrassing moment for Mexican officials helped elevate Guzmán’s reputation to near-mythic status.
On the Run For 13 Years
He stayed on the run for 13 years and he was finally recaptured in February 2014 in a joint effort between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement.
This time, Guzmán was placed in Altiplano, Mexico’s most secure prison. But El Chapo wasn’t done.
Just 16 months after his rearrest, El Chapo disappeared again. Security footage later revealed what happened. Over a several month period, a mile-long tunnel was dug from a house just outside the prison walls to Guzmán’s cell, making it clear the operation benefitted from inside help. The tunnel’s entrance near the cell’s shower area provided a blind spot from security cameras where Guzmán could not be seen as he slipped away.
The tunnel’s sophisticated design harkened back to Guzmán’s use of tunnels as part of his drug trafficking. It cost millions in U.S. dollars to construct, and it was equipped with a small motorcycle on rails, lighting and ventilation. The setup appeared to make his escape easy—and once again left Mexican officials furious.
Guzmán remained on the loose for six months, until Mexican marines captured him following a January 2016 shootout in Sinaloa. Determined not to lose their famous prisoner this time, the Mexican government extradited El Chapo to the United States in January 2017.
Sent to 'Alcatraz of the Rockies'
In November 2018, El Chapo went on trial in a New York courtroom on charges of money laundering, drug trafficking and his involvement in conspiracies to commit murder, with witnesses testifying about the cartel's violence and corruption.
He was convicted in early 2019 on all counts, sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years and was ordered to forfeit $12 billion in restitution for his victims.
Guzmán was locked up at one of the most secure prisons in the world, Colorado’s ADX Florence, nicknamed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” The prison’s security features include motion detectors and 1,400 remote-controlled steel doors.
The lockup’s prisoners have included Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Unibomber Ted Kaczynski. The inmates are kept in cells made almost entirely of poured concrete, with furniture built into walls to keep it from being moved.
To prevent escape attempts, El Chapo is held in solitary confinement and allowed outside in a fortified recreational cage attached to his cell for just a few hours each week.
In 2025, Guzman’s legal team claimed that conditions in the prison had led to a steep decline in his health, including high blood pressure, insomnia and anxiety, but officials refused to loosen the restrictions.
Guzman’s legacy still casts a long shadow. The Sinaloa cartel remains a brutal force, operating international narcotics smuggling rings. For several years after their father’s final arrest, the cartel was partially run by two of Guzman’s sons, nicknamed “Los Chapitos.” The sons’ arrests failed to end the cartel’s deadly business.
