The day they brought down ‘El Chapo’
Drug lord’s reign ended without gunfight
Joaquin Guzman was named ‘Public Enemy No 1’ last year by the Chicago Crime Commission
In a pre-dawn operation, US and Mexican forces arrest the head of the Sinaloa cartel who had eluded law enforcement for 13 years
MAZATLAN, MEXICO // For 13 years Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman watched from the rugged mountains of western Mexico as authorities captured or killed the leaders of every group that challenged his Sinaloa cartel’s spot at the top of global drug trafficking.
Unscathed and his legend growing, the stocky son of a peasant farmer grabbed a slot on the Forbes’ billionaires’ list and a folkloric status as the capo who grew too powerful to catch.
But then he started to make mistakes. Agents learnt that Guzman, 56, had started coming down from his isolated mountain hideouts to enjoy the comforts of Culiacan and Mazatlan. “That was a fatal error,” said Michael Vigil, a former senior officer with the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Working on information gleaned from some of Guzman’s bodyguards arrested last week, Mexican marines swarmed the house of his former wife in Culiacan, but struggled to batter down the steel-reinforced door.
As the marines forced their way in, Guzman fled through a secret door beneath a bathtub down a corrugated steel ladder into a network of tunnels and sewer canals that con- nect to six other houses. Guzman fled south to Mazatlan. On his heels, a team of DEA agents set up a base of operations with Mexican marines in the city. On Saturday, Guzman’s reign came to an end without a shot fired. Marines closed the beachside road in front of the Miramar condominiums, a 10- storey, pearl- coloured building with white balconies overlooking the Pacific and a small pool in front. Smashing down the door of an austerely decorated fourth- floor condo, they seized Mexico’s mostwanted man at 6.40am, a few minutes after the sun rose. Guzman was detained with a man identified as Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramirez.
A neighbour said the apartment had been occupied for only two days. An employee of the building’s cleaning staff said clothes were strewn across the floor and bed in the condo, and humble domestic appliances – a microwave, a floor fan, and a flat-screen television on a small table – were left inside. Photos of the apartment published by a local newspaper showed cheap and unglamorous furnishings. Inside the condo, the photos showed little food or drink: just a couple of dozen eggs on a shelf. A bag from a low-end supermarket lay on the floor.
Authorities had started closing in last year on the inner circle of the world’s most-wanted drug lord. The son of one of his two top henchmen, Ismael “Mayo” Zambada, was arrested at a border crossing in the American state of Arizona in November as part of a sprawling, complex investigation involving as many as 100 wiretaps.
A month later, one of the Sinaloa cartel’s main lieutenants was shot dead by Mexican helicopter gunships in a resort town a few hours drive to the east.
Less than two weeks passed before police at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam arrested one of the cartel’s top assassins, a man who handled transport and logistics for Guzman.
This month the noose started tightening. Federal forces began sweeping through Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. They closed streets, raided houses, seized automatic weapons, drugs and money, and arrested a series of men Mexican officials carefully described to reporters as top officials for Zambada. But the target was bigger. On February 13, a man known as “19”, whom officials called the new chief of assassins for Zambada, was arrested with two other men on the motorway to the coastal resort city of Mazatlan.
Four days later, a man described as a member of the Sinaloa cartel’s upper ranks was seized along with 4,000 hollowed-out cucumbers and bananas stuffed with cocaine.
In the middle of this week, a 43- year- old known by the nickname “20” and described as Zambada’s chief of security, was arrested transporting more cocaine-stuffed produce.
By the middle of the week at least 10 Sinaloa henchmen had been seized. A United States law enforcement official said on Saturday that at least some were actually security for Guzman, and authorities used them to obtain information that helped lead to the head of the cartel.
A US law-enforcement official de- scribed the killing of Zambada’s main lieutenant in November described it as part of a concerted bilateral effort to decapitate the Sinaloa cartel. The organisation became the focus of US and Mexican attention after a string of arrests and slaying of the heads of other cartels, most notably the seizure of brutal Zetas cartel head Miguel Angel Trevino Morales in July. “Who are the only big fish left in the country? We can’t just twiddle our thumbs,” said the official. “Now we focus on the biggest elephant in the room. It’s by virtue of default.” Guzman was hit with multiple fed- eral drug trafficking indictments in the US as his drug empire stretched throughout North America and extended branches into Europe and Australia.
The drug lord’s play for power against local cartels caused a bloodbath in Tijuana and made Ciudad Juarez one of the deadliest cities in the world. Last year, Guzman was named “Public Enemy No 1” by the Chicago Crime Commission, only the second person to get that distinction after US prohibition-era crime boss Al Capone.