On tape: I had to sell drugs

Jurors finally heard El Chapo describe in his own calm voice his meteoric rise from penniless pot farmer to cocaine kingpin wanted on both sides of the border.

The accused Mexican druglord wasn’t on the witness stand at his drug trafficking trial now in its fifth week in Brooklyn.

Instead, his words echoed around the federal courtroom Tuesday as prosecutors played portions of the 2015 video interview he recorded for actor Sean Penn and Mexican-American actress Kate Del Castillo as part of a profile published by Rolling Stone.

Jurors saw El Chapo wearing a blue paisley shirt and signature trucker hat as he spoke directly to the camera and claimed drug dealing was his only option as a 15-year-old boy growing up in Badiraguato, a poor village in western Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains.

“In that area, and up until today, there are no job opportunities. The only way to have money to buy food, to survive, is to grow poppy, marijuana, and at that age, I began to grow it, to cultivate it and to sell it,” he said in Spanish in one of several clips played for jurors.

In another clip, El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman, said his illicit empire barely missed a beat while he was locked up in a Mexican prison in 2014 and planning his now-infamous 2015 escape via a tunnel to his cell and motorbike on a special track.

“From what I can tell, and what I know, everything is the same. Nothing has decreased. Nothing has increased,” he said.

Shortly after shooting the video, Guzman was arrested again on January, 8, 2016. He was extradited to the U.S. a year later to face the trial now underway.

He has pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen charges involving drug trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and illegal firearms.

His defense claims he’s being framed by corrupt former associates.