In July 2019, the "ADX Florence" prison, which has always been known as "Alcatraz", welcomed a "distinguished guest", who is Joaquín Guzman Loella (also translated as "Guzmán"), mexico's largest drug lord who has spread "notoriety" around the world.
Guzman was one of the founders of mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel. For a long time, as the head of Mexico's largest drug cartel, Guzman controlled a "drug empire" worth about half a billion pounds.
As early as 2008, Guzman had appeared in the "Forbes Billionaire List", ranking 701.
In 2009, he was ranked 41st on Forbes' List of the World's Most Powerful Celebrities, becoming the man at the pinnacle of Power and Wealth in Mexico.
But it is such a man, his childhood experience is not happy.
Born in Mexico in the 1950s, Guzman dropped out of primary school before he finished elementary school because his family was too poor to support himself.
Not only that, the hard money he earned from working outside the home was always spent by his alcoholic father in the blink of an eye, which made him feel very uncomfortable.
The father was like this, the mother did not give Guzman too much love, and the two sons themselves had a bad temper, and they threw Guzman out of the house at every turn.
This allowed Guzman to develop a well-behaved and lawless personality from an early age.
When it came to adolescence, Guzman was again self-taught and began to pursue girls. In order to make up for his "cultural" defects, he also found someone to write love letters to help him pass on "love".
In this way, the small Guzman actually changed several girlfriends. And when he finally met the girl who could talk to him about marriage, the girl ran away with a drug dealer the day before she got married.
Since then, "drug trafficking" has become the most important "big cause" in Guzman's eyes, and he decided to practice it with his life.
Just do it. He soon joined guadalajara cartel, Mexico's largest drug cartel at the time, and its "leader" was Felix Galado, known as the "godfather".
Due to Guzman's outstanding performance after joining the gang, he soon became a "hardcore crony" of Galado and became the second in command of the drug syndicate.
In the 1980s, he and Galado built a drug trafficking empire in Mexico, shipping drug marijuana from Mexico to the United States in large quantities.
To make the smuggling road smoother, Guzman found a pilot named Martinez to cooperate.
Guzman was in charge of the supply, Martinez provided the means of transport, and a secret channel was unknowingly established.
In less than five years, Guzman and the Godfather had saved enough money to form an air fleet of hundreds of small planes to transport drugs — a drug cartel with its own airlift unit that was simply outrageously open doors and outrageous to home.
However, at this time, Guzman has not yet ushered in the peak of his life. In 1989, Garado was arrested and imprisoned, and Guzman naturally took over Galado's territory.
This year was a year of rapid expansion of Guzman's power; then, in the 1990s, two major drug lord brothers who specialized in meth in Mexico were arrested by government forces, resulting in a vacuum in the Mexican meth industry for a time.
Guzman saw the opportunity, decisively intervened, and quickly occupied the Mexican methamphetamine market through bribery, kidnapping and other means. This move directly laid the foundation for Guzman to become the "poison king".
Guzman, who has reached into the methamphetamine space, not only covers more than half of Mexico's states, but also extends its network to Thailand, India, and the rest of Asia.
After 2000, Guzman and his accomplice Smail Sambada Garcia founded the Sinaloa Drug Cartel in Mexico.
The name is given because mexico's sinaloa state has been the cradle and refuge of violent elements since ancient times.
What's more, it's also home to many of Mexico's notorious drug lords, including Guzman.
Now that he has developed himself, Guzman naturally wants to "add luster" to his hometown.
Sinaloa Group grew rapidly under Guzman's leadership to become one of the world's largest drug cartels.
In order to make his drug transportation unimpeded, Guzman ordered his men to build a number of cross-border underground corridors along the U.S.-Mexico border;
He then used the accumulated capital from the previous drug trafficking to set up a canning factory, hiding drugs in "cans" and "exporting" them to the United States; at the same time, he also bought helicopters and submarines to "smuggle" his drugs by force.
Under Guzman's meticulous operation, thousands of tons of drugs were trafficked from Colombia through Mexico to the United States and other places.
In the face of Guzman's rampant smuggling practices, the Mexican government has done nothing but make increasing sacrifices.
Because compared with Guzman's "private army", the Mexican government's armed forces are really not able to see.
Even Mexico's Daily Daily bluntly pointed out: "For a long time, Mexican gangsters have been extremely powerful in drug trafficking, and even the government has been helpless against them." ”
Drug cartels here sometimes carry guns and patrol their own turf in luxury or armored vehicles.
What is even more frightening is that once a policeman is targeted by these drug dealers, he will be subjected to inhumane revenge, it is normal to lose his life, and it is not impossible to peel and behead.
It can be said that Guzman and his drug cartels have the blood of countless innocent people and anti-drug police in their hands.
According to statistics, the number of deaths caused directly or indirectly by Guzman's crimes has reached 38,000, which is worthy of being the top ten evil people in the world.
Of course, Guzman's "criminal path" was not all smooth. On May 24, 1993, Guzman's business rival Palma learned that Guzman would be at Guadalajara International Airport in Mexico that night.
So he sent more than two dozen gunmen in several jeeps, surrounded a white sedan parked at the airport, believed to be Guzman's car, and shot wildly into the car.
But in reality, Guzman was sitting in another car not far away; in the white car was local Cardinal Posadas Ocamp.
Because of the enormous influence of Bishop Ocamp, his murder aroused the indignation of religious people around the world, and domestic and foreign governments demanded that the Mexican government take immediate measures.
So, although Guzman did not organize the attack, he was arrested in Guatemala in June of that year and extradited to Mexico for trial.
However, Guzman did not intend to stay honest after being imprisoned, and while he used his own external forces to stuff money for the prison guards to ensure his "higher quality of life", he also let the prison side "give himself the green light" so that he could continue to remotely control the huge "drug cartel".
In 2001, he spent $2.5 million to call the prison guards so that they would not censor the truck that used to carry clothes, saying it was to smuggle gold nuggets out.
The prison guard's "turn a blind eye" allowed Guzman to successfully escape, and since then he has disappeared from the police's sight.
It wasn't until 2008 that Mexican special forces captured Sinaloa leader Alfredo Beltran Leyva alive.
This man is the number two person in the "Sinaloa Group", second only to Guzman. Leyva's arrest gave people hope of catching Guzman.
On February 22, 2014, with the assistance of the United States, Guzman was arrested by Mexican police in the Pacific coast resort of Mazaran after six years of "touching melons".
This is Guzman's second in prison. Unexpectedly, just a year and a half later (July 2015), the cunning Guzman managed to escape from Mexico's most heavily guarded prison.
For a time, public opinion was in an uproar, and the people accused the prison of being ineffective and scolded the government for being so wasteful.
In order to find out the truth as soon as possible, the prison administrators launched a detailed investigation and finally determined that Guzman had escaped from a secret tunnel.
Previously, Guzman's son had bought a house near Thempano Prison, saying that it was to facilitate the delivery of food to his father, but in fact he was preparing for Guzman's escape.
Guzman's son then began directing his men and dug up a secret underground passage from the house to Guzman's cell.
According to surveillance: the entrance to the secret passage, located in the shower area of Guzman's detention room – a place where cameras are dead ends;
Measured, the tunnel is about 1,500 meters long, 170 centimeters high and 80 centimeters wide, and is equipped with ventilation ducts and lighting systems.
Not only that, but a track was laid at the bottom of the tunnel, and at the beginning of the track was placed a modified motorcycle that could run fast on the track.
On the day of the escape, Guzman took advantage of the prison guards' snooze, quietly drilled into the tunnel, got on a motorcycle, and escaped from the tunnel in a hurry to regain his freedom.
Guzman's freedom, though, didn't last long. In 2016, he was arrested for the third time.
This time, the Mexican side learned from the experience of the previous two times and "extradited Guzman to the United States" for detention. As a result, the possibility of Guzman escaping again is infinitely close to zero.
He will face "life in prison without parole" and a sky-high fine of $12.6 billion. The life of this once "big drug lord" has finally ushered in the final ending.
bibliography:
"The world's number one drug lord "Short Guzman" has been imprisoned three times" Gao Rongwei
The History of Guzman, the World's Wicked Man
"Mexican drug lords have escaped from prison again" Sun Yanfeng
"Mexico: The Drug Lord Guzman Escapes from Prison for the Second Time" Li Zhongdong