Dramatic Clip Captures Raid On World's Most Notorious Drug Lord
A long and recently bizarre story came to a violent end last week when the world’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was captured after a raid on a safe house in the coastal city of Los Mochis.
Guzmán was captured in 2014 by some of the same marines who conducted Friday’s raid but escaped from prison via an underground tunnel last year. Legend has it he also escaped from a high security facility in 2001 by hiding in a laundry basket.
Authorities were led to Guzmán’s residence by an unwitting Sean Penn who, along with famous Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo, visited the kingpin’s jungle hideout where Chapo gave a two-minute video interview. Penn would later pen (no pun intended) an exclusive article for Rolling Stone that carried the highly original title “El Chapo Speaks.”
Government “spies” were apparently watching Penn and Del Castillo on their journey to the underworld. The following images capture the pair arriving at an airport last October.
Apparently, Guzmán wanted his life story told on the silver screen but “but would entrust its telling only to Kate,” Penn wrote. Del Castillo once played a “drug lordess” (as Penn puts it) in a Mexican soap opera. Why Penn decided he needed to get involved is anyone's guess but you can read his lengthy rationale in the Rolling Stone piece.
At the end of the day, we imagine Guzmán wishes he had never met the actor because as Reuters notes, the "secret" meeting between the Hollywood star and the world's most-wanted drug boss 'was essential to finding the fugitive,' Mexico's attorney general said on Monday."
Mexican marines killed five bodyguards in the Friday raid and nearly captured the notoriously elusive crime boss who escaped through another tunnel hidden behind a closet mirror.
It took the marines an hour and a half to find the activation switch in a ceiling lamp and by that time, Chapo and “Cholo” (an underboss in the Sinaloa cartel) had crawled through the sewers, stolen a car, run out of gas, and stolen another car. Ultimately, they were captured.
Here’s WSJ:
Along with Mr. Gastelum, the drug kingpin managed to crawl for about one mile along the dark sewage tunnels of Los Mochis. A security camera showed the two fugitives climbing out off a street sewage tunnel in broad daylight. One marine told the network that it had begun to rain heavily and that may have forced Mr. Guzmán out of the sewers.
After emerging from the sewage tunnel, the two fugitives first stole one car, which ran out of gas, authorities said. Then, they stole another vehicle, which authorities were able to intercept after its owner alerted police. The two fugitives were captured and taken to a nearby motel as a precautionary measure while marines awaited for reinforcements.
“Your six-month vacation is over,” the head of the marine unit said he told Mr. Guzmán after he was captured.
And here's the full video of the raid:
With a power vacuum at the top of the Sinaloa cartel (part of the oligopoly that runs drug trafficking in Mexico), we wonder what, if any, effect Chapo's capture will have on the narcotics trade and, more generally on the Mexican economy. After all, some $50 billion flows into Mexico each year from the cartels' activities.
As Reuters noted five years ago, "Mexico probably made more money in 2009 moving drugs than it did exporting oil, its single biggest legitimate foreign currency earner."
That money flows into all sectors of the economy as cartel bosses struggle to wash the mountains of cash the gangs earn from their illicit activities. Then again, there may be no impact at all from Guzmán's capture because the endemic corruption that pervades Mexico's bureaucracies probably means Chapo will once again be crawling his way to freedom Shawshank-style in no time.
* * *
Sean Penn explains why he needed to interview a drug lord
It was at a social event in Los Angeles when Kate met Espinoza. She learned he was well connected to financial sources, including those that funded film projects, and she proposed a partnership to make a film about El Chapo. This was when Espinoza included our mutual colleague and friend El Alto. I learned of their intention to make the film, but I did not know Kate or have any involvement with the project. The three of them met with El Chapo's lawyer to explore their approach, but it was ultimately determined that direct access to El Chapo would still be too restricted for their authorized pursuit to rise above competitive "Chapo" projects that Hollywood would pursue with or without his participation.
Then came July 2015. El Chapo's prison break. The world, and particularly Mexico and the United States, was up in arms. How could this happen?! The DEA and the Justice Department were furious. The fact that Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong had refused El Chapo's extradition to the United States, then allowed his escape, positioned Chong and the Peña Nieto administration as global pariahs.
I followed the news of El Chapo's escape and reached out to Espinoza. We met in the courtyard of a boutique hotel in Paris in late August. He told me about Kate and that she had been intermittently receiving contact from Chapo even after the escape. It was then that I posed the idea of a magazine story. Espinoza's smile of mischief arose, indicating he would arrange for me to meet Kate back in Los Angeles. At a Santa Monica restaurant, I made my case, and Kate agreed to make the bridge, sending our names for vetting across the border. When word came back a week or so later that Chapo had indeed agreed to meet with us, I called Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone. Myself, Espinoza and El Alto were given the assignment. And with a letter from Jann officiating it, we would join Kate, who was our ticket to El Chapo's trust, then put ourselves in the hands of representatives of the Sinaloa cartel to coordinate our journey. It had been a month in the planning by the time Espinoza and I were breathing the New York air that late-September day on 55th Street.
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and the sick thing is that Uncle Sam and Uncle Pedro's hit men will do it. To make it LOOK like Penn was the govt set up. I think both govt moved in because Hollywood exposed how both govts could get to any drug lord if they wanted to. Remember these are the same govts that look the other way when chemical companies sell such vast amounts of items to folks down south that could be for no other purpose than processing the sweet stuff. After that, they HAD to move in to keep us believing that they actually enforce the law.
I'm amazed the marines didn't just end this once and for all like the Search Bloc did for Pablo Escobar.
hollywood needs another escape script.
escape goat
agree with you. The Mexican Marinas are a tough outfit. Very surprised that they did not end this with a bullet.
It's a matter of who gets paid by whom.
Is that a 12 pack of Bud on the nightstand? Nice filthy wife beater. He is a chubby fucker.
So is El Chapo gotta contract on Sean Penn? How much?
How about just the head?
I know some gals in MS-13 that will even mount the head real nice so El Chapo can mount it in his cell.
Will they put him in the same cell as Bernie Madoff, now that would be justice!
Is Penn a spook for the CIA!
Perhaps the CIA just needed El Chapo's considerable skills at moving product because they can't more their Heroin through Dover AFB since Medvedev Cut off access to Afghanistan by closing Russian airspace. Now they need a land route.
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=35227&no_cache=1...
He giveth:
July 7, 2009 11:07 AM Age: 7 yrs
By: Roger McDermott
US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in the Kremlin on July 7, 2009.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a significant military transit agreement with Barack Obama during the summit in Moscow on July 6.
And he taketh away:
May 18th, 2015
http://sputniknews.com/military/20150518/1022264395.html
Our poor soldiers freezing to death in Afghanistan as the Entiltist in Cheif plays through on a golf course in Hawaii......counting down the days when he and the Wookie can end the charade.
And what about Rolling Stone. Is it just another jmafia msm outlet now?
Rolling Stone remained silent when Mark Hastings was murdered. Never pursued the story at all.
Now they have Penn working for them. The same Penn who has helped cover up how the people of Hati have been invaded and taken over by the monsters behind the UN (while the UN pretends they are there to help).
I don’t know the answer to your question, but RS earned my eternal gratitude for publishing Matt Taibbi’s epic “Vampire Squid” takedown of Goldman Sachs.
And a lot of good that did!
Lloyd probably commissioned the piece by Taibbi to feed his vanity.
A leader even more violent and ruthless has already taken his place.
Ouch that's un-good.
Dude,
How come an actor who played a high school stoner is the only one who can access a drug lord that both the US and Mexican governments claim they've been hunting for years?
Maybe he was a "valued customer"...
Umm...because the CIA's Human Resources Department is totally incompetent?
Or maybe because it's all a dog-and-pony show?
Sounds like he had the right woman working with him.
At a mining conference years back I met some miners exploring on property near Guzman former hideout. One miner showed me his Guzman -issued SAT phone so the miners could warn Guzman and his men they would be taking soil samples below the tall marijuana plants growing on the grounds. The top miner, who is famous in the precious metals community for finding very large deposits, told me Guzman had two rules. No firearms and no touching local women. That was all. The miners played by the rules and we're invited multiple times to the Guzman house, one was a Christmas party they said.So, being in mining, I checked around and apparently a lot of people knew this story. Just like bin Laden, they knew where he was but didn't nab him until they wanted to.
"no firearm, no touching local women"
well we know every government agency would fail
I wonder what the odds are that this SOB "escapes" again...
El Chapo is learning, as they all do, how shitty the CIA's retirement plan really is. See Noriega, M.; bin Laden, O.; Gadhafi, M.; Hussein, S.; Oswald, L. H.; and the list goes on and on. Clearly El Chapo either wouldn't stay bought, or upped the ante on his part of the deal, or maybe he had just been in position too long and gotten too big, but clearly the CIA has decided they wanted Chapo out of the picture. Maybe they have a new up-and-comer in mind for the gig.
Still, he isn't in US custody yet, is he. Under actual rule of law, there would be no way he'd ever leave Mexico, but when the US Deep State is involved, legalities are not. If he is extradited, the US will put him in a cage worthy of the Greek myths, and for the same reasons. Hubris. Defiance of the gods. Yeah, sure, we'll crow about a victory over drugs and talk big about justice being served. But will the price or availability of imported street drugs on the US market change a bit? Will the US dark budgets lose a single dime?
This is just an employment dispute.
He will be dead before he ever gets to a court room. He has too many stories to tell.
You put out great stuff swmnguy. Definitely one of my favorite commenters. Thank you!
I sense a White House visit and award ceremony for the Sean Penn. Then there will be the movie with a cameo appearance by Dear Leader.
Those were stupid questions for an interview....pretty shallow....not going to help in the script development
Old saying:
"Whale only gets harpooned when it spouts."
So now Sean Penn turns out to be a snitch. Druglords don't like snitches. Douchebag better watch his back.
Snitches dig their own ditches.
snitches get stitches
Maybe we'll get treated to the "I, I, I" narrative again in the State of the Union.
Apple didn't fall far from the tree apparently.
Dead Man Walking looks like a reality for Mr. Penn now.
If you've got the US government on your case it's basically impossible to escape.
They'll always get you because their funds are unlimited and with all their spy technology you're going to slip up one day.
So now they've got Shorty will much of the coke stop coming in the US? BWAHAHAHAHA. You jail/kill one king pin thug, 100 are ready to replace them...
All of what you say is true. But the point of busting El Chapo or any other "kingpin" is never to stop the flow of drugs. Never. It's to alter the terms of some part of the deal.
That is untrue.
For example:
Why is Ayman al-Zawahiri still breathing?
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is the current leader of al-Qaeda and a current or former member and senior official of Islamist organizations which have orchestrated and carried out attacks in North America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East
US Gov, creating and utilizing Al Qaida from birth through today, have a great interest in keeping Al Qaida and its offshoots strong- for they have trouble legitimizing foreign intervention wherever "islamic terrorism" is not.
Why is Ayman al-Zawahiri still breathing?
Because he is still useful to the ZWO.
Perhaps he is Hebrew????
ZWO
Gotta' say one more thing about this ...
IF this story is true (who knows?) ... Guzman was splashing through dirty sewer water, trying to get escape. He did that last time (his #2 escape) ... and it didn't work. So now he's doing it again???? That's pretty dumb.
I mean seriously - if you were the world's most powerful drug lord ... would your plan for escape involve running through sewer water? Where was the back-up guy with the fast car? Where were the buses to block the streets? Where was the helicopter at the airport? Where was the Learjet on the secret airfield - ready to take him out of the country?
If this was an "escape plan" .. it was pretty darn pathetic. Whoever the person was who planned Chapo's escapes - that person was a complete moron. Hahahahahahaha!!!
No kidding. If you're the most powerful drug lord in the world, why are you meeting Sean Penn and some soap opera actress in your top-secret hideout?
The whole "El Chapo" story reeks of psy-op. The elaborate escape tunnel from the prison. All of this story. It all seems scripted, and lazily at that.
Doesn't change anything.
Except make me want to re-watch "Breaking Bad". :-)
Hollywood stars rally to the side of El ChapObama.
Hopium smuggler for the CIA
Not only was he recognized as one of the toughest critics of the government of U.S. President George Bush as well as its handling of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, but is also known for his friendship with Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales and his support for the Argentine cause to recover the territory of the Malvinas Islands. Oooops! That mythical Malvinas stuff is wearing a bit thin on the imagination: https://www.academia.edu/17799157/Falklands_-_Some_Relevant_Internationa...
It doesn't really matter if he/the escape was a psyop or not, between the medias fascist editorialism and the government's kangaroo court justice, this is a spectacle foisted upon the public to distract their attention away from everything else the wizard of oz doesn't want it to see.
Always amazing that drug kingpins can devise secret tunnels and doorways, buy top of the line weapons, hire dozens of bodyguards, devise elaborate escape routes, yet cannot have an old beat up car with a full tank of gas sitting at the exit of their tunnel! Or even to carry enough cash to buy a tank of gas?
the published story doesn't hang together.
Odds on another prison break are higher than odds he will reach The United States!
Seriously. Just legalise drugs.