This essay will discuss the representation of a Latin American icon, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera aka ‘El Chapo’ who is a Mexican drug lord who headed the Sinaloa Cartel, a which was named after the Mexican Pacific coast state of Sinaloa where it was formed. This essay will discuss ‘El Chapo’s’ background and some of his early life, also how he became involved with drug trafficking and finally how he was represented in the media and how people seen him more particularly will discuss the famous shows on Netflix called ‘El Chapo’ and ‘The Day I Met El Chapo’.
‘El Chapo’ said in an interview for the Rolling Stone magazine, written by Sean Penn (2016), that he was born into a poor family in the rural community of La Tuna, Badiraguato, Sinaloa,
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Mexico. His parents were Emilio Guzmán Bustillos and María Consuelo Loera Pérez. His father as many people in the area where ‘El Chapo’ grew up was also officially a cattle rancher, however, he also has been an opium poppy farmer because of the very few employment opportunities. He says, he has a big family he had many brothers and sisters, as a child, he sold oranges and worked with his father. His father had been abusing towards him and his siblings, they would often escape to their grandmother’s house to avoid such a treatment. His mother has been very loving towards her children, she often made bread to keep the family up. According to the interview by Sean Penn, ‘El Chapo’ answered the question ‘And how did you get involved in the drug business?’ “Well, from the time I was 15 and after, where I come from, which is the municipality of Badiraguato, I was raised in a ranch named La Tuna, 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. That is what I can tell you” (2016:56). A frequent practice among locals was the growing of opium poppy, which he started doing because of the no job opportunities in his hometown. During harvest season, ‘El Chapo’ hiked up to the hills to cut the bud of the poppy. His father sold the harvest to other suppliers in the neighbourhood when the opium was stacked up in kilos from which heroin and other synthetic drugs were made, his father also sold marijuana at commercial centres nearby while he was with ‘El Chapo’. His father spent most of the profits on alcohol and women and regularly returned home with no money. ‘El Chapo’, at the age of 15, started growing his own marijuana plantation with his cousins who lived nearby, because of his father’s mismanagement. He supported his family financially and he gave all of his first marijuana profits to his mother. In his teenager years, not too long after he started growing marijuana his father kicked him out of his house, and he went to live with his grandfather. As Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace (2016) suggests, ‘El Chapo’ earned his nickname during his adolescence, it is a Mexican slang for “shorty”, because of his appearance and because he is only 1.68 metres tall. ‘El Chapo’ left his hometown because he was searching for greater opportunities and he was hoping to find something through his uncle Pedro Avilés Pérez, who was one of the pioneers of Mexican drug trafficking and in his early 20s ‘El Chapo’ joined the organized crime. As Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace (2016) says, it was in the early 1990s when the Mexican drug traffickers started moving tons of narcotics and earned billions.
Before Pablo Escobar’s death in 1993, ‘El Chapo’ was working with him and there was a solid partnership between Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers, it was only after the death of Pablo Escobar when Mexican drug traffickers peacefully took over the Colombian drug traffickers, which according to Elizabeth Joyce and Carlos Malamud (1998) led to Mexico becoming the principal supplier of drugs to the North American market. ‘El Chapo’s’ Sinaloa Cartel after the peaceful takeover ships tons of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the world’s top consumer, the United States and supplies throughout the United State. Sean Penn (2016) says, ‘El Chapo’ had exported more drugs to the United States than anyone else, including Pablo Escobar, more than 500 tons (450,000 kg) of cocaine in the United States alone. According to Edwin Nieves and Santiago Baruh (2016), ‘El Chapo’ was the second most powerful man in Mexico and the ‘biggest drug lord of all time’ also he was considered as ‘the most ruthless, dangerous, and feared man on the planet’ and he matched the influence of Pablo Escobar and he was called as ‘the godfather of the drug …show more content…
world’. ‘El Chapo’ was arrested three times and escaped twice, he was first captured in 1993 in Guatemala, extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico for murder and drug trafficking. According to Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace (2016) on the 9th of June in 1993, ‘El Chapo’ was arrested by the Guatemalan Army at a hotel near Tapachula, close to the Guatemala–Mexico border. He was then extradited to Mexico two days later aboard a military airplane, where he was immediately taken to a maximum-security prison in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico. Following this according to Anabel Hernández, Roberto Saviano and Iain Bruce (2013), on the 22nd of November in 1995, he was transferred to the maximum-security prison in Jalisco, after being found guilty of three crimes: possession of firearms, drug trafficking and murder. Associates brought him suitcases of cash to bribe prison workers and allow the drug lord to maintain his lifestyle even in prison, with prison guards acting like his servants. After bribing prison guards, he was able to escape from a federal maximum-security prison, on the 19th of January in 2001, a prison guard, opened ‘El Chapo’s’ cell door, and he got into a laundry cart that a maintenance worker rolled through several doors and eventually out the front door. He was then transported in the trunk of a car driven by the maintenance worker out of the town. According to Anabel Hernández, Roberto Saviano and Iain Bruce (2013), he was wanted by the governments of Mexico and United States.
Both the United States and the Mexican government offered millions of rewards for information leading to his capture. On the 22nd of February in 2014, he was tracked down and arrested a second time by Mexican authorities with the help of the DEA in Mexico. He captured without any gunshots fired. On the 11th of July 2015, ‘El Chapo’ escaped from prison again by exiting through a system of secret tunnels, with the length of 1.5 km, leading from the shower area to a house construction site.
Dale Sprusansky wrote this about ‘El Chapo’ in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,
“Become the most feared and ruthless of the drug lords, flaunting his wealth and power while eluding capture from a massive manhunt. Even when El Chapo's capture was announced, officials knew he would escape and he did, returning to the mountains where troops couldn’t touch him. Courageous, gritty, and gripping” (2016:119).
He was recaptured by Mexican marines and Federal Police following a shootout on the 8th of January in
2016. According to MGN Ltd. (2016) and BusinessPundit (2016), on the 19th of January in 2017, ‘El Chapo’ was extradited to the United States to face criminal charges there related to his leadership of the Sinaloa cartel. Mexico, also formally announced a renewed process of extradition to the United States two days later ‘El Chapo’ was recaptured. A critical requirement for extradition is that the United States must guarantee that they will not use the death penalty against ‘El Chapo’ if he is found guilty of the charges. ‘El Chapo’ during his court appearance in the Eastern District of New York, pled not guilty to all of the charges. According to Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace, “Guzmán’s well-built cartel, the most business-like of the bunch, seemed to be managing a smooth transition of power, with ‘El Chapo’s long-time associate Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada managing to keep billions’ worth of drugs moving, his protection by well-rewarded political officials and corrupt businessman seemingly undiminished” (2016:159). Even though ‘El Chapo’ has been in prison or on the run, the drug trafficking business did not decline nor increased as Sean Penn asked in the interview with ‘El Chapo’, “‘Did your drug business grow and expand when you were in jail?’ ‘El Chapo’ said ‘From what I can tell, and what I know, everything is the same. Nothing has decreased. Nothing has increased’” (2016:56). Netflix and Univision began co-producing a crime television series called ‘El Chapo’ in 2017, about the life of Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera. The main character is played by a Mexican actor Marco de la O. The series chronicles the true story of the rise, capture and escape of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. The series begins in 1985, when he was a low-level member of the Guadalajara Cartel, his rise to power as head of the Sinaloa Cartel, and his downfall. According to Alba Tobella (2017), it was filmed in Columbia, because the producers of the series thought it would be safer to film there because ‘El Chapo’ was still in Mexico at the time of the filming so for security and safety reasons the producers changed the location to Colombia. The series premiered on Sunday, on the 23rd of April in 2017. This series shows how ‘El Chapo’ became the drug lord he is today, the directors of the show Ernesto Contreras and José Manuel Cravioto (2017), portrayed ‘El Chapo’ in the show as he was in favour of a violent and serious approach when doing business, if any of his drug shipments were not on time, ‘El Chapo’ would simply kill the smuggler himself by shooting him in the head. The whole series puts this picture in our head that ‘El Chapo’ is quite serious and violent and not the guy you would want to mess with, we fear him to the extent where Pablo Escobar is nothing comparing to ‘El Chapo’. According to Ernesto Contreras and José Manuel Cravioto (2017), he became Mexico’s top drug kingpin in 2003 after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas Guillén of the Gulf Cartel and was considered the ‘most powerful drug trafficker in the world’ by the United States Department of the Treasury. ‘El Chapo’ became the boss of bosses. Carlos Armella & David Broome directed a documentary, a web mini television series in 2017 which called ‘The Day I Met El Chapo: The Kate Del Castillo Story’ or ‘Cuando conocí al Chapo: La historia de Kate del Castillo’ which is based on real facts about the meeting of Kate del Castillo and Sean Penn with El Chapo, Kate reveals the untold story of her encounter with ‘El Chapo’. The series tells Kate’s side of the story using material and exclusive details which have never been seen before of the events what led to the meeting between ‘El Chapo’, Sean Penn and Kate Del Castillo. According to Kate Del Castillo (2017), the beginning of the series of events of this meeting was when Kate tweeted a praising tweet about ‘El Chapo’, her intentions was to make a movie about ‘El Chapo’ and his life that’s why she wanted to meet him. As Sean Penn found out about this he seemed to be very interested, so Kate decided to bring him along to the meeting with two film producers, when they finally got to meet ‘El Chapo’, Sean Penn came up with the idea of making an interview with ‘El Chapo’. He agreed to this interview and a few months later he sent a video recording of his answers.
Martinez’s story is not so much one that pieces together the events of the crash, nor the lives of the three youths, but it is an immigrant’s tale, discovered through the crossings of the various Chavez family members and profiles of Cheranos in Mexico.
Joaquin Guzman was a lieutenant of the cartel when it first came to power, and took full control in the 1990s after the arrest of the preceding leader
Pancho Villa became an expert at survival and evading capture from search parties. During his...
Born into a poor family Joaquin only stayed in school till 3rd grade By then he was taken out to help his father with his drug business. When Guzman turned 15 he set out on his own to start his own drug business, which was so successful he was able to support his whole family, and even by his mother a mansion in an otherwise poor city. His drug company evolved into the Sinaloa Cartel and Joaquin Guzman became EL Chapo the Osama Bin Laden of the Drug Trade known for his brutal and meticulous tactics. El Chapo became one of the richest men in the world earning a place on Forbes billionaires list for four years until they took him off because they couldn't find his money's origin. He is also considered one of the greatest criminals in Mexico escaping 2 supermax prisons 2001 and 2015 and becoming the only other man besides Al Capone to be Chicago's public enemy No.1. El Chapo’s power not only over the Mexican drug cartel but also financially has made him a difficult person for the police to
The arrest of Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman was a victorious circumstance for the Mexican government, who have been closing down on his presence for the recent past years. Mexican authorities began taking down high ranked members of the Sinaloa Cartel including two of Guzman’s main associates. On February 22, 2014, the world’s most wanted man had also been captured. Although the biggest drug lord has been captured, the crime and violence left behind cannot be forgotten.
In the beginning, Cesar Chavez started having a hard life ever since he was young. He was born on March 31, 1927 in San Luis Arizona, near Yuma. He had two brothers and two sisters. He started working at a young age after his family lost their ranch on an economic crisis. As a consequence, they moved and started living in a barrio, which was a poor area of town in San Jose, California and they started living as immigrants. Later, he left school in order to start working with his family in fields and, in a way, start supporting his family. They used to move from farm to farm in look for more fields to harvest, so they could get more money. When he was seventeen he enlisted into the United States Navy and served for two years. At his return, in 1948, he married the love of his life, Helen Fabela, and eventually years later they had eight children together.
Sub Point 1: Tessa Vinson explains the origins of The Cartel in the Spring 2009 issue of The Monitor. Chinese immigrants working on the railroads brought with them the knowledge of how to grow poppy. Poppy is a plant which contains opium which is a source for many other drugs. As the need for poppy grew in demand Sinaloens began to export it through the Pacific Railroad into the United States. The United States and Mexico became increasingly aware of this and launched "Operation Condor" on November 1975, which eliminated most poppy fields aerially. This forced many small cartels to go out of business but also eliminated competition for the more established cartels. With the supply of poppy gone most cartels shifted their attention toward Columbian cocaine. In the mid-1970s Drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo who was in charge of powerful Guadalajara cartel began to export cocaine, he became known as "El Padrino" as he eventually controlled almost all of the drug market. (Vinson, 2009, pp.
...'s most wanted drug lord, El Chapo. Even though these are good results, the cartel is still thriving. It has said that it has gotten worse because about 1,000 people have died each month in drug violence since Pena Nieto took office, and the army is still involved in clashes with the cartels across large parts of the country.
Growing up Escobar was exposed to many things that coerced him to be the man he became. Pablo Escobar grew up during a time called La Violencia (The Violence) it was a time of civil war between the Columbian Conservative Party and the Columbian
The cartels are now in control of most of the drug trades and are successful. The Mexican border gives them the power to go everywhere they desire, making them a relentless force. “To date operation Xcellrator has led the arrest of 755 individuals and the seizure of approximately 5 U.S. Currency more than 12,000 kilograms of cocaine, more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 11,000 of methamphetamine, more than 8 kilograms of heroin, approximately 1.3 million pills of ecstasy”(Doj 2). Mexican cartels extend to central and southern America. Columbia is the supply of much of the cocaine exported to the U.S. Colombia is under control of South American gangs, they do business with the Mexican cartels to transport drugs the north. The Northern Mexican gangs hold the most control because the territory is very important (Wagner1). They are many different types of cartel in Mexico it also signifies that there are killing each other so their cartel can expand an...
They spoke of Kate as if she was a subject criticizing her personally instead of reading deep into the tweet discussing the main message. In the documentary “The Day I Met El Chapo” the director included interviews from Kate’s friends and other officials such as a retired DEA agent. The retired DEA agent, Hector Berrellex states, “El Chapo is a violent serial killer and nobody should be honoring him to include Kate del Castillo.” Instead of reading her tweet and noticing that her intent was to criticise El Chapo and the Mexican government at the same time. These opposing views towards Kate and the tweet she made are a common reaction towards any form of change. One example would be Rosa Parks, she did not move from the front of the bus for a white person because she had every right to sit there. The reaction to her transgression was jail time for not obeying the law. Kate’s transgression resulted in the media putting a magnifying glass on Kate, her family, friends, and the dangers from criticising the largest cartel leader. The Mexican government opposed Kate’s tweet by harming her career as an actress, and preventing her from visiting anywhere in Mexico. One opinion about El Chapo is someone not to be messed with similar to Al Capone. Another opinion of El Chapo is that he was just trying to
The Mexican drug-trafficking cartels are said to have been established in the 1980s by a man named Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, also known as “The Godfather”. With the help of Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel started the Guadalajara Cartel, which is one of the first to have thrived from association with the Colombian cocaine trade. The two men who helped Miguel Gallardo establish the cartel were arrested, so Gallardo, the single leader of the cartel “was smart enough to privatize the Mexican drug trade by having it run by lesser-known bosses” (The Five Most Famous Drug Cartels”), that he often met with in Acapulco. Eventually Miguel was arrested as well which caused the split of the Guadalajara Cartel into the Sinaloa Cartel and the Tijuana Cartel.
The film opens with a news program reporting Chávez’s consumption of coca and linking it to the alleged poor governance of Venezuela. He was called a dictator, together with Morales, who was not directly mentioned in the segment but was simply referred to as “the dictator from Bolivia” who supplied him with ...
“Mexican smugglers have long trafficked homegrown heroin and marijuana to the U.S. But in the 1980’s, Mexico also became the primary route for Colombian cocaine bound for the U.S” (Bates). According to Bates, when Guadalajara’s leader was arrested in 1989, the groups remaining capos, including a young Guzman, divided up its trafficking routes, creating the Sinaloa, Juarez, and Tijuana Cartels. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, age 56, is responsible for half the illegal narcotics that are imported into the U.S. each year. “El Chapo” meaning shorty, is believed to be the world’s most powerful drug lord.
In Jeanette Schmidt’s article, Transporting Cocaine states, “Colombian cartels would pay the Mexican groups as much as $1,000/kilo to smuggle cocaine into the United States” (Schmidt, 2). The Colombian cartels would then pick up the drugs and resume distribution and sales efforts, making personal profits that are unrecorded. In order to seize these individuals who are growing in power and numbers, the U.S. must control the connections between Mexico and Columbia. Mexico is the biggest transporter amongst Columbia and the U.S. because it shares a border with the U.S. This increasingly poisonous drug trafficking leads to drug dealers...