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Manhunt of El Chapo Guzmán

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Morogris (talk | contribs) at 07:02, 24 February 2014 (→Felipe Calderón administration: 2006–2012: Updating.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Escape from prison: 2001

Vicente Fox administration: 2001–2006

On March 2001, authorities discovered that Guzmán was hiding at a ranch known as Los Limones in Santa Fe, Nayarit. Soldiers raided the property but the drug lord had escaped beforehand, reportedly via helicopter. On August 2001, he was detected near La Marquesa in Mexico City. On November 2001, Guzmán was reported to have lived in Puebla with his wife Griselda López Pérez and in Cuernavaca.[1][2] According to police reports, Guzmán and his wife were under the protection of Jesús Castro Pantoja, an ex-policeman in charge of the drug lord’s security logistics; and Juan Mauro Palomares (alias "El Trece"), another Sinaloa Cartel member and associate of Guzmán.[3] From Puebla he moved back to Mexico City before hiding at a mountainous community known as Tohayana in Sinaloa. It was there were federal agents believed that Guzmán began to make business connections with South American drug traffickers.[1] On the first week of September 2001, Mexican authorities reported that Guzmán was living between Toluca and the state of Nayarit. He managed to escape arrest after the extinct Federal Preventive Police (PFP) intercepted a vehicle carrying Arturo Guzmán Loera (alias "El Pollo"), one of Guzmán's brothers. In one of the other vehicles in the convoy was Guzmán, who managed to escape the scene. One of the henchmen arrested with Arturo was allowed to make a phone call while detained, allowing Guzmán to escape from a safe house he was hiding in Zinacantepec, State of Mexico, where he lived from June to September 2011. The Mexican authorities had several follow-ups on Guzmán's whereabouts since previous months; through phone taps, they concluded that the drug lord was residing in the Toluca Valley. That year, the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN), Mexico's intelligence agency, conducted an investigation among several State of Mexico functionaries to determine if any of them were collaborating with Guzmán.[4][5] In 2002, he was reported to have been at Campeche in southern Mexico; in Tamaulipas in the northeast; in the state of Sonora in the northwest; and in Mexico City, the country’s capital. On 14 June 2002, federal agents believed that Guzmán and Zambada were hiding at Las Quintas neighborhood in Culiacán. When the authorities got to the area, they surrounded the houses with over 200 federal policemen, only to discover Zambada’s ex-wife and daughter.[6] About a month later on 2 July 2002, informants notified federal agents that the drug lord was hiding at the Condado de Sayavedra neighborhood in Atizapán, State of Mexico. Like in the other occurrences, Guzmán was not found.[7][6]

On 22 August 2003, rumors spread among the news that Guzmán had been captured in Monterrey, Nuevo León; Mexico's Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha denied the allegations.[8] That same day but in Manzanillo, Colima, other versions circulated that Guzmán had been captured, but they turned out to be false.[9] In 2004, the Mexican Army discovered that Guzmán and Zambada hosted a large social event in Badiraguato, Sinaloa and were heading via truck to Tamazula, Durango. A terrestrial operation to capture the drug lord would have taken hours given the dirt tracks that led to the area where Guzmán was located. Instead, the Army sent in the Mexican Air Force to surprise him. As helicopters soared on top of the ranch, Guzmán and his men escaped by foot. Soldiers descended from the choppers and arrested the employees working at the ranch, but Guzmán was nowhere to be found. According to local journalists who consulted the police, the operative was carried out to merely scare away Guzmán, not to apprehend him.[10] On November 2004, soldiers raided another of Guzmán’s ranches north of La Tuna, Badiraguato, after they detected his voice through a satellite phone line they had been tapping for several months. When they got to the location, Guzmán had escaped—they were about ten minutes late from capturing him. At the scene the soldiers confiscated several belongings from the drug lord, including laptops with new photographs of Guzmán. The pictures proved that the drug lord had been at that ranch, and showed that he sported a new mustache and had gained more weight after escaping from prison. Outraged for failing to capture him, the soldiers lite Guzmán’s vehicles on fire and destroyed the property. Mexican authorities blamed infiltrated informants for passing down information to Guzmán’s and helping him escape, but critics noted that the drug lord had successfully avoided arrest because there were no serious efforts to apprehend him and that the government was faking to be after Guzmán.[11]

During the last days for the administration of President Vicente Fox (2000-2006), General Rolando Eugenio Hidalgo Eddy was appointed at the 9th Military Zone with clear orders to capture him. Within a few months in office, the General managed to arrest one of Guzmán’s top money launderers and raided several towns and airstrips thought to be owned by Guzmán.[12][13] Although he received death threats from organized crime, he went for Guzmán’s family. In one operative led by him, soldiers raided one of the ranches owned by María Consuelo Loera Pérez, the drug lord’s mother. Intelligence reports mentioned that Guzmán had visited his mother in La Tuna, Badiraguato. When the soldiers arrived, the drug lord had already escaped; after not finding any evidence of criminal activities, the allegedly soldiers trashed the property, according to some local eyewitnesses accounts.[14] Guzmán purposely carried out a defamation campaign against the General to win public support.[15] Locals, accused of supporting the drug lord, marched in Culiacán and wrote a petition to the President and the local human rights commission asking for the abuses to stop. Authorities dismissed the accusations as a tactic employed by Guzman. Locals, on the other hand, denied the accusations.[14] On August 2006, he commanded an operation that led to the capture of Guzmán’s nephew Luis Alberto Cano Zepeda in Durango. Guzmán responded by disposing the corpse of a man outside of the General’s headquarters.[16][17] Guzmán's escape from prison in the Fox administration marked an embarrassing episode for the government, which carried out several efforts to re-arrest the drug lord. However, Guzmán managed to remain a fugitive throughout the whole political administration and into Calderón's presidency, which began on December 2006.[18]

Felipe Calderón administration: 2006–2012

In the administration of President Felipe Calderón (2006–December 2012), Guzmán's capture was a top priority for the Mexican government. However, he managed to remain a fugitive throughout the whole political administration. Eleven days after taking office on 11 December 2006, Calderón carried out a military-led campaign to dismantle the drug trafficking groups in the state of Michoacán, marking the start of the Mexican Drug War.

On October 2007, media outlets reported that Guzmán had been captured in Sinaloa de Leyva, Sinaloa following a military raid. The information was later confirmed to be just a rumor.[19][20] Manhunts on behalf of the General continued throughout his tenure in Sinaloa until 2008, when he departed from his post, without much success. In every occasion, Guzmán was elusive and got away from being detained.[21][22] On 25 March 2008, a massive shootout in Guatemala's border with El Salvador reached the headlines in Mexico; local media outlets reported that among the eleven dead was Guzmán. Two of the bodies were calcined, and Guatemalan authorities issued DNA samples to determine whether the Sinaloa Cartel kingpin was one of them, given that the Guatemalan authorities confirmed that there was one Mexican citizen among the casualties. As Mexico anticipated the news, Guatemala's President Álvaro Colom clarified that Guzmán had not been killed. After meeting with investigators, he said, they concluded that the drug lord was possibly hiding in Honduras.[23][24] On May 2008, Mexican authorities conducted several operations in Irapuato, San Miguel de Allende, and in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato after suspicions that Guzmán was residing in that state.[25] On 15 September 2008, Mexico’s Independence Day, Guzmán reportedly visited Badiraguato, Sinaloa to take a look at his marijuana plantations and deliveries as a helicopter overlooked the area.[26]

Investigators believe that the drug lord lived in Argentina from August 2010 to March 201 and was companied by an unidentified female and his stepdaughter. Following a lead conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that called for his arrest, Guzmán reportedly went to the Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires and flew to Paraguay, Colombia, and then to Europe using a false name. It was not clear if Guzmán travelled in the same plane with the woman and the girl. The authorities speculate that they did travel together, however. In Argentina, Guzmán reportedly conducted drug trafficking shipments and met with regional drug lords in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, and Córdoba to further extend the Sinaloa Cartel's presence in South America. The drug lord hid in poor Argentinian neighborhoods and laundered money there; such actions helped him gain the trust of some locals, investigators say.[27][28]

Enrique Peña Nieto administration: 2012–2014

Closing up on Guzmán

Re-arrest: 2014

References

  1. ^ a b Gómez, Francisco (20 May 2008). "Las otras fugas de El Chapo". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 14 February 2013 suggested (help)
  2. ^ "El Chapo vivió en Puebla luego de su fuga". Quinta Columna (in Spanish). 14 May 2010. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 17 May 2010 suggested (help)
  3. ^ Benavides, Carlos (6 November 2001). "Revela PGR paso de "El Chapo" por Puebla". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  4. ^ Montaño, Teresa. "Se ocultó el capo en Zinacantepec, revelan". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  5. ^ Montaño Delgado, María Teresa (8 October 2001). "Aprovecha El Chapo errores para huir". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  6. ^ a b Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 133-134.
  7. ^ "Rastrean al Chapo en cercanías de Atizapán". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). 3 July 2002. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 3 February 2014 suggested (help)
  8. ^ "Desmiente Macedo captura de 'El Chapo' Guzmán". Esmas.com (in Spanish). Televisa. 22 August 2003. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 24 January 2010 suggested (help)
  9. ^ Avilés, Carlos (22 August 2003). "Niega Procuraduría captura del Chapo Guzmán". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  10. ^ Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 118-119.
  11. ^ Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 119.
  12. ^ Tolosa, Arturo (13 October 2007). "La guerra personal entre el General y El Chapo". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 9 January 2009 suggested (help)
  13. ^ Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 120.
  14. ^ a b Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 121-122.
  15. ^ "El fugaz paso paso de la esposa del "Chapo" por la PGR". Ríodoce (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ "Es sobrino de El Chapo uno de los detenidos en Durango". Noroeste (in Spanish). 16 June 2009. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  17. ^ "Asesinan a sobrino de "El Chapo" Guzmán". Proceso (magazine) (in Spanish). 12 June 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= requires |archive-url= (help); External link in |authorlink= (help)
  18. ^ Olson, Alexandra (18 January 2011). "Mexico's 'El Chapo' Guzman thrives 10 years after escape". El Paso Times. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  19. ^ Cabrera Martínez, Javier (8 October 2007). "Sin confirmarse versión sobre captura de El Chapo Guzmán". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 11 October 2007 suggested (help)
  20. ^ "5 falsas capturas de El Chapo". Aristegui Noticias (in Spanish). 23 February 2013. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 27 February 2013 suggested (help)
  21. ^ Beith, Malcolm (14 July 2011). "Can Mexico Fix its Image Problem". Foreign Policy (magazine). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 11 February 2013 suggested (help)
  22. ^ Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 122.
  23. ^ Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 190.
  24. ^ "Guatemala desmiente muerte de El Chapo". CNN Expansion (in Spanish). 28 March 2008. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  25. ^ Álvarez, Xóchitl (20 May 2008). "Buscan a El Chapo en Guanajuato". El Universal (Mexico City) (in Spanish). León, Guanajuato. Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  26. ^ Beith, Malcolm 2010, p. 183.
  27. ^ Arredondo, Rogelio (26 May 2011). "Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán estuvo viviendo en Argentina desde el 2010: agencia". International Business Times (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 24 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  28. ^ "Revelan que 'El Chapo' Guzmán vivió en Argentina en 2010". Excélsior (in Spanish). 27 May 2011. Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2014. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

Bibliography

Beith, Malcolm (2010). The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the World's Most Wanted Drug Lord. Grove Press. ISBN 0802196225. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Grayson, George W. (2011). Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1412815517. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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