Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, dodged international manhunt for more than a decade after escaping from a maximum-security prison in the Mexican state of Jalisco in 2001. Throughout his criminal career following his escape, Guzmán was pursued all across Mexico and abroad, and went from being an average-level drug lord to arguably the world's most-wanted man. Mexico offered MXN$30 million (about US$2.3 million) for his capture, while the United States offered up to US$5 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction. In 1993, he was arrested and imprisoned for murder and drug trafficking, facing a 20-year sentence. Fearing his extradition to the U.S., Guzmán fled from prison by reportedly hiding in a laundry cart in 2001. He quickly reincorporated back in the Sinaloa Cartel while authorities continued their manhunt to re-arrest him.
While on the run, Guzmán reportedly travelled with a large entourage of armed bodyguards equivalent to those of a head of state, using a vast surveillance network and bullet-proof cars, aircraft, and all-terrain vehicles to avoid capture. His elusiveness helped him craft a near-mythical persona and image in some parts of Mexico; alleged eyewitnesses accounts abound that Guzmán would enter restaurants with his gunmen, order all cell phones and devices confiscated, proceed to calmly enjoy his meal, and subsequently paying the tab for every customer in the restaurant upon departing. His whereabouts were a subject of Mexican folklore, with reports and rumors circulating that he was in many parts of Mexico, especially in an area known as the "Golden Triangle", a drug-producing region in the Sierra Madre mountains where Guzmán grew up.
By late 2013, authorities began to penetrate Guzmán's security inner circle by arresting several of his top lieutenants. Through informant tips, wiretap phone calls, and confessions from his close associates, Mexican security forces got closer to his whereabouts. After more than 13 years on the run, he was finally arrested by the Mexican Navy in a beach resort area in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, on 22 February 2014. Many Mexicans compared his capture with the fall of Colombia's drug lord Pablo Escobar, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and even the death of Osama bin Laden. However, on July 11, 2015, Guzmán escaped from prison again through a tunnel inside his prison cell, but was caught six months after his escape and was extradited to the U.S.
Vicente Fox administration: 2000–2006
Arrest and prison escape: 1993–2001 On 9 June 1993, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, was arrested in Guatemala following a massive manhunt to arrest him and other drug traffickers involved in the murder of the Mexican cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo (who was mistakenly killed by the Tijuana Cartel during an attack aimed at Guzmán). Following his arrest, he was extradited to Mexico and imprisoned at the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 (often referred to simply as "La Palma" or "Altiplano"), a maximum-security prison in Almoloya de Juárez, State of Mexico. On 22 November 1995, he was transferred to the maximum security prison Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 2 (also known as "Puente Grande") in Jalisco. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but while he lived in Puente Grande, Guzmán enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle; he had most of the people working in the prison under his payroll, ordered the meals he wanted from a menu, continued his illicit activities through cellphone, enjoyed sporadic visits from prostitutes, among other benefits. However, under fears of being extradited to the United States for pending charges on drug trafficking, Guzmán orchestrated his escape from Puente Grande. On 19 January 2001, his electronically secured cell was opened and Guzmán was reportedly escorted by a prison guard outside of Puente Grande while hidden in a laundry cart. The security cameras of the prison were disabled on his way out, and Guzmán became a free man.
Guzmán was driven out of the prison by Francisco Javier Camberos Rivera (alias "El Chito"), one of the prison guards, and headed to Guadalajara. In the car, Guzmán sat in the passenger seat and urged Camberos Rivera that both of them were better off fleeing together, given that the manhunt to re-arrest him would also include his accomplice. When they were outside the city, Guzmán asked him to stop at a gasoline station because he said he was thirsty and wanted a bottle of water. Camberos Rivera got off the vehicle, went into the shop, and bought the water. When he came back to the car, Guzmán was gone. At 11:35 p.m. that day, the prison warden Leonardo Beltrán Santana was notified that Guzmán's cell was empty, and chaos within the prison ensued. The prison staff searched in every cell, room, and closet to no avail. When the news of Guzmán's escape reached the newspaper headlines, the Mexican government vowed to launch a national manhunt to bring him behind bars again and to punish those responsible for allowing him to escape.
In the nearby communities close to the prison, the Mexican Army searched for Guzmán; they raided houses, ranches, and even government buildings, but they did not find traces of the drug lord. In Guadalajara, security forces raided a house of one of Guzmán's associates, confiscating weapons, drugs, phones, computers, and thousands of dollars in cash, but they did not find their target. Anonymous tips led authorities to Manzanillo, Colima, which led to raids in seventeen houses and four ranches. Guzmán, however, was nowhere to be found. Within days of the escape, it was clear to the Mexican government that Guzmán was no longer hiding in the surrounding areas. The manhunt was then extended nationwide, with hundreds of police officers and soldiers scattered across Mexico, from major cities to the tiniest rural communities. After meeting with other Sinaloa Cartel leaders a few months after his escape, Guzmán re-emerged and was eager to prove that his time in prison had not softened his personality and that his position and status among the cartel hierarchy was stronger than before. He spent most of 2001 transversing numerous hideouts all across Mexico, acclimating quickly to his new lifestyle as a high-profile drug lord on the run.
Continued manhunts In 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. In August 2001, he was detected near La Marquesa in Mexico City. In November 2001, Guzmán was reported to have lived in Puebla with his wife Griselda López Pérez and in Cuernavaca. 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. From Puebla he moved back to Mexico City before hiding at a mountainous community known as Tohayana in Sinaloa. It was there federal agents believed that Guzmán began to make business connections with South American drug traffickers. In 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.
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 Mayo 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. 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. On 22 August 2003, rumors spread that Guzmán had been captured in Monterrey, Nuevo León; Mexico's Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha denied the allegations. That same day but in Manzanillo, Colima, other versions circulated that Guzmán had been captured, but they turned out to be false.
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. In 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 lit Guzmán's vehicles on fire and destroyed the property. Mexican authorities blamed infiltrated informants for passing down information to Guzmán 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 attempts to capture Guzmán.
Public appearances One Saturday evening in May 2005, Guzmán reportedly appeared at a restaurant in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas escorted by several of his gunmen. After closing the doors of the restaurant, the drug lord warned the 40 customers that they were not allowed to leave the place or use electronic devices until he finished dinner. To make up for the inconvenience, however, Guzmán picked up the tab for all of the customers in the restaurant. In November 2005, Guzmán was supposedly seen in Culiacán, Sinaloa repeating the same exploit he had done months before; according to an eyewitness, the drug lord arrived at Las Palmas, an eatery in one of the city's busy streets, with 15 of his bodyguards—all of them sporting AK-47 assault rifles. A man told those present the following: