NY TIMES
After a lengthy 11-week trial, a jury on Tuesday convicted Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug kingpin known as El Chapo. Mr. Guzmán, 61, faced 10 charges, including leading a criminal enterprise and the importation and sales of large amounts of narcotics into the United States. He now will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
The trial allowed prosecutors to extensively detail the inner workings of Mr. Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel, providing unparalleled insight into international drug trafficking. Here are 11 of the most important takeaways, in no particular order.
Corruption in Mexico is worse than you think
During the trial, nearly every level of Mexican government was implicated in bribes, including the presidency. One witness testified that El Chapo paid Enrique Peña Nieto, [above] when he was president in 2012, $100 million in exchange for allowing the kingpin to come out of hiding.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s top security official was said by one witness — and federal prosecutors — to have accepted a multimillion-dollar bribe from the Sinaloa cartel in 2005.
Genaro García Luna, the former secretary of public security, was accused of accepting two suitcases stuffed with $3 million. And the Mexican federal police, referred to by one witness as “our people,” were said to have protected El Chapo after his first escape from prison in 2001.
Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía was one of the world’s biggest producers of Colombian cocaine. The photograph on the left shows Mr. Ramírez before his plastic surgeries; the photograph on the right is afterward.CreditCreditUnited States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York
Drug traffickers love plastic surgery.
Getting too much plastic surgery appears to be an unwritten rule in narco textbooks. The drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as the Lord of the Skies, famously died under a surgeon’s knife, and several witnesses said they went through extensive operations.
Tirso Martínez Sanchez, who helped run trains filled with drugs between Mexico and the United States for the cartel, said he had several facial-reconstructive operations to drastically alter his appearance, stopping only after he started bleeding out during his third operation.
Most memorable were the comic-strip-like features of Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía, known as Chupeta, who was El Chapo’s Colombian cocaine supplier. Over the course of several operations, he structurally altered his jawbone, cheekbone, eyes, mouth, ears and nose.
Chupeta also tried to have his fingerprints removed, most likely causing a circulation problem; he almost constantly used gloves on the stand. In court, his reddened skin looked like melted wax pulled over his scalp.
The prosecution’s star witness in the current trial of El Chapo, Jesus Zambada García, was first presented to the Mexican press in 2008 shortly after his arrest.CreditAlexandre Meneghini/Associated Press
Corruption in Mexico is worse than you think
During the trial, nearly every level of Mexican government was implicated in bribes, including the presidency. One witness testified that El Chapo paid Enrique Peña Nieto, [above] when he was president in 2012, $100 million in exchange for allowing the kingpin to come out of hiding.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s top security official was said by one witness — and federal prosecutors — to have accepted a multimillion-dollar bribe from the Sinaloa cartel in 2005.
Genaro García Luna, the former secretary of public security, was accused of accepting two suitcases stuffed with $3 million. And the Mexican federal police, referred to by one witness as “our people,” were said to have protected El Chapo after his first escape from prison in 2001.
Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía was one of the world’s biggest producers of Colombian cocaine. The photograph on the left shows Mr. Ramírez before his plastic surgeries; the photograph on the right is afterward.CreditCreditUnited States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York
Drug traffickers love plastic surgery.
Getting too much plastic surgery appears to be an unwritten rule in narco textbooks. The drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as the Lord of the Skies, famously died under a surgeon’s knife, and several witnesses said they went through extensive operations.
Tirso Martínez Sanchez, who helped run trains filled with drugs between Mexico and the United States for the cartel, said he had several facial-reconstructive operations to drastically alter his appearance, stopping only after he started bleeding out during his third operation.
Most memorable were the comic-strip-like features of Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía, known as Chupeta, who was El Chapo’s Colombian cocaine supplier. Over the course of several operations, he structurally altered his jawbone, cheekbone, eyes, mouth, ears and nose.
Chupeta also tried to have his fingerprints removed, most likely causing a circulation problem; he almost constantly used gloves on the stand. In court, his reddened skin looked like melted wax pulled over his scalp.
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El Chapo was paranoid.
According to witnesses, El Chapo heavily invested in wiretapping and spyware equipment over the decades, becoming obsessed with secure communications in the 1980s. Around that time, he also began obsessively recording the calls of his wife, lovers, associates and enemies. One associate, Miguel Angel Martínez, recalled Chapo telling him, “The most important thing in that environment was to know what everyone was thinking about you. Whoever — your friends, our enemies, your compadres.”
Later, Christian Rodriguez, a 20-something I.T. expert from Colombia, developed a more high-tech spyware system for phones and computers belonging to Mr. Guzmán’s wife, mistresses and associates. Mr. Guzmán received routine spy reports and also made a habit of calling back associates after a business transaction; the second, invisible, call activated hidden microphones that enabled him to listen in without the person’s knowledge.
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, owned a monogrammed diamond handled pistol.CreditUnited States Attorney's OfficeEl Chapo’s paranoia led to his downfallThe United States government used El Chapo’s intrepid spy systems against him. Although Mr. Guzmán used BlackBerry phones as well as a filter system, which passed messages between third parties to protect the identity of the senders, his most comprehensive system was devised by Mr. Rodriguez. It allowed him to place calls from a secure three-digit extension to other trusted parties anywhere in the world.However, Mr. Rodriguez agreed to cooperate with American authorities after being approached by the F.B.I. during a sting operation. He turned over calls and text messages from the encrypted system
According to witnesses, El Chapo heavily invested in wiretapping and spyware equipment over the decades, becoming obsessed with secure communications in the 1980s. Around that time, he also began obsessively recording the calls of his wife, lovers, associates and enemies. One associate, Miguel Angel Martínez, recalled Chapo telling him, “The most important thing in that environment was to know what everyone was thinking about you. Whoever — your friends, our enemies, your compadres.”
Later, Christian Rodriguez, a 20-something I.T. expert from Colombia, developed a more high-tech spyware system for phones and computers belonging to Mr. Guzmán’s wife, mistresses and associates. Mr. Guzmán received routine spy reports and also made a habit of calling back associates after a business transaction; the second, invisible, call activated hidden microphones that enabled him to listen in without the person’s knowledge.
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, owned a monogrammed diamond handled pistol.CreditUnited States Attorney's OfficeEl Chapo’s paranoia led to his downfallThe United States government used El Chapo’s intrepid spy systems against him. Although Mr. Guzmán used BlackBerry phones as well as a filter system, which passed messages between third parties to protect the identity of the senders, his most comprehensive system was devised by Mr. Rodriguez. It allowed him to place calls from a secure three-digit extension to other trusted parties anywhere in the world.However, Mr. Rodriguez agreed to cooperate with American authorities after being approached by the F.B.I. during a sting operation. He turned over calls and text messages from the encrypted system
In one secretly recorded phone call, Mr. Guzmán told an employee of his cartel, “Don’t be chasing cops. They’re the ones who help.”CreditUnited States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York
The government was listening
The prosecution’s case was built from four wiretap investigations. In addition to Mr. Rodriguez’s system tap, prosecutors also used wiretaps collected by authorities in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, as well as one from Homeland Security Investigations.
The government collected more than one million text messages between cartel members
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, was surrounded by media after the verdict on Tuesday.CreditStephen Speranza for The New York Times
The worldwide reach of the Sinaloa cartel
Like any good business, the Sinaloa cartel globalized, stretching far beyond the Mexican-United States border to Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Belize, Honduras, Canada, Thailand and China.
From early in his career, Mr. Guzmán reached out to cocaine suppliers in Colombia to receive cheap cocaine. He negotiated cheaper deals with the dealers by promising to deliver the cocaine more quickly, gaining him the nickname El Rápido for his speed in funneling the cocaine through tunnels under the border.
Prosecutors called 56 witnesses to the stand in the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo.CreditCreditJohannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A lot of people played a part
The case required the cooperation of several American law enforcement agencies, but it also required keeping some Mexican authorities out of most discussions.
Among the cooperators were the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations and the United States Coast Guard. Also involved were foreign law enforcement and military based in Ecuador, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, as well as local law enforcement in New York City, Chicago and Texas and federal prosecutors in New York, Chicago, El Paso, Miami, San Diego and Washington, D.C.
But not a single Mexican law enforcement officer testified. Victor J. Vazquez, the D.E.A. special agent who helped lead the successful arrest of El Chapo in February 2014, told the jury that the D.E.A. and Mexican military purposely kept local Mexican law enforcement in the dark because of “the corruption level — using them again was not going to work.”
A hole in the floor that the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera used to escape a prison in Mexico.CreditMario Guzman/European Pressphoto Agency
What he really wanted to do was direct
El Chapo loves the limelight — even his lawyers admit it. Mr. Guzmán wanted to direct a movie, and then later tried to set up another movie with the telenovela star Kate del Castillo. That contact led to his infamous interview with Sean Penn for Rolling Stone.
And in court, El Chapo seemed ecstatic to see the actor Alejandro Edda, who plays him on Netflix’s “Narcos: Mexico.”
Former cartel killer Isaias Valdez Rios gave wrenching accounts of Mexico’s bloody drug wars.CreditUS Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York
The cartel felt like ‘Game of Thrones’
The cartel was not a cohesive unit, but an ever-shifting factionalized federation constantly at war with itself. Mr. Guzmán has feuded with his cousins, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers; the Arellano-Félix organization; and other former close associates.
Deaths of leaders and close friends often sparked the wars, which led to the bloody deaths and injuries of innocent civilians and family members in public places, including the 1993 murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo at an airport in Guadalajara.
Drug-filled plastic bananas discovered in a raid on one of the Sinaloa safe houses in 2014. The photo was offered as evidence in the New York trial of Mr. Guzmán.CreditUnited States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, via Associated Press
The Sinaloa cartel moved a lot of drugs
Mr. Guzmán’s drugs came into Mexico and later the United States on fishing boats and trains, helicopters and planes, semi-submersible and tanker ships, shoe boxes and chili cans. Although many more drugs crossed over than were seized, a few notable successes for authorities included a 16-ton seizure from a merchant vessel in Panama and a 6-ton seizure out of Ecuador.
Although it never happened, the cartel also discussed trying to move 100 tons of cocaine on an oil tanker ship.
Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López testified on Tuesday that all the work she did for her lover El Chapo resulted only in humiliation.CreditUnited States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York
A horrifying claim was never heard in court
In documents unsealed on Feb. 1, one witness alleged that El Chapo routinely raped young girls, preferring 13-year-olds whom he considered “his vitamins.”
He was also accused of raping a young woman, who testified against him in court. That woman, Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López, was believed to be his former lover and sobbed on the stand while recounting her affair with the kingpin. Evidence about these attacks, kept from the jury because it was considered prejudicial, was published just ahead of deliberations.
The government was listening
The prosecution’s case was built from four wiretap investigations. In addition to Mr. Rodriguez’s system tap, prosecutors also used wiretaps collected by authorities in Colombia and the Dominican Republic, as well as one from Homeland Security Investigations.
The government collected more than one million text messages between cartel members
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, was surrounded by media after the verdict on Tuesday.CreditStephen Speranza for The New York Times
The worldwide reach of the Sinaloa cartel
Like any good business, the Sinaloa cartel globalized, stretching far beyond the Mexican-United States border to Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Belize, Honduras, Canada, Thailand and China.
From early in his career, Mr. Guzmán reached out to cocaine suppliers in Colombia to receive cheap cocaine. He negotiated cheaper deals with the dealers by promising to deliver the cocaine more quickly, gaining him the nickname El Rápido for his speed in funneling the cocaine through tunnels under the border.
Prosecutors called 56 witnesses to the stand in the trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo.CreditCreditJohannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A lot of people played a part
The case required the cooperation of several American law enforcement agencies, but it also required keeping some Mexican authorities out of most discussions.
Among the cooperators were the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations and the United States Coast Guard. Also involved were foreign law enforcement and military based in Ecuador, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, as well as local law enforcement in New York City, Chicago and Texas and federal prosecutors in New York, Chicago, El Paso, Miami, San Diego and Washington, D.C.
But not a single Mexican law enforcement officer testified. Victor J. Vazquez, the D.E.A. special agent who helped lead the successful arrest of El Chapo in February 2014, told the jury that the D.E.A. and Mexican military purposely kept local Mexican law enforcement in the dark because of “the corruption level — using them again was not going to work.”
A hole in the floor that the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera used to escape a prison in Mexico.CreditMario Guzman/European Pressphoto Agency
What he really wanted to do was direct
El Chapo loves the limelight — even his lawyers admit it. Mr. Guzmán wanted to direct a movie, and then later tried to set up another movie with the telenovela star Kate del Castillo. That contact led to his infamous interview with Sean Penn for Rolling Stone.
And in court, El Chapo seemed ecstatic to see the actor Alejandro Edda, who plays him on Netflix’s “Narcos: Mexico.”
Former cartel killer Isaias Valdez Rios gave wrenching accounts of Mexico’s bloody drug wars.CreditUS Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York
The cartel felt like ‘Game of Thrones’
The cartel was not a cohesive unit, but an ever-shifting factionalized federation constantly at war with itself. Mr. Guzmán has feuded with his cousins, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers; the Arellano-Félix organization; and other former close associates.
Deaths of leaders and close friends often sparked the wars, which led to the bloody deaths and injuries of innocent civilians and family members in public places, including the 1993 murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo at an airport in Guadalajara.
Drug-filled plastic bananas discovered in a raid on one of the Sinaloa safe houses in 2014. The photo was offered as evidence in the New York trial of Mr. Guzmán.CreditUnited States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, via Associated Press
The Sinaloa cartel moved a lot of drugs
Mr. Guzmán’s drugs came into Mexico and later the United States on fishing boats and trains, helicopters and planes, semi-submersible and tanker ships, shoe boxes and chili cans. Although many more drugs crossed over than were seized, a few notable successes for authorities included a 16-ton seizure from a merchant vessel in Panama and a 6-ton seizure out of Ecuador.
Although it never happened, the cartel also discussed trying to move 100 tons of cocaine on an oil tanker ship.
Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López testified on Tuesday that all the work she did for her lover El Chapo resulted only in humiliation.CreditUnited States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York
A horrifying claim was never heard in court
In documents unsealed on Feb. 1, one witness alleged that El Chapo routinely raped young girls, preferring 13-year-olds whom he considered “his vitamins.”
He was also accused of raping a young woman, who testified against him in court. That woman, Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López, was believed to be his former lover and sobbed on the stand while recounting her affair with the kingpin. Evidence about these attacks, kept from the jury because it was considered prejudicial, was published just ahead of deliberations.