This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Mexico’s president Enrique Peña Nieto announced the recapture of cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, whose escape in July from a maximum-security prison humiliated the country’s federal government and exposed corruption in the country’s prison system.

“The arrest of today is very important for the government of Mexico. It shows that the public can have confidence in its institutions,” Peña Nieto said in an address to the nation on Friday. “Mexicans can count on a government decided and determined to build a better country.

Peña Nieto offered few details of the capture, which came six months after El Chapo, the head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, slipped out of his cell and into a sophisticated tunnel built with the apparent collusion of prison officers.

It was his second escape from a high-security prison in less than 15 years.

Peña Nieto made no mention of the United States or the role its intelligence agencies may have played in Guzmán’s capture. El Chapo faces at least seven criminal indictments in several US states, on charges including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, money laundering, and drug distribution.

Guzmán presided over one of the world’s most extensive criminal enterprises, trafficking cocaine on almost every continent, and dominating the narcotics trade in the US. He was deemed so influential and wealthy that in 2009 he landed on the Forbes list of billionaires – provoking outrage in the administration of then-president Felipe Calderón.

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Guzmán’s capture marks a rare piece of good news for the president, whose popularity has plummeted to depths not seen in two decades amid the fallout from El Chapo’s escape, allegations of corruption in a property deal involving Peña Nieto’s wife, and his aloof response to the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 student teachers.

“Mission accomplished,” Peña Nieto wrote in a tweet that broke the news. “I would like to inform the Mexican people that Joaquín Guzmán Loera has been captured.”

Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) Misión cumplida: lo tenemos. Quiero informar a los mexicanos que Joaquín Guzmán Loera ha sido detenido.

The Mexican navy said in a statement that Guzmán was captured following an early morning shootout after marines, acting on a tip, raided a house in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzmán’s home state.

Five people were killed in the shootout, though only one marine was injured, while weapons, a rocket launcher and bulletproof vehicles were captured.



The capture marks the second time Guzmán has been apprehended in the past three years. Mexican marines captured him in Mazatlán in early 2013 after he had foiled previous attempts by fleeing into a system of underground tunnels.

Guzmán was sent to Altiplano high-security prison, 56 miles outside Mexico City, but in July last year, he absconded again, squeezing through a hole in his shower floor then fleeing on a modified motorbike through a mile-long tunnel fitted with lights and a ventilation system.

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At the time of his escape the capo wore a tracker bracelet and was under round-the-clock surveillance, but cameras inside his cell had two blind spots in the shower and toilet.



CCTV footage released in October showed that guards failed to intervene even though loud hammering was audible from Guzmán’s cell.

The Mexican government offered a reward of 60m pesos ($3.8m) for information leading to the drug lord’s recapture, but the escape was extremely embarrassing for the government. It came less than three weeks after the United States filed a request to extradite Guzmán, and the kingpin’s lawyer told the Guardian last year that his escape was prompted by fears that he would face trial in the US.

Peña Nieto and federal officials came under heavy criticism for refusing to extradite Guzmán to the United States, despite shortcomings in the Mexican prison system. At least 20 public officials, including the former head of the prison system, were arrested after the escape, though there were no cabinet resignations.

El Chapo after capture. Photograph: Office of the Mexican Attorney General

The embarrassment was all the more acute because the escape marked the second time Guzmán had fled custody: in 2001 he escaped from another maximum-security prison, Puente Grande in western Jalisco state, reputedly hidden in a laundry cart.

Analysts say el Chapo’s latest capture gives the president a chance to regain some credibility, although the question of extradition remains a complicated one for the Mexican government.

Malcolm Beith, author of 2011 biography of Guzmán, said: “Catching Chapo again now gives Mexico a great opportunity to either try him quickly and fairly and make sure that if found guilty he remains behind bars – or extradite him and prove that US-Mexican relations are just as strong as ever.”

Mexico started extraditing top capos during recent decades, but there remained a residue of nationalist resistance to the process. In 2014, the then attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam told the Associated Press that Guzmán would eventually be extradited – but only after serving his sentence in Mexico, “Some 300 or 400 years later.”

Such feelings diminished after El Chapo’s 2014 escape, and the Peña Nieto administration went on to extradite a string of cartel figures, including Edgar Valdéz Villarreal, the Texas-born tough better known as “La Barbie,” who earlier this week pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering charges in an Atlanta court.

Security analyst Jorge Kawas said extradition was almost inevitable for El Chapo, but he cautioned: “Some powerful people in the (Mexican) elite should be worried if El Chapo decides to spill the beans.”

In a brief statement on Friday, US attorney general Loretta Lynch hailed the arrest as a “victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States.” She comended the Mexican authorities, but made no mention of the subject of extradition.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration also congratulated the Mexican government, saying in a tweet that the agency was “extremely pleased at the capture”.



DEA News (@DEANEWS) DEA is extremely pleased at the capture of Chapo Guzman. We congratulate the MX Government and salute the bravery involved in his capture

Over recent months, Mexican forces had carried out a string of search operations in the Sierra Madre mountains of Sinaloa, and in October Guzmán was reportedly injured before narrowly escaping.

Local people described aggressive raids in which villagers fled their homes to escape indiscriminate fire from helicopter gunships.

“There have been intense navy operations throughout the state for the past two months,” said Javier Valdés, publisher of the independent new site Ríodoce in Sinaloa’s capital city, Culiacán.

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Valdés said that despite years in prison – and months on the run – Guzmán maintained a powerful influence in the region, adding that even after the arrest the Sinaloa cartel would be likely to carry on with its business as usual.

“It continued operating while he was in prison the last time,” he said.



Guzmán’s rags-to-riches story, and his previous success in evading capture have only added to his status in Sinaloa, a sliver of territory hugging the Pacific coastline with a lowland famed for its tomatoes, and remote mountain ranges renowned for their opium plantations and marijuana fields.

He achieved a sort of demigod status in the state, where his 2015 escape was greeted with celebratory gunfire and choruses of narcocorridos (songs lionizing narcos).

Guzmán was born in a remote and impoverished hamlet in the rugged Sierra Madre mountains. His father was a gomero, someone who picked opium poppies, while Guzmán sold oranges as a boy.

He rose to the top of the organized crime pyramid, despite being barely educated and expanded the Sinaloa cartel into a criminal organization with a global reach.

