Mexico City : With his daring underground escapes and ability to sneak narcotics under the US-Mexico border, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman (in pic) earned a new nickname: “The Lord of Tunnels.” But Guzman’s latest cat-and-mouse game with the authorities reached the end of the tunnel when he was recaptured by marines on his home turf in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, President Enrique Pena Nieto declaring triumphantly: “Mission accomplished.”
Before that, the man whose old nickname means “Shorty” had used the money from a drug empire whose tentacles reach Europe and Asia to dig himself out of trouble again and again. The bathtub in one of his houses opened into an escape route through drainage systems that he used to flee from troops in early 2014, and he repeated the act last year from a maximum-security prison.
US and Mexican authorities have regularly discovered sophisticated tunnels with rails and electricity used to ship marijuana, cocaine and other drugs into the United States, with cash and weapons coming the other way. The 58-year-old Sinaloa drug cartel leader’s legend soared after he humiliated authorities by escaping prison in his most ambitious tunnel yet.
On July 11, 2015, after just 17 months at the Altiplano prison in central Mexico, Guzman slipped through a hole in his cell’s shower, climbed on a motorcycle mounted on rails, and traveled 1.5 kilometers (one mile) through the tunnel.
